Kasper & the Decline of the DC Empire [N&A]

I'm not sure he ever got a free pass, I remember several people who laid soem blame at his feet. I think there are also some who though the never had much input and that Payne was pulling the strings from afar.

Personally Thamlin hit it right on the head. Kasper is a very unqualified person for his position and hasn't learned while in his role. What input he has had in personnel decisions has either been ignored or if not poor. I expected him to be let go when Payne came back and still wouldn't be surprised to see him leave any time now.

 

Before we really break down the Kaspar regime, can we try to compile a list of personnel moves?

Here's what I can think of:

Trades:
Justin Mapp to Chicago for Dema Kovalenko

Stephen Armstrong to KC for Brandon Prideaux

Eddie Pope, Ritchie Williams, and Jamie Moreno to Metroscum for Mike Petke and an allocation (Galin Ivanov) -- The big trade.

Mark Lisi, and Craig Zadie to Metroscum for Peter Villegas, and Orlando Perez

Brian Kamler to Metrostars for ???

Perez to Chicago for a draft pick?

Draft Picks:

Brain Carroll, Alecko Eskandarian, David Stokes, Doug Warren, Some guy named Adu, Josh Gros, Kevin Ara.....


Any others?

 

What exactly does a "Technical Director" do anyway? If you look up the staff on DC's website Kasper's position is listed under "Team" and above the head coach. There seems to be no other direction as to what pourpose he serves on the website. Conspicous in its abscence, however, is the position "Scout". With all that the staff have to do to run a fledgling pro sports franchise you'd think there would be someone employed full time in scouting and evaluating new talent. Shouldn't DC United have someone fully dedicated to keeping tabs on players from high school, college, A-League and other MLS teams to the many pro leagues around the world? Shouldn't Kasper atleast have an assistant? Is this why other MLS teams continue to find servicable talent while Kasper finds players like Ivanov?

 

I believe this is an artifact of the days after Kevin Payne left. Stephen Zack took over the business side of the business, and Kasper was brought on to take over the soccer side. At the time he was responsible for implementing the management line on soccer matters. I'm not entirely sure what role he fulfills now, but I'd bet scouting for new talent is on his daily task list.

 

I think the whole idea was for United to do away with the General Manager role in a North American Sense (ex: Kevin Payne, or George McPhee with the Caps), and give more power to the manager/coach (Hudson, then Nowak). I thought the idea was that the manager would identify team needs or players, and the Technical Director would work on filling that need.

 

1. Kasper wasn't qualified for his job as talent evaluator. But realistically, there is practically no American talent that is truly qualified. How many Americans can say they have a good sense of foreign (especially carribean and central American talent) yet also follow US college soccer well enough to know several years ahead of time who could be good coming out? Heck--most of the MLS coaches tell you they look at the playoffs (maybe) and the combine and maybe a local school or two--and that's it. So realistically, it's not like Kasper was chosen over the soccer equivalent of Bobby Beathard. And the guys who have really proven their talent evaluation (Bradley, Arena, etc.) are coaches, not GMs or TDs.

2. It has become a tradition to lament about how our picks have sucked the past 3 years (since Kasper came on). The truth is: some picks are probably Kaspers (like some of the trades) and some are probably more Hudson or Nowak's--or even Payne's.

--Kante: Hudson pick I'd say.
--Mapp draft pick: a Kasper pick (and a good one I think--Mapp has a world of potential that may energe at some point).
--McGinty pick: a no-brainer--we had to draft him and I bet we'd made a promise to him.
--Stokes pick: Hudson raved about him initially and I think this was primarily a Hudson pick. People are down on him now--except for it seems Nowak who said in the IV that if Stokes doesn't provide as much space and makes quicker decisions he'll be fine.
--Eskandarian: D-tron argued for Clark, I argued it was a wash (either Clark or Eskandarian), I have no problem with a team that has scoring troubles choosing the almost consensus #1 pick who is also supposed to be the best scorer to come out of college in the past several years.
--Carroll: didn't a lot of people argue we'd be better off taking Logan Pause? Right now I'd take Carroll over Pause.
--Warren: he hasn't had an opportunity to prove if he's a good or bad pick. But at the time he was the best GK in the draft and it turned out to be a wise pick when Rimando went down.
--Ara: I think that's a Nowak pick mostly--Nowak saw him at the combine and thought highly of him.
--Gros: I tend to think that's a Kasper pick--I don't think Kasper was at the combine was he? And Nowak didn't get hired until the college season/games were over.
--Perkins signing: could be either Nowak or Kasper b/c he was at the combine.

