Great Bakary ESPN Piece + Back to the bench for Rolfe?

Praising Osorio doesn't say much for the coaching appraisal skills of those who do it.

 

Does the same go for the geniuses on Big Soccer, ESPN, and Ives whom all spoke of what a tactical guru he was (evidently, writing crap down during a game somehow means you have a keen understanding of the great enigma that is soccer) when he took over the Fire, and even went so far as to say he was the best coach in America and could even possibly become the national team coach?

 

I hope Baky signs a deal (wish we had some of that Mapp money) but given what he says in the article, it isn't too likely. It'd be rough to have to sell him this summer, so that he doesn't leave on a free after the season... but it'd be stupid to lose him and get nothing out of it.

My thoughts on the Osorio affair:

Osorio was never the genius he was made out to be, just like he's not as bad as he's showing in New York at the moment. He got the same results in '07 as Hamlett did last year with the same team, so that seems to imply that the Fire are very talented and that Hamlett would probably fail at New York, just like everyone else who's had the job (*cough* Bruce Arena *cough*).

I think Osorio was better at motivating certain players, but that's just based on what I see from watching the team, which probably doesn't mean a whole lot. I want to like Hamlett, but his over-simple approach to team selection and substitutions, and the team's poor home record can't be ignored.

Osorio made up his mind to scuttle off to New York in '07 and I don't really remember what chance the Fire had to keep him, but the Fire should've hired someone with team management experiece after he left.. instead of letting a complete novice manage the team during an fleeting era where there is great talent at the club that won't last for too much longer.

 

I always get crap for deflecting blame off of coaches, which is interpreted as being an apologist -- particularly of Sarachan and Hamlett. My point, however, is that coaching is not nearly as important as most people on here seem to think. Yes, a good coach makes a difference. But honestly, it is the players.

I think your post backs me up. Osorio and Hamlett seem to be nearly identical with a very similar set of players. You note how badly Sarachan did before Osorio arrived, but what gets lost over time is that we suffered an unreal run of injuries and had to play some pretty iffy line ups in the first half of that season. Not unlike the worst run we had under Bob Bradley when we were calling up USL players right and left and signing some very forgetable names that I have now forgotten.

Osorio got back some injured players but most importantly, we signed Blanco and he brought in Conde. He was no genius. We just had better players on the field.

We are currently in first place and I don't believe we will continue to play poorly at home all season. So we have a chance at a real good year. Is that because of Denis? Not primarily. Like when things go bad, it is the players that really determine the strength of a team. There is a reason Phil Jackson took the jobs he took and turned down other opportunities.

Could anyone have won those championships? No. But the Bulls won because of Michael and Scotty. The Lakers won because of Kobe and Shaq.

We should win, although McBride's injury will make it more interesting and will put more responsibility on an aging Blanco. If we don't, I think Denis job should be in danger.

Now, having said all of that, it never ceases to amaze me the hate directed at that man who has been a loyal member of the Fire from day one. Meanwhile some people are starting to imply that Osorio is somehow better despite the fact that the records do not back that up AND the fact that the mother********er was talking about leaving this job at his ********ing introductory press conference. He was a carpet bagger and an opportunist who left skid marks leaving the club we all love.

And yet with a record almost identical to Hamlett, some think he is better and that we shouldn't have taken a shot on someone without head coaching experience.

 

Hey all - just wanted to let you know that Bakary is a class act and really loves Chicago and the support he gets from the stands. You can definitely tell that it means a lot to him and the rest of the team.

You've got a great player and person in Bakary - they don't come along often.

KD

 

Well, in '07 we also had Barrett who was much more prominent and played a lot more than Wanchope. You had Chris Armas who played in 25 games in the midfield and you had Ivan Guerrero who I think is the equal to Pappa in value although Pappa gives you a little more offensively.

So, I get your points but I think the teams are really pretty even in terms of talent and not surprisingly, the records are pretty consistent from one coach to another.

Part of the problem I have when I get into discussions on here is that I'm arguing different things. I'm not necessarily arguing who is the better coach here. I'm arguing that the effect of the coach is not that great or at least no where near as great as some make it out to be.

It is definitely a piece of the puzzle, so a bad coach can be the difference in winning or not winning.

