More indicators that make the departure of Yallop more realistic, it seems that Lalas or AEG are disassembling much of the staff that Yallop brought in. The club on Monday let go of Hanley, though it wasn't revealed until Tuesday when reporters noticed that a new coach, Ian Feuer, was working with the keepers. It wasn't clear whether the move was related to the Galaxy allowing 11 goals in the last three games, many the fault of a leaky defense rather than goalkeeper Joe Cannon. Yallop would say only Hanley leaving was for "personal reasons." Nevertheless, Hanley, who worked with Cannon and Yallop in San Jose, where they won two MLS Cups, is the second member of the staff to be removed from the bench in the last week. On Friday, assistant Paul Bravo was promoted to a new position, the club's director of soccer, reporting directly to General Manager Alexi Lalas. Link:http://www.dailybreeze.com/sports/articles/9440736.html?page=2&c=y
Re: Fox Footfall confirms Yallop is done Good post I agree,only UNLESS BIG CHANGES ARE MADE FROM THE TOP (AEG)This is not going to happen,they are too big thus untouchable. Tim L will be there until the end,Lilas, yes he may be replaceable.
Was Lalas always on the Galaxy's radar? Would he have been GM had the former GM not passed away? If the former GM was still here, how do you think the team would be now? Would they have gotten Beckham?
I guess the new goalkeeper coach is this guy then... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Feuer I don't know anything about him, but I am betting that someone on the board does since he has been in the US Soccer system previously.
Here is is "highlight" video: http://www.ianfeuer.com/IanFeuerHiliteReel.wmv And website... http://www.ianfeuer.com/
Feuer was tall and rail thin. Looked more like a basketball player than a soccer goalie. Decent skills but not an exceptional athlete. His range could be intimidating, especially on PKs because of his long arms. The guy was right on the edge of the national team, but just not good enough.
Our old GM, Doug Hamilton, was great at the business side, but there was mixed opinions about how effective he was at the soccer side. My guess is that if he hadn't passed away that he would have been promoted in AEG and then Lalas would have been brought in to be the GM. Beckham was AEG all the way. Who the GM was wouldn't matter.
yes, lalas has been on AEG's hit list for a long time. it's debatable as to when he was selected to be groomed for LA, but certainly by the time he took over san jose he was always headed for LA. hamilton, prior to his death, had been promoted in AEG to take a broader role within the organization. in full speculation mode, i think had hamilton not died, lalas would have been brought in as assistant GM for last season while hamilton finished his grooming. if hamilton were still here we'd probably be in a very similar situation. it's easy to bitch and moan that lalas hired the wrong guy and made stupid trades, but hamilton was just as guilty of terrible decisions. he ruined tampa bay. beckham and donovan would be with the club regardless of who was GM. both those deals were orchestrated by tim lieweke. which is in effect where i believe our problem lies. lieweke is a marketing/biz dev guy. when he sees an opportunity – donovan, beckham, our stadium – he seizes control of the galaxy fo and does what it takes to make it happen. now before we all jump down his throat and demonize him, let's not forget without tim we wouldn't have our lovely stadium, we wouldn't have the 2005 open cup and the 2005 mls cup, and we wouldn't have david beckham. unfortunately these mega deals have also caused turmoil and uncertainty in the galaxy organization. in 2003 when we got our stadium we went on a long road trip to start the season which basically sent us in to a tail-spin from which we have never really recovered. when donovan was signed in 2005 it was only a few days before the start of the season and we shipped off ruiz, for whom sampson had built a team around including bringing in pando ramirez; a talented player, but used in completely the wrong way. now here we are in 2007 where we have a curious combination of 2003/2005 – we've got a bizarre and brutal schedule like 2003, but worse and we've got a team built around a player who didn't show up until mid-way through the season. what we really need now if for AEG to take a back seat. give lalas/yallop/bravo or ???/klinsmann/??? a guaranteed 3 years and a goal of winning the supporters shield and one major cup (mls, us open, super liga) by 2010. they need to be able to stomach rough patches and power through them without freaking out.
Re: Fox Footfall confirms Yallop is done I am fully of dashiel's opinion, and he expresses it so much better than I. Klinsmann is no panacea. I will fully support him, but I think giving him full reigns to do whatever he wants with the team personnel would be very, very foolish. And I doubt if he would take the job if he doesn't have that authority.