Looking at those picks, I don't have a problem with them. Not all players work out and much of the lack of development has to do with Ray Hudson.

--didn't pick Damani Ralph? Hey--by that standard even Chicago is dumb and Wilt and Sarachan should be canned b/c they didn't pick him in the first round.
--didn't draft Noonan? Wasn't Noonan chosen near the end of the first round?? That means a lot of teams passed on him. And...as good as he's been (which as surprised me), part of the talk for why Twellman is playing so poorly is that Noonan drifts back into midfield and leaves Twellman without anyone to play the ball to.
--didn't pick Brian Ching in the waiver draft? Steve Goff indicated that there wasn't much in the waiver draft and it appeared that was the consensus around the league. Credit Yallop with spotting a gem (just like he spotted Jamil Walker and made him a player). While it was Hudson that was in love with Barclay. My sense was that if we hadn't made the trade for Barclay we would have passed on picking up Ching. I think Hudson drove this one.
--Resigning Moreno: I think this was driven by Payne. I think Payne saw a chance to recapture a little glory and felt we owed Moreno one last shot and he could also retire in Black.
--Armstrong for Prideaux: that was a brilliant deal. We had to cut an SI and we got a cheap, versatile American defender. I don't know if that was Kasper or not--I assume it was--who made this happen.
--the Metros superdeal: I suspect this was a combination of things that was mostly driven by Bob Bradley (who wanted Pope and to a lesser extent Moreno). Metros originally offered Jolley but Hudson insisted on Petke is my understanding.
--Allocation for Ivanov: Hudson was looking at another Bulgarian and Stoichkov pointed him to Ivanov--blame this one on Ray and Hristo.
--Mapp for Dema: I think Kasper arranged it but Hudson drove this--he wanted a Ben Hur in central midfield and saw Dema as his man. If Mapp doesn't step it up, this deal will be solidly for DCU (as it is to-date). If Mapp shows the potential he's capable of, long-range the deal is for Chicago.
--dumping Kamler: hated to see it happen but this was the second time Hudson had dumped Kamler--that is was not Kasper but Hudson that drove this one.

On balance, I think our draft picks have been good. I decisions in some cases about who to pursue or who to keep weren't good--but those are mostly driven by the coach.

I think Kasper's role is to be another opinion about the coach to the GM (which was important when Payne was less involved), to scout college talent, to deal with agents on contracts (though I bet Payne handles this now), to work out deals once the coach has indicated he sees a need or wants someone moved. I see Kasper as less of a decision-maker and more of a second set of eyes and a person do to some of the things a coach just doesn't have time to do all of.

 

could you guys imagine a pope-nelson-namoff backline right now?

mmmmmm. defense.

 

Every other team in the league somehow manages the cap well enough to afford the league maximum of 18 players. Yet United, a team that ain't exactly basking in depth, has so bungled the cap that it has an open roster spot and no jack to fill it.

That, my friends, is mismanagement and with the almost criminally small rosters in this league, to allow yourself to play with an even smaller one is both ludicrous and a recipe for failure.

And, it's not like Kasper can say he wasn't involved in the assempling of this team as the vast majority of the players on DCU's roster have come aboard since he signed on. Only Convey, Quaranta, Olsen, Nelsen and Namoff predate Kasper at United and of those, a couple have redone their contracts - Olsen, Namoff and perhaps Quaranta and Convey but I can't say for sure - since Kasper joined the team.

