FIRE PAYNE and KASPER

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Payne and Kaspar...Not sure I'd be too harsh on them...50% of DC's international moves have not panned out, it's about the same this year - for my money Peralta and Gallardo panned out given how they played when healthy - as did the pickups of Crayton, Guerrero, Doe, Janicki, and Khumalo. Niello, Wells and Martinez did not.

Two concerns I have about Soehn are that he was unable to make changes when the most costly DCU mistakes were the same week after week. And I think the club needs to look closely at the conditionaing and strength training regimen...so many muscular injuries...part of it is, I'm sure, the training program, part may be the training staff, and is there a strength and conditioning coach? If so who hired him?

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

My take on it is that if you are playing a game every 3 days, you don't have much time for practice to work on things. I think Tommy gets 1 more year. He has won SS and USOC. Considering that 70% of the Salary Cap was injured most of the season (or at least so it seemed), DCU played an additional half season (RBNY played 31 games, DCU played 47 I think), and the fact that massive turnover usually doesn't mean improvement in any sport, I think the coach and the core players get a shot next year, albeit on a VERY short leash.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

I have been away from my computer all morning. Is TS gone yet?????

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Yes. The Season is gone.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Just because you don't think the US Open Cup is valuable .... does not mean it isn't - you are sadly mistaken.

One can only wonder what else you are sadly mistaken about in that post.......

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

As to your first group, you shouldn't forget Diego Sonora, who was critical to us winning an MLS Cup in 1999.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Oh, and don't forget Carlos Llamosa, either, who is from Colombia.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Management, even of sports teams, is a long term proposition. I wouldn't make changes in the front office just because the team did not do well this year. Frankly, I wouldn't even replace Soehn simply because of this year's results.

You have to look at long term trends and management's basic approaches and I think there's plenty of evidence that DCU needs to go in another direction.

First and foremost, the front office's efforts to get a new stadium have been a failure and there's little reason to think that anything positive is likely to happen in the near future. Moreover, the stadium is the key to the team's financial viability. Without a stadium and without a prospect of one, DC begins to look like a bad location for a MLS team.

You could argue that the front office has been unlucky and that it faces a harder challenge in securing a stadium that other front offices. Perhaps true, but, at the end of the day, it's results that matter and management is supposed to understand the challenges it faces and figure out how to deal with them. Payne and company have had 13+ seasons to get a stadium and they haven't gotten the job done. Time for a change.

Second, the front office's approach to building a roster has been problematic for some time. Draft results have been terrible. In particular, the team had not acquired and developed any outstanding young talent. Where is our Stuart Holden and so on? Moreover, the team had given away, or driven away any number of promising or sort of promising young players.

On the flip side, the front office has become fixated on South Americans, often with questionable athleticism, but with nice skills. This isn't a new trend, but over the past season, the front office out did itself. It convinced the new owners to double the payroll and then acquired five South Americans of dubious value, but with high salaries. You would have thought that the goal was fielding a team at the bottom of the Argentine second division. The point here is not that the team should avoid South Americans, but that it needs to understand that South American players are overpriced by MLS standards and a team has to shop very carefully. I don't think that Payne/Kasper accept this.

A sub-theme in the South American love affair has been the failure to recognize that as players age they become less valuable. The Moreno of 2008 is not the Moreno of 2006. Signing him to a two-year guaranteed contract was dumb. I don't know who makes what decisions at DCU, but I also suspect that Moreno and, before him, Marco continued to get playing time because of pressure from the front office. In any case, DCU has left veterans on the field long after they were making real contributions.

Finally, look at the coaches the front office has hired -- Arena, Rongen, Hudson, Nowak, and Soehn. What does that work out to -- 2 out of 5? With Hudson being a laughable selection. Not a good record.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Congratulations on landing yourself on my ignore list.

If they had an option to add someone to an "ignorant" list, I'd do that as well.

Tommy simply wasn't ready to be a head coach, he's the man responsible for preparing the team, and putting the best possible 11 players on the field. He's also responsible for making adjustments during the match, and inspiring the players. He failed on all those fronts this year. I have no problem with replacing our whole coaching staff.