This year, however, we have created a ton of chances. We are a much more positive team than we were under Osorio in my opinion. We are allowing too many goals which is in part bad set piece defending and in part Busch not having as good of a year as last year. I have said many times that Denis can share in the blame for the set piece defending. On the other hand, I have pointed out instances of ball watching too many times as well. I don't care if Osorio is the coach or Bradley or Hamlett or me. A professional shouldn't need to be told to correct a mistake that a jr. high player should not make.

Anyway, we are in first place. We are in position to have a great year. We have certainly not peaked yet. Given all of that, Denis isn't going anywhere, so I guess I don't see the point in doing anything other than supporting him. If we don't win it all, I think he should be seriously evaluated for whether he should be back next year. (I normally think coaches should have more than 2 years but he started out with a better player situation than most new coaches.)

 

Wasn't Soumare a rookie? So a lot of that growth could just be a young player coming onto his own. Also, It seems unfair to give Osorio credit for Soumare's growth and ignore Pappas growth. He's thrived under Hamlett.

 

Because you ARE an apologist for crappy coaches, as evidenced by this nonsense:

Yeah, it's only the players. That's why teams all around the world hire coaches and good coaches with solid track records are in such demand. I guess nobody in the history of football except you has figured out that guys like Wenger and Mourinho are lucky that their clubs somehow just happen to have all the best players each year. The only way this is even possible is if everything else is equal between opponents: front offices, budgets, roster sizes and coaches.

Real Madrid tried the "just buy an All-World team and watch the trophies roll in" approach earlier this decade. Their roster was a list of everyone who rocked the world at WC98 and WC02 and in the top leagues in Europe. In 5 years, they won exactly 1 league championship, no Copa del Reys and no European trophies. Ranieri, Grant and Scolari at Chelsea have all also experienced the same lesson. Buying a roster of big name players can only take you so far and then only if the disparity in player quality is huge. Not a stirring endorsement of your theory.

On the flip side, you have Scotland where the Auld Firm dominate due to $$$. And yet, one year Aberdeen won the domestic championship despite not having a all-star roster. Their coach obviously had nothing to with it. Who was he? Some loser named Alex Ferguson who also merely happened to totally luck into having all great players at Manchester United because heaven knows he's such a non-factor at that club.

And you cite the Bulls in your argument? Nice own goal there. Let's leave aside for a moment that you're talking abuot two very different sports, each with its own dynamics. How many championships did Michael Jordan win before Phil Jackson became coach? How many did the Pippen/Jordan duo win before Jackson? How many titles has LeBron James won? How did Shaqtus do in AZ when he didn't have Jackson or Reilly as coach?

Then there's a team you may have heard of - the Chicago Fire. we went from world-beaters in 2003 to chumps in 2004. I suppose our players just suddently forgot how to play soccer. Right. We had the same roster both years except for Boca who left after 03 and DMB left halfway through the season. Other than that, it was the same roster. So what happened? Long story short, in 03 Dave basically took Bradley's team to glory by getting out of his own way. We played like a Bradley team. In 2004, Dave tried to do things his way and it failed. He also alienated good players who were used to doing things the correct way under Bradley which simply doomed him and our team to perpetual medicority-to-suckitude.

As for injuries, render unto me a freaking break. In 2001 ansd especially 2002, Bradley had a much tougher time and yet we were never uncompetitive. We haven't had nearly the same trouble this year and yet the main reasons our record looks impressive is that, except for DC and Columbus, the East is an embarrasing turdpile this year and we have a great roster who have provided some great individual performance. But we do not play as a team and so we're at the mercy of individual players having great games. Ergo the lack of consistency in our results. If we had even a decent coach, we'd be in the driver's seat for the Supporters Shield because we'd have at least 7 more points - and that is not being greedy or unrealistic or assuming that we have Cristiano Ronaldo on our team.

Coaching matters. I'm not going to make the same mistake as you (only in the opposite direction) and say it is the ONLY thing that matters but it matters much more than you'd like to admit. Can a good coach take a U-9 girls team and win the English Premier League? No. Then again, how many World Cups or Euro-championship elimination rounds did George Best play in? A good coach will not only build a good roster but he'll also get it to play as more than the sum of its parts so that it plays consistently well. At best, the Fire are pretty much exactly the sum of our roster because Denis isn't adding any value which is why we can literally beat or lose to any team this year. since we are as good as uncoached, it just depends on if one or two of our players creates a magic moment. But that's not how a team should play.