In otherwords, he is responsible for the team's cap problems. He may not be solely responsible, but he shares a large degree of the blame and he is damn sure the only constant among the people who shoulder the blame.

So, on business side of being a techincal director, it's hard to give him a good grade when he can't even manage to get the roster fulled to the league-allowed maximum.

Supposedly, the other parts of Kasper's job are scouting and wheeling and dealing.

Others have covered these issues but there are a few I'm gonna still point out:

Taking Stokes over Todd Dunivant, Shavar Thomas and Ricky Lewis, just to name defenders. Word was that Ray fell in love with Stokes at the combine, where he played well on the team Ray coached. So, obviously Ray shoulders a lot of the blame here. But, we all know Ray didn't scout the college game. We knew it and Kasper no doubt knew it. It was his job to tell Ray that there were better players out there than Stokes. He should have been able to tell Ray that he'd scouted the Final Four (where Dunivant was on display), the ACC Tournament (Lewis and Stokes) and the Big East Tournament and that Stokes was the lowest rated of the four defenders. Basically, as someone with the power to override Hudson, he should have vetoed the Stokes pick. He should have, but he didn't.

That was the fifth pick in a draft loaded with talent. And, while I'm still not ready to give up on Stokes, who I still think has a big upside, the reality is that last year's draft was full of talent more ready to contribute in MLS than Stokes was. As I said last year, a team that has stuggled like United has of late was in no position to take a flyer on a prospect with the fifth pick in the draft. They needed someone who could contribute right away, and said players were available in the draft, at defense, the midfield and at forward.

Then we have the whole Devin Barclay fiasco. One of Kasper's supposed qualifcations for this job was having been the GM of an A-League team in Pittsburgh. Ergo, he's supposed to know the talent in that league. But, with United desparately needing a big, target forward, he trades the first pick in the draft, which San Jose used for Brian Ching, a big power-forward who has since been capped by the national team and is now one of the leading scorers in MLS. But instead of using our pick to take Ching, who would have filled a glaring need on this team, we took underachieving poster child Devin Barclay, who A) isn't very good and B) even if he was good, didn't play a position what filled a need for United.

It's not like Ching was unknown. He'd played four years of college ball AND in the PDL (that league's rookie of the year in 97), spent a season in MLS with the Galaxy, then tored it up in the A-League (All-league in 02), including a strong showing against MLS teams in the Open Cup. Players like that GMs, coaches and even Technical Directors are SUPPOSED to know about.

Honestly, Ching-for-Barclay will go down in MLS annals as one of the worst trades ever, up there with the Roy-for-Roy deal and the one where Kevin Payne gave away a slew of draft picks for RDA, pas deux. At least Kasper is in good company.

Then we have the Cerritos trade that saddled the team with the cap problems that haunt it now. There wasn't a team in the league that would give up a No. 1 pick for Cerritos at that - or this - stage in his carrer, since he costs so much and he is no longer productive. Not only does Kasper over pay by giving up a No. 1 AND a popular lockeroom guy in Ali Curtis, who happened to be cheap, he didn't even manage to get the Burn to agree to eat any of his salary this year. I'm sure it was all Mike Jeffries could do not to burst out laughing before the trade was formally approved by the league.

(Think about that - Kasper got scammed by Jeffries!)

I give Kasper and Ray credit for bringing in Matins, finally getting a big, target foward. But, in four starts, Kasper didn't score a point so for all the numbers he put up in Pittsburgh, we still don't know if he can produce in MLS. And, that was before he suffered a major injury. But, even if it turns out he can score at this level, we all knew about the injury and Kasper had to know that Thiago would miss half the season, meaning the team would again be without a target forward AND a proven scorer entering the season.

But does he go out and get one in the offseason? No. Jaime is arguably a proven scorer, but it's been a few years since he's proven he can score in double figures in this league so I'm reluctant to consider him a proven scorer at this point in his career. (And two goals in 9 games would appear to bear this out.) Same with Cerritos.