Big difference between Hamilton & Lalas IMO is that Hamilton had the ability & the foresight to leave well enough alone at times. He had some patience. I'm not familiar with the Tampa Bay problems, but Hamilton stuck by Sampson in the middle of 2005, and we know where that got us before the end of the year. Just before he died there were big rumors that Dunivant was going to be traded to NY for Gaven, and Hamilton resisted. I don't think he was as fond of the flash & change for change's sake as Lalas is. Do you think he would have traded Ugo and Herculez, and Hartman the way we did? I don't. The more I remember of the history, the more I blame Lalas' leadership for where we are right now. God, I'll be glad if he leaves. A hundred times more happy than to see Yallop go, and I'm over Yallop.
Very well said. Lately, thats something I've been thinking about. Just the differences in Lalas and the late Doug Hamilton.
do i think the ugo/herc/hartman/cannon trade would have gone down? no, that was clearly the worst trade made under lalas's watch. i think i understand why it happened: yallop had come in last season and made us the best team in the league down the stretch (second best based on results, but considering the state we were in when frank took over i say best overall). roberts had looked very good down that stretch, herc and landon played a similar role and rumor had it there was some friction between landon/herc. finally hartman was perhaps a little too comfortable in so cal and was making some very costly mistakes. hindsight is twenty-twenty, but it wasn't such a hot trade for us... though to be fair it wasn't so hot for colorado either. it's not like they've been busting up the league. i can't speak for ugo as i've only seen him once or twice, but herc has 4 goals on the season. ignoring for a moment that it's impossible to determine who made what trades, the GM or the coach. what we do know, hamilton was brought on board in 2002 and the team was pretty much sigi's until 2005 when he and sampson began to rebuild. full disclosure: i have no idea how heavily hamilton was involved, but if you look at media reports from 2005, hamilton seems to have taken a pretty big role in our 2005 rebuilding which means he approved of: moreno/aloisi for dunivant/cronin victorine for a second round draft pick the costa rican stooges umaña and chinchillia danny califf for an alocation ruiz for an alocation (basically donovan) pando ramirez naldo nagamura thiago he was also around for the mega-trade with dallas which was an abject failure; bo's arrival which relegated lalas to the bench despite being team MVP the year prior. serna was 100% his signing and also a huge failure. he also allowed sampson to disrespect herzog to the point herzog – who was the main reason for any success we had in '04 – that herzog retired. i think there's a little too much historical leeway for hamilton because of his tragic death, but in all honesty i would much rather have lalas at the helm. if you look at the only footbal-ling decision that can 100% be attributed to both GMs you look at who they hired when faced with firing an mls cup winning coach. hamilton lines up a stooge with no club experience, a hated figure amongst players and fans in the states; a coach notorious for locker room unrest. someone who was tactically inept, a terrible man-manager and not that hot in terms of picking up talent (he wasn't terrible either). lalas lined up a coach tied for the most number of mls cups in league history; one who had proven that he could take a shambolic team and rebuild it in to a championship winning side. ultimately it looks like that decision is going to be the wrong one, but i really believe it's a case of timing rather than frank being a bad coach. it was just flat out the wrong time and place for frank and maybe for anyone to succeed with this team this year.
dashiel - your arguments about Hamilton's short-comings are persuasive, and I know a lot of Galaxy fans were very upset with him. The Sampson hiring/non-firing indirectly brought a championship, but also was only a short-term success because Sampson was bound to fail long-term. And the 2005 championship was probably more down to the players & adding Donovan than anything else. I'd still rather have him back than Alexi. I think Lalas did fine hiring Yallop, I was happy about it, but then he and/or Lalas doomed the whole thing to fail with disastrous, panicky player moves. And Lalas's guidance, direction and support from the front office for the players and team has been ridiculous. From what I can see, I don't like his management style. Beckham and all the injuries played a part in making the year a circus and a loser. But Lalas and Yallop under Lalas have more than played their part. Maybe someday Lalas will be a better man manager and leader for an organization. But he was in over his head here. And so was Yallop, unfortunately for us.