Kasper definitely struck out with some of his signings. Namely, Niell, and Carvallo. As much as I've written off Martinez and Peralta, they're comparable to most of the starting players in their respective positions throughout the league. The difference is, we're overpaying them. That doesn't mean they were bad signings.

Donnet is a great player, and had we been able to hold on to him, he'd have made a solid impact on our wings. However, he wanted more money than we were willing to pay.

Khumalo is hardly an MLS washout, there are lots of players who develop at a later age. He's definitely one of them, I look for him to be a solid contributer next year.

That said, technical directors aren't like coaches, it's not as if we can bandy about names that we'd like to have as technical directors for United. Who's to say that any of them would be any better? Getting players in MLS is no easy task.

We had a bad year, these things happen, especially in MLS. This isn't the Premiership, where teams can stay at the top every year simply because they have bigger wallets.

Payne is part owner, and responsible for nearly every success United has had. Calling for his head is beyond imbecilic.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

The Front Office has done everything they possibly could to get a new stadium built in DC. Fenty reneged on the agreement the team had in place with the previous administration.

The FO hasn't been unlucky, they've been screwed by the Mayor of DC. I'm looking forward to our new stadium in PG county, and I'm certain that Payne and Co. will pull it off.

The draft is a crapshoot. I don't think it's necessarily that our draft picks have been poor, it's that we don't have coaches that are good at developing young players. That's a problem that needs to be addressed.

With the success United has had with South American players in the past, can you really blame them for sticking with this tactic? There isn't a team in MLS who wouldn't want the services of Fred, Emilio, Moreno, Gallardo or Guerrero. Were it not for injuries to all of the above players this year, we'd all be singing a much different tune right now.

You're right, he isn't the same as he was in 2006.
In 2006 he had 11 goals and 10 assists. He also played 32 games with 31 starts.
This year he had 10 goals and 10 assists, in 25 games with 21 starts.

I still see 4 MLS Cups in our trophy cabinet.
Would you rather have Steve Nicol and nothing worthwhile accomplished?

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Once it was clear that Williams would not be able to deliver on a stadium, that is, get legislation through the City Council, DCU's front office had to understand that they were back at square one and needed to reassess their strategy. Expecting the next mayor to deliver on Williams' promises (if, in fact, he actually made any promises) was foolish in the extreme. Once it was clear that Fenty would be the next mayor, it was worse than foolish because Fenty had made a name for himself opposing the Nats' stadium.

And it was clear that Williams would have difficulty delivering once it became clear that Federal legislation was needed, that the site offers some environmental challenges, that the public was upset about public funding for the Nats' stadium -- in other words long before the end of Williams' regime.

It's not a coincidence that no other MLS team has been able to get a major city to build them a stadium in a central location. Dealing with a small suburban government and building in a less than prime location is all a soccer team in the US can hope for. Payne aimed high -- a stadium in the central city on a subway line. He gets some credit for that. But sticking with an ambitious plan long after problems had cropped up was dumb.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

While you bring up some valid points, your post is all over the place!

You state that you would not fire Tommy based on the record this year (in the 1st par) but say "2 out of 5 coaches" being a bad record (in the last par) which implies Tommy is not one of the two [at least I think that is what you meant, you did not specifically point out which 2 out of the 5 you considered good].

The South Americans with quality North Americans has been a formula with proven success (not only in getting hardware, but in playing attractive soccer), hence management has been trying to continue with this formula.

There is indeed a sell-by-date for aging players, but Moreno managed to get 10 goals and 10 assists, nobody else on the team was close to his contribution. Or would you rather play an unproven young American while not making the playoffs (this cost Rongen his job, who I think you implied was not a good coach).

You also lump Payne/Kasper together. They have different jobs and different responsibilities (such as Mark Simpson/Francisco Tobar for example).

ps-Guerrero is Honduran, not SA as stated by another poster (although I attribute this to that poster's emotinal state at the time of posting ).

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

I wouldn't fire Soehn based on this year alone; based on the last two years, perhaps. He's really not much of a coach. Nevertheless, I don't see that firing Soehn fixes the basic problems. Almost any coach would struggle with the roster the front office assembled.

Subtract Moreno's penalty kicks from the total and suddenly his stats don't look so good. And I would argue that his lack of pace and tendency to hog the ball has hurt the team a great deal and slowed the development of a style that suited the bulk of the roster.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Mayor Barry promised DC United a stadium.