As for the "hate", if Denis was really truly so dedicated to the Fire, he'd recognize his limitations and go back to being a great assistant coach for us and help us win. Be that as it may, I do feel sorry for him because he has been here since the beginning and the way the team's ownership treated him in the wake of Asshorio's departure was nothing short of shabby and humiliating. At the same time, that still doesn't make him a great coach or help us win trophies.

As for Asshorio, I don't think he's all that. Yeah yeah, he turned us around in 2007 but then a dead squid would have been an improvement over Dave. And everyone knows last year's play-offs were a complete one-in-a-million fluke. The only thing I can say in his favor is that it's almost impossible to judge the quality of any coach while he's in New York due to the impenetrable miasma of failure that surrounds that team due mainly to their FO and to league tinkering. I still would not take him back.

 

Stopped reading right there. Took you six words to completely misrepresent what I said.

 

Wrong. That is what you've been saying all along and in what I quoted from your post. Given your record of past apologetics, anyone who has read your posts knows that your sop of "Yes, a good coach makes a difference" is a fig leaf. In the end, though, according to you no coach is ever to blame for why his team is consistently crap. Or, as you yourself say: "But honestly, it is the players." And you wonder why you have a reputation as an apologist. Whatever. I don't blame you for not reading the rest of my post. It can't be fun to get beat down for spouting nonsense.

 

Progress.

This time you used about 1/10th of the bandwidth to spout utter bullshit. Well done.

 

Chris M.,

After the Houston game back in June, you tried to blame the players for the result and exonerate Denis. You said (as you've said now in this thread and other places) that criticism of Hamlett is due to "hate", as if there's no possible objective, rational explanation for said criticism. When called on it by kropolski, you backed down a little bit athough you still said "I think Denis has handled the job quite well but as the coach, he is responsible for periods of inconsistency and for failure to correct brain cramps in some players", again trying to use a figleaf while really blaming the players. In that thread, I asked you the following questions:

What, specifically, makes you think Denis is such a great coach?

What functions of the head coaching job do you think he does better than any other coach in MLS?

Where do you see him adding so much value as a coach that we should keep him for the next 3-5 years?

What makes you think he can successfuly rebuild this team next year after most of our good players leave?

I never got any answers. How about now? Heck, I'll help you by listing the areas for which I think a coach can and should be responsible. I listed these after the Dallas game in May:

Basically (and this is hideously oversimplified), he can influence a team's fortunes by:

1) building/maintaining a good roster
2) preparing strategies and tactics that get the most out of that roster by playing to their strengths and getting them organized
3) individual player development
4) in-game management

--------------------

In case anyone is wondering, here's how I graded Denis back then on June 2:

1) Every fan has at least one player on his team that he'd happily give a one-way airline ticket to anywhere and drive him to the airport. Mine is Justin Mapp. Still, I don't think many people can find too much to fault with Denis's job here. Grade: PASS.

2) The Fire's marketing people will spin you that "we've only lost one game" but anyone who has bothered to actually watch our games knows that is lying by omission. This team is not playing to their capabilities. I've seen more arm-waving at each other (and no, it's not just Blanco doing that) this year than in the past. I've already run through the sorry list of ways this has impacted us this year. And we continue to be woeful on both the attacking and defending sides of dead ball situations - which is a matter of team organization and therefore within the coach's realm of responsibility. Grade: EPIC FAIL.

3) Every great once in a while, it helps a player's development to be forced to play a little out of position to teach him new skills. Bob Bradley forcing DaMarcus Beasley to learn to play defense is the poster child for this kind of thing. But this is a special case, to be used extremely sparingly as most players do not benefit from it as much as if they concentrated on learning their own position. And almost always, the player is eventually returned to his original position after he has been judged to have learned the lesson the coach wants to teach, as was DMB. Sadly, Chris Rolfe has been hurt by being forced to play all over midfield although thankfully he can still uncork a wicked shot despite it all. Soumare, IMO, has regressed, not progressed. Thorrington's passing touch has gone south the longer he plays d-mid and I hate to think of how poor his shooting skills must be now. The jury is still out on Nyarko. Banner, Husidic, Robinson, who knows since we rarely see them. Grade: FAIL.

