Good Luck to FC in Haiti

good guy, not so good of a coach. Hey, at least FC can't trade away players in Haiti. Best to luck and thank god hes not with the Revolution anymore.

 

Recall Tardieu

Haiti is one of the real minnows of the soccer world.

But at least Fernando is back in it. Good guy, still much to prove as a coach.

Interested to see how they do in their big derby matches against the Dominican Republic, Curacao and the Netherlands Antilles, not to be confused with the Netherlands also known as Holland.

Maybe a recall for ex-Revo Patrick Tardieu, the "Haitian Sensation"!

 

Interesting that there are three, count 'em, three Americans who manage national teams. And two of them are pretty well expected to be in the next World Cup. Who would have ever thought it back in the dark ages?

Good luck to Fernando. A good guy, and hopefully whatever lessons he learned in his first head coaching job will help him bring Haiti up to the level of a medium-sized fish in CONCACAF.

Tom

 

So now we have two Americans coaching other teams in CONCACAF (Clavijo and Sampson), two former MLS coaches coaching in CONCACAF (Clavijo and Bora) and two former US National Team coaches coaching in CONCACAF (Bora and Sampson)... and we have Canada wanting to hire San Jose boss Frank Yallop.

MLS and the USSF are taking over CONCACAF!

BTW, I'm happy to see Clavijo land on his feet but, assuming he doesn't speak French and most of the Hatians who speak English do so with an accent as heavy as FC's, that is some miscommunication waiting to happen.

 

There's also an American assistant at Jamaica, and I believe one for one of the weaker Asian teams like Tibet. I wonder why, since everyone knows American coaches suck and don't know anything about soccer?

 

That's a rather harsh judgement. It WAS his first head coaching job, and the team he left behind did make it to the league final. Of course Nicol is the one who deserves the lion's share of the credit for that success, but I also believe that Clavijo should get some too (for preparing the team and assembling most of the roster).

Clavijo brought the Revolution their most success up to that point in their history. Following up his playoff season, Clavijo did not succeed in that situation - but that does not make him a bad coach.

 

Well, his main flaw in my book was trying to force-fit a 3-5-2 when you don't have the horses to play that way. That, and I'll never forgive him for taking out Andy Williams, the only Rev who was even remotely able to generate any offense, with a 1-0 lead in the Open Cup Final. Everyone, and I literally do mean everyone, knew what a bad move it was, and within 5 minutes, LA had scored and we had no chance whatsoever of anything more than praying for PKs.

That's what I was referring to when I said I hope he had learned from his Revs tenure. There are some skilled players in Haiti, but because of such a horrible economic situation, the game has taken a back seat to survival. Hopefully that's somethig that will change, and Clavijo can get Haiti up to the point of being a contender for the Shell Caribbean Cup, then qualifying for the Gold Cup, and from there, making it into the next-to-final group stage of 12 for WCQ. Baby steps.

Tom

 

I wouldnt give FC as much credit as you have. He got the dispersal picks and picked 4 duds (Rooney, Diallo, Chacon, and Asad). The only smart moves where the pickups of Ralston and Llamosa. The greatest move FC ever made and that has made me less harsh of him was the drafting of Twellman. FC has a keen eye when it comes to spotting talent and potential. Getting it to work is a different story. Anyway, FC's lineup included Sommer in net (a gk way past his prime) and no real connection between the forwards and defense. Remember it was Nicol who got Hernandez, Kamler, and Serna. Out of the 6 players in that deal, 2 remain in the league, and both where in the Revs deal. I also give credit to FC for previous draft picks, like spotting Joseph in the 2002 draft.

 

I always thought he would have made a better scout, or even GM, than coach.

- HWM

 

i dont know about a GM but certainly a scout. FC didnt have great relationships with players, mainly stars like Wynalda and Harkes. (I don't care what you guys think about them, they are proven stars). He also made some bad moves that enraged Revs fan, unfortunately I was so enraged at that time i blocked that time period out of my head.

 

STOP. The only time you open your mouth is to change feet.

Even though you may have opinions, they are, nonetheless, totally unfounded.

You have no idea what kind of relationship FC had with his players. All you're doing is predicating the above based on a SINGLE conversation that you were eavesdropping in on [That was the day Wynalda, a self-described headcase, stopped by to chat with a few people at the front of section 115 and tossed out that itty bitty bombshell about FC and their relationship]. Eric's bitter. He has little reason to be. Eric's doing well, too, now. The same goes for Harkes.