It seems to me that when I started following Galaxy in June is about when the wheels totally and utterly came off the Lalas Wagon. Trading away young promising talent like Nathan Sturgis and Robbie Findley for utter shite like we acquired, and allowing the whole Beckham hysteria to take a front seat ahead of the welfare of the team and the fans in the stadium every week means that from a top quality team which had started fairly badly, to one which has tailed off even from the heady days of winning 10 goal games by one. and losing 3-2, to now where we get trashed 3-0 by Colorado who never really looked like they had to try very hard. I know we have suffered a crippling injury crisis, and have effectively a team on the pitch and a team in the treatment room, but we didn't sign the right people. Chris Klein, Kelly Gray, Edson Buddle etc don't fit into the whole 'lets rebuild the team around Beckham' philosophy that Lalas has tried to implement. We have basically, if you average that a club gives three youngsters their debuts every season, skipped a generation and are relying on players who are too inexperienced and young like Mike Randolph and Ty Harden, who really shouldn't be given this level of exposure. I don't want Yallop to be fired, as I can't see how I, or any other coach could have hauled this sack of shit into the playoffs, but I know that he will either jump or will be pushed. San Jose would be the more attractive option, with the chance to build his own team, and probably not work under the obstacles that Lalas' trades have burdened him with. Alexi Lalas is a media guy, and an impressive one, whose words are read around the world, but he is not so good, an administrator, or a talent scout. In a way I am still clutching at the straw that Paul Bravo will take on this role as a way of keeping Frank Yallop happy and Lalas will become more of a supervisor. What definately does need to happen is for LA to develop a team of younger talent, who play exciting football. Sturgis and Findley fitted that bill, but I can't say that Klein or Gray do, or Buddle and possibly even Pavon, who is too immobile in the box to be an effective target man for Becks crosses. The new fans who don't know anything about football will divide into those who came for Becks and are satisfied there is nothing more to see, and those who stay for the team, but being a fan of a team that six years ago were knocking Barcelona out of the Champions League and averaging 40,000 capacity crowds, I know the serious danger of consistently watching a losing team. Even on relegation, we averaged 30,000 crowds, with the fans expecting the new players to bounce straight back up, but the season after we dipped to 20,000 and last season a truly dreadful 17,000, and this was nothing to do with the Division we were in, it was down to the results on the field. We got 25,000 for our first home game of the season and are expecting similar for the Luton game on Saturday, and are in League One, but the team is playing with fire in their hearts and it consists of young, hungry players who try to play good football, and are getting results. I'm sure that it is okay that while Beckham-mania abounds, crowds will not drop much below 20,000 at HDC, but when this has died down, how many fans will have been alienated unless this team picks itself up? In Rugby League, the only sport I watch with a salary cap bar MLS, there are two schools of thought. You either have a strong first XIII and weaker replacements or a fantastic academy, or strength in depth. You may think, as I did that doing the LA route and signing big money first teamers would win more as Leeds do in RL, but the favourites to win Rugbys Super League, as always are St Helens, who build from youth, and only sign big players when they can be shown to be better than the players already there. LA has taken the Leeds Rhinos route, and signed the star players, but when they get injured they are replaced by players not up to the average standard of the league. Whether this was Frank Yallops doing, or Alexi Lalas, we'll only know when one of them is short of money and writes a book about it, but each can take a share of the blame. I refuse to believe that FY didn't know about the players FO was looking at, and I don't believe he didn't sanction Sturgis and Findley. Even Nate Jaqua was better than the current LA standard, of unfit, overage and overrated player we seem to be packed to the rafters with at the moment.
The 2g's radio show/podcast reported the Yallop situation this morning on their show from a source that supposed to be reliable in past revelations within the team goings on. If true Yallop won't be at the game tonight and JK could start as early as Monday. If JK is the new coach Lalas is leaving next because he is the common denominator with losing teams. Once he goes against Jurgen AEG will fire him because he is small time and it doesn't get any bigger than Klinsmann. I think Lalas signed his own two weeks notice without realizing it. I was hoping the Quakes could get JK but you guys need some serious changes and the best of luck to you. Don't tell any Quakes fans that I said that, they would probably kill me for it.
Well, Yallop's at the game, so that parts wrong. Now it looks like a wait and see story. You guys have to ditch Lalas if you want a chance of winning.
Re: Fox Footfall confirms Yallop is done I agree, with 13 players carrying injury's due to a packed schedule of games I am against firing Yallop. Let him ride out the season and get some players healthy and take it from there. It doesn't matter who the coach is there's not a lot you can do with so many injuries and back to back games.
Man, if it's true, and Yallop is indeed sacked by or before week's end... we just scored a bigger victory that those lucky schmucks from Pachuca will ever get winning SuperLiga. I farking kid you not. Praise every god the world worships if it happens. It couldn't have come any sooner.
I'm not terribly interested in what Fox Football Phone-In "surmises" the situation to be. If they have credible info, they should report it as such and indicate the outcome is confirmed. if they don't, they should indicate that it's rumor at the current time and move on.
its all just rumor, if it was true then fine but i doubt it is. I think its interesting no alexi last night, very interesting. Purhaps rumor is true just diffrent people...