4) This is where Denis has actually progressed the most and even here his choices sometimes baffle even his supporters like Chris M. Still, he seems to have mostly resisted his penchant for bunkering even when we have a lead (hopefully, the KC home game was the last we'll see of that!) and we usually play better in the 2nd half which indicates some kind of positive adjustments. Grade: PASS, albeit by the slimmest of margins.

 

Normally, I would accept such a surrender but you're not getting off that easy now as I want you to answer my questions that you chickened out on last month.

What, specifically, makes you think Denis is such a great coach?

What functions of the head coaching job do you think he does better than any other coach in MLS?

Where do you see him adding so much value as a coach that we should keep him for the next 3-5 years?

What makes you think he can successfuly rebuild this team next year after most of our good players leave?

 

I'm not going to go find what I said. You appear to have done that, but instead of providing quotes of where I was "blaming the players" you just provide my "fig leaf" (what in the hell does that even mean?) My primary criticisms of players throughout the year have been related to poor finishing and poor defending on set pieces. I think I recall criticizing the players in the Houston match for the first goal. A total breakdown on the field that left CJ hung out to dry and he made a mess of the mess that was left him. If we consistently played poor, disorganized defense, I would look more to coaching. That was just a messed up series of events.

I have also said that Denis shares the blame on the poor set pieces. I'm sorry but if a player like Logan Pause (who I like by the way) gets caught picking his ass while ball watching twice in one game -- that's on him. You shouldn't have to teach this to professionals.

I didn't realize that answers to your questions were mandatory. Looking at the questions, I assume I didn't answer because your questions are not based on fact. But what the hell, I'll give it a shot.

1. I never said Denis was a great coach. Apparently, if I don't join in on a bash party, you infer this. I think Denis has done a very good job since taking over but nothing that suggests greatness. For example, I think we have played good, organized attractive soccer for long stretches of most of our games. Without looking at "stats" I would say that even in the frustrating home ties and losses that we have out offensed the other teams in shots, corners won etc., but have failed to finish chances that we really should. Second, I think Denis has done a good job managing personalities and egos. He had a frustrated Conde who had all but quit on the team and he is now one of our most valuable players. He has handled Blanco extremely well without simply being his water boy. For the most part, I am ok with his line ups. He has given Pappa a real shot, he has brought Husidic along nicely, I applaud his use of CJ and moving him permanently to the middle of the defense.

2. Several of these things I believe he does better than many MLS coaches. I would take Fat Sigi, Dom Kinnear and probably Bruce Arena over Denis right now. Other than that, I think Denis is the equal to others. Steve Nichol is a better coach, but I'd rather lose than watch a whiny, bitchy little team that plays as defensive as his teams. From what I understand his practices are run very similar to the way Fire practices have always been run going back to Bob. I think that shows in the quality of play that we see in our good stretches.

3. I never said anything about keeping him as coach for 3-5 years. Having said that, he has done well in his first 1.5 years and I think he is growing in the job. He is using more positive formations this year and I think his substitutions have been better as well. If he continues to improve as a coach and the team progresses on the field, he should stay. By the way, I have been on record from the beginning of the season saying that this is a critical year in which we should win it all and if we don't, there should be serious evaluation of Denis and his job.

4. I'm not sure this is really even a valid question is it? Isn't Frank in charge of personnel decisions? I would hope that he consults with Denis, but that is Frank's primary job. If he does his job, then Denis will have to get the team to gel over the first half of next year. He will likely have a young line up and I do like how he has brought several young players into the line up at their own pace, including Pappa, Husidic, Tim Ward, Nyarko and Banner.

Not a bad list. I think sometimes people on here invert this list as if a coach has a huge impact throughout the course of a game or on individual player development. Again, Frank is primarily responsible for 1. I think our coaches have done a decent job preparing for other teams as we normally do very well out of the box and if anything we fade in the second half.

Not really.

 

Sorry, but you certainly wear people down. Congratulations. If I don't "answer your questions" it likely has more to do with fatigue than fear.

 

Which would be redundant because that's what you generally do and because the post was already too long just like this one is going to be, I'm afraid. And so mental midgets will whine about having to summon the intellectual heft to follow a multifaceted argument supported by fact and observation. Well sorry, folks, that's how I roll.

btw, your first postgame contribution to the Houston thread was in response to a DCU fan who wanted to know why people were criticising Hamlett:

Passive aggressive much?