A little commentary: FWIW, guys like Harkes, Wynalda and a few others from the 90's represent the best and the worst of American soccer. For the most part, they were guys who had talent, albeit not enough, but came equipped with heads big enough for an elephant. They felt entitled and they had no real reason to. Wynalda needs to shut his pie hole, work hard at his current job and MOVE on with his life.

And, for you my friend, you need to develop a personal code of ethics and moral standards, and stop listening to other people's conversations.

 

You need to check your facts because i was part of that group that he was telling a story about.

The only good relationships FC had with his players were those of Hispanic decent, in which he favored. Whenever you favor a certain group like he did, there is bound to be tension, ESPECIALLY when you have TWO US stars on the team.

 

Absolutely, positively, 100% garbage.

Just because Eric Wynalda or John Harkes says something, that doesn't mean it's true.

 

Sadly, few of the US WC94 players have ended their careers gracefully.

I'm sure a LOT of that has to do with the stage of life that MLS is in, needing to squeeze dollars from the guys who generated the interest to make MLS possible. Having to swallow pay cuts in declining years must be a bitter pill for those guys.

I think dealing with a lot of that crap was part of Clavijo's difficulties (Burns, Wynalda, Harkes) - not to mention having to live with the enigma that was Mauricio Wright!

I do have to say that Wynalda and Harkes are EXCELLENT commentators and can't wait for them to push the likes of Ty Keogh off the scene.

 

I agree, I never thought of it that way but maybe there was always tension between those guys going back to the national team and it exploded in NE. Whatever it was, its over, all have moved on to happier things. So good luck FC.

 

George Vecsey column on FC and Haiti in today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/sports/soccer/04VECS.html

Brian

 

Here's an old photo of Harkes from his Revs playing days. As the say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Harke's commentary on MLS Wrap is totally inane and bland. I'd rather hear Wynalda, who is willing to be critical of players and coaches, or Chris Sullivan (?), who makes good comments about tactics and formations. I'd like to see MLS Wrap try Simon Elliott, who did a great job as color commentator in the one game that he did late in the season.

 

Well, the whole thing about the "Class of 94" was that they already were a de facto club before MLS was formed. They performed against all odds to build the game in this country in the early 90s, when some Euro-eejits were predicting the '94 WC would be played in front of empty (MLS style) stadiums. I have a video from that time, "The Story of Oranje," where a guy in the Dutch FA says basically that, and how it was a mistake to award the Cup to the US. I wonder if they edited that bit out of the later releases?

The guys who could latch on with modest European or Mexican clubs did well for themselves, but they generally didn't get a whole lot of respect, even if Harkes did score the "goal of the year" for Sheffield Wednesday against then-England keeper Peter Shilton.

So was it a big shock that a lot of these guys were not the superstars that they were hyped up to be when MLS started? I argued that losing to Iran in France was the best thing to happen to the Nats, simply because after that point, we became a "normal" country. If you aren't playing well for your club, you generally won't be in the National Team. We still had stiffs like Lalas, Burns, Ramos and a bunch of other guys who kept more deserving players off the team--guys who were unheard of before 1996. Eddie Pope was the only new player brought in in the post-MLS era.

The irony is that of all the pre-MLS stars, Tony Meola who was out of the Nats picture by the time MLS started, ended up being by far, the best club player of the bunch.

These guys should be given their due, and I would expect most of them to be making appearances in Oneonta in the next few years. This was our Golden Generation, and they deserve credit for bringing the sport to a level where it never had been, and a lot of people thought it never could reach.

Tom

 

I suspect that the poor performance of some of these headliner type players was largely a fact of their being protected from the normal ramifications of poor performance, whether that be from coaches, team management, or league management.

The classic example is once again Lalas. In my opinion he was a good but vastly overpriced player with the Revs, but when he returned to the league, he showed a lot more effort on and off the field that reflected itself in his fitness level and the performance of LA during that period.

It's a shame that some of these guys were not pressured to show what they were really capable of by their teams, both club and national. When you have terms like "Captain for life" floating around, and management is keeping players in the lineup because of their perceived appeal to casual fans, it's far more difficult to keep teams competitive and unified.

This still continues, though.

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