I do not know of the inner dealings between management of DC United and the Mayor's office (or the various office's since DC United existence), so I cannot judge with any certainty DC United's management's work on that front.

It appear's you hold a grudge against Kevin Payne for not getting DC United a stadium. I too, would love DC United to have a stadium, but one cannot blame Kevin Payne for Fenty's greed.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Tommy won the Supporter's Shield two years running, so based on that alone, your statement that "based on the last two years, perhaps" is not reasonable.

I do agree with you that he is not much of a coach.

Your other sentences implied that Kasper is your problem, we will have to see if Kevin Payne agrees with you on that. I for one am very skeptical of the Gallardo signing, but we shall see how he does next year.

Moreno was placed in games to hold the ball, to settle down other players (who perhaps are running around like a chicke-without-a-head) and provide experience. While the rest of the team liked the more up-tempo type of game they were unable to achieve any results with it, hence Tommy put in Moreno late in some games to change the tempo.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Sheep?

I realize it must be pretty tough to go through life with your Pampers all in a bunch. But you seem to be the only one "whining" here. Those of us in the adult world are looking at things a bit more rationally. Now here's a nickel, go buy yourself a sucker. And then go play in the street a$$hole.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

My bad.

DC United won it two years in a row.

Tommy won it in 2007.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Fenty's greed? What does that mean?

Ok, Mayor Barry promised a stadium?!? Mayor Williams promised a stadium?!?

Well, maybe. I know they said things that you could interpret as promises, but frankly talk is cheap. Until a mayor submits legislation to the council or signs a binding agreement, I would not count any chickens. (Payne should have realized that.)

What, in any case, does that have to do with Fenty? For my money, Fenty is a dimwit who is making a mess of the schools and child welfare services. Nevertheless, I don't recall that he said anything that could be construed as a promise to build a stadium. Actually that was one of the smarter things he has done. I don't see that he has anything to gain by helping DCU. A stack of academic studies demonstrate that public funding for sports facilities is wasted. It doesn't generate any new economic activity. Fenty made a name for himself opposing the Nats' stadium -- a deal that looks worse every day. Until the latest downturn in the economy, it looked like DC could get Poplar Point developed without DCU. And why should Fenty help an organization that was buddies with his predecessor. Politics is all about "what have you done for me lately?" I don't see any greed here. Maybe political cunning, but not greed.

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

Fenty promised a stadium (in RFK no less). But you are right, talk is cheap.

Fenty wants his pockets filled with gold...

 

Re: FIRE SOEHN, PAYNE and KASPER

What direction are you talking about? We won in 04' the MLS cup, won the SS two years in a row following that, yes we havent had much success lately in the MLS cup, but really thats just all about what teams hot at the moment and on a roll. IMO it doesnt work for me in soccer, maybe in the NFL and NBA, but not for soccer.

And you keep talking about Payne like hes the biggest problem, last i checked you stated before you started watching DC in 05' right? So you dont even know what our success was like before 05'! Your talking out of your ass....

If it wasnt for Payne, we wouldnt be the most respected MLS team by south america, nor would we accomplish what we have.

You seem to forget with the loss of our play maker in gallardo and moreno coming off the bench injured, we lost that spark to get us through tough games.

Moreno came in vs. NE and injected life into our squad, not so much vs. Colombus, but the guy is playing friggin' injured!!!

Imagine Moreno 100% and gallardo sneaking in passes to tino', emilio, and fred!

People forget how injuries killed our team this season, not only mentally, but gelling physically.

Next year with our same roster and all players 100% we will dominate.

How so? South America builds on what US players lack, touch, vision with the ball, small sided passing in tight spaces, and eveyrthing that generic South Americans bring to the table.

This is a elite part of our play here in DC, we dont play that mindless soccer that exists in the EPL.

This is the signifigance of shopping in south america, and even Africa like Khumalo who has that playing style(yes i know he came from the riverhounds, but that skill is purely african).

I dont know about you, but Moreno was our best player next to Doe who finished off passes he had when coming off the bench vs. the Revs. I think Moreno this season looked tons better than he did in 06' when people were ready to throw in the towel for him.