Then you followed up with this from another post:

Then you tried the pitiful old red herring of "nobody is happy with their coach".

Now you've tried to blame injuries and call-ups. You want to see a team whose roster has been decimated? Fine, check out Chivas and especially the Revs. We ain't got nothing on them. Nichol has a real excuse and Preki has done wonders for the Fake Goats even if their injury problems have finally caught up with them lately. We've had to make a few line-up adjustments, especially in the Stuporliga but nothing radical.

I could dig up even more examples than the two more recent threads I perused to make sure I wasn't building a stupid strawman but honestly I think this suffices. It's the never-ending series of shifting excuses that makes you an apologist. You really think he's doing great and you think that anyone who criticizes him is either a brainless hater or an irrational doom-und-gloomster because for you there can be no significant criticism of a coach because coaches have little effect on and therefore little responsibility for their team's results.

It means you toss out some mild sop to the opposition to make yourself look more reasonable than you are while still maintaining the substance of your argument.

If the players are that bad, the coach should get rid of them and get better ones.

Our continuing problem both attacking on and defending against set pieces is exactly a coaching problem because they both rely on multiplayer coordination and teamwork. This is also a great example of missing the forest for the trees. On any ONE given set piece disaster, sure you can look at a player or players who were most immediately responsible for the bad result. But you just don't seem to be able to take the next step and look at ALL our set pieces to find patterns that do not have much to do with any individual player because it's a team thing. Team things like that are where the coach either adds value or becomes a stumbling block.

As if you've never offered an uninvited comment before.

Now you finally you get around to sometimes answering and sometimes dodging my questions. Well, that's a little progress, I suppose.

You may try to skate on semantic sophistry between "very good" and "great" but you're not really fooling anyone, you know.

More like short bursts. Maybe an entire half on a few occasions. Except for the home game against the pitiful RedBulls, though, we have yet to play a complete 90 minutes. To head off your expected straw man, I don't mean that we have to be 1970 Brasil and completely dominate a team and win each half 8-0. I'm using your own criteria.

I do look at stats while keeping in mind that they should be where analysis begins and not ends. We're #9 in the league in shots taken with RSL having the most and the RedBulls are #2. We are #2 in SOG with TFC in #1 and DCU at #3. FWIW, Houston and Seattle who are above us in the overall standings are as follows:

Houston: Shots = #10, SOG = #6
Seattle: Shots = #12, SOG = #14

Since Houston has 23 goals this year and Seattle has 26 to our 25, I'd say they've probably been creating better chances for themselves which is an indicator that they're playing better as a team. This is especially true Houston seeing as they have no individual player among the top goal scorers this year. But I digress...

My bet is someone -likely not Denis- advised Conde that the better he plays for us, the sooner he can get out of here. That is, I admit, as much a speculation as crediting Denis for the turnaround. I'm with you on blanco and Pappa but we're playing Blanco too much again which is understandable given how poorly we play without him. Our hand was kind of forced on Husidic due to call-ups and the Stuporliga. As to the kid's quality, he's not bad and he's not great. He's done well for a rookie but it's not like he's wowing anyone either. Playing CJ is another move forced on us. Luckily, after a horrendous start that had many of us (myself included), prematurely writing him off, CJ has played fairly well although the gap in quality between him and Conde is remarkable. We'll have to wait until we have both Soumare and Conde back in full match fitness to see if CJ stays or sits. Finally, he has failed to motivate Mapp although I can't hold that entirely against Denis because at this point I'm not sure who or what could do it.

As for his line-ups, I see you've not mentioned his insistence on playing Rolfe as a midfield, on using Thorrington as a d-mid and sporadically trying to use Ward as a midfielder. These are all mistakes and in Rolfe's case, it would be better for him to leave the Fire to save his career as a forward because that's what he does best.

I'd provisionally add Soehn to that list. After the poor start due to the distraction of the CCL, DCU has really turned it around and they have a team of young players who should form the core of that team for the next few years. As for Nichol's defensiveness, Denis still has a tendency to go defensive as soon as we get a lead, even if he's not as bad as he used to be.

See, that is why I think both Denis and the Fire would have been bettef off with him as an assistant. I think that's really where he shines. The whole strategy and tactics thing, not so much.

I never said you did. But since you believe he's doing "very good", 3-5 years is not an unreasonable time frame to keep a "very good" coach.

I've also noted his improvements. I just think our roster has made him look good and the improvement have not outweighed the continued elementary mistakes. It's not going to get any easier next year when our roster probably won't be so hot.

Denis has to tell Frank what he wants. Judging by the results, that hasn't happened and so we've settled for playing a few guys out of position now and leaving gaps in our roster. I'd rather we had signed Sigi the Hut last year to get more out of this squad this year and especially to rebuild us the way he did Columbus. Too bad Hauptmann was too damn cheap to pony up.

I don't see how our young players have developed any faster than usual. Nyarko in particular has gotten tons of playing time and yet is he really better than at the start of the season? He's still fast but he doesn't read the game well and his decision-making is still rather poor. His goal against SJ was great but otherwise he's not exactly tearing up the league with great finishing this year. Pappa has built a great understanding with Sega but that seems to be a player thing more than a coach thing. Pappa is still a yellow card waiting to happen every time he tries to defend. Ward seems to have started quickly rigt off the bat and plateaued. I like Banner but then I liked him last year too and it's far too early to say much about Husidic.

Look at our last game, how the subs totally turned that game upside down. We were garbage until Blanco and Pappa came on. Look at all the points we've dropped last year and this due to getting too defensive too early. So yes, in game management can have a drastic effect on even an individual game's results. And it is a natural outgrowth of factor #2, strategy and preparation. Too often we've come into games looking like we have no discernable plan for how we want to play or what advantageous match-ups we want to focus on. If you look at the stats, we tend to get scored on early. Gee, why is that? That said, I will repeat what I've mentioned already this year: Denis's in-game management has improved in both subs and half-time adjustments. Sadly, I also have to say that the iprovement has not been big enough to overcome his deficiencies.

They're jointly responsible. Denis should be setting the direction. Only after Denis tells him what he needs should Frank do anything. If Frank is going off signing players without consulting Denis first, that's a Bad Thing.

Actually, it's the reverse, at least according to the stats. On the MLS site, there are stats called "TEAM GOALS SCORED INTERVALS" and "TEAM GOALS ALLOWED INTERVALS" which tacks GF and GA in 15 minute intervals respectively. According to those tables, we give up a high number of goals in the first 15 minutes of each game and score the majority of our goals in the last 15 of each half.

See my paragraph immediately above? That's why I check facts and cite them even if it means people whine that my posts are too long and difficult to read.

 

Very nice. Well done. That's a good...

HEY LOOK, THERE GOES FRANKOWSKI!!

 

Replace Thorrington with Guerrero. I don't remember Thorrington getting significant minutes at all in '07. He came in at the end of the last game of the regular season and scored the winning goal, but didn't see any minutes in the playoffs. I don't remember when he came back from his last injury, but he barely got any playing time until Hamlett took over in '08.

And back to one of the original points of this thread, what makes you think Rolfe will be benched? He was on the bench to start the season due to missing the last week of training because he was recovering from some illness. Then the team did well without him and Hamlett didn't want to change the lineup. It was a dumb decision to keep Rolfe out of the starting lineup, but it didn't seem to be based on comments he made to the press. (And yeah, I know there was a comment from Rolfe that was construed by some to be critical of Hamlett, but I don't remember it being as clear as you made it out to be).

Osorio's biggest problem this year is pretty widely agreed to be that he tinkers with his lineups, formations, and tactics too much from game to game, even following good performances. That wouldn't be any different for him in Chicago.

I think the argument that Osorio is a better coach than Hamlett seems pretty ludicrous right now. His personnel decisions were not bad enough that they should have turned what looked (on paper) to be a pretty good team at start of the season into the worst team in MLS history (they're averaging half a point a game right now).

For a more level-headed take on this, there's this thread in the MLS General forum, which I think gets it just about right.

 

If it comes down to Rolfe's happiness (him wanting to stay with the Fire) or having Hamlett as Head Coach...I'll go with the Rolfe option...I would rather see Rolfe on the field, than Hamlett on the sideline.

Rolfe needs a raise, a strikers' role...and a 3 year deal if possible.