In otherwords, Kasper knew the team struggled to score goals last year, knew the two leading goal-scorers weren't coming back this year but did nothing to bring in a proven scorer. Maybe he believed Freddy would tear it up from the jump, but, while I still believe Freddy will be awesome, in time, that time ain't now and Freddy isn't ready to carry the scoring burden here.

So, Kasper basically did nothing in the offseason to address the team's most glaring need. On top of that, he oversaw the construction of a team with no depth at defense AND he's already mortaged the future as the team has no picks in the first three rounds next year, so don't look for any help in the draft!

I could go on but at some point the examples start being redundant. I'm sure Kasper could come on here and give explanations for each item we list as failures and I'm sure he could do a nice job deflecting a lot of the blame, maybe deservedly so, to Ray or Trask or Payne or Novak. But, at some point, it starts to appear pretty shallow when he is the common denominator on all the decisions and you have to start calling the guy's bluff.

The bottom line is he hasn't made the team better and many of his moves, or non moves, have made the team worse. And, he needs to be held accountable.

But, despite the glaring, again!, need for a big forward on a team that

 

Let's not forget the savy cap management that caused DC to dump Milton Reyes before the season began, which took away what little depth DC had in its defense. Was Kasper around when Milton was acquired?

 

Etch is gonna be Arena's boy when he retires.

 

If there's someone familiar with United who has his name written all over this job, it is Thomas Rongen. He was rumored to get it when it was created, but as it was established shortly after his terminiation from coaching I guess they didn't feel it would be the best fit.

Either way, the way I see it is Payne should dump Kasper, put Rongen in there, and hire Hudson for the broadcast booth. Seems like it covers everything pretty well to me, but then again it probably makes too much sense.

 

Rongen would indeed be a perfect fit for the TD job. The question is, would he be able to do that and keep his U20 gig?

With the next World Youth Championship in Rongen's native Netherlands, there's no way in hell he gives up the U20 gig before he gets to return home triumphantly with Freddy, Spector, Gaven, Alvarez, etc...

Could he do both at the same time? I would think he could, especially since when he's with the U20s or scouting U20 players, he's essentially doing what the TD should be doing anyway. I mean, what better place to see the yop young players in CONCACAF than scouting and coaching them in qualifiers?

Would United or USSF allow him to double dip? I can't see the organizations that let Sunil Gulati have all the conflcits of interest that he has still wear multiple hats could object to this.

So, cue The Who: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

NEGNOR ERIH

 

I've agreed with sentiment for some time. In fact, I seem to agree with Thamlin all the frickin time. It's those sunglasses -- they mesmerize.

I don't think this will happen, however. We have too many in this organization with rose-colored glasses under the impression that the cup is awarded on hustle points alone.

 

I don't know how much wiggle room the DCU front office has to rearrange itself, but to me it seems like the best investment we could make as a club would be 3-4 scouts who know different areas of the world - 1 for carribbean, 1 for central america, 1 for us college.

i must agree that the single biggest mistake that has been made is cap management. how the dirty metro can go out and get two guys like their new forward line is amazing - both in their ability to find the talent and somehow to fit it under the cap.

 

Yes, it does make too much sense, how many times do we have to tell you that Logic, critical thinking, sane points DO NOT have a place on these boards...

Come on, man You know Rongen would probably be able to find the players that DCU could use to plug these problems in the squad.

 

As a result of this discussion, I started looking at other teams' websites (it felt icky, but I did it anyway), and none of the other teams have a scouting staff. A few have Technical Directors, or an extra Assistant Coach or two, but nobody dedicated to beating the bushes looking for players.

So just how do they go out and pick up the gems and flops? For the American college kids there might be a central scouting dept (like the NHL has), and tape is readily available. But how do they find the Carribean kids?

 

Well, in Bradley's or Sarachin's case, they scouted all the CONCACAF teams when they were assistants for Bruce Arena.
Bradley is also helped by the special NJ clause in the salary cap rules

 

The way I see it, the decline of the DC Empire has to do w/more than Kaspar and who we drafted or traded. Though that's a big part of it.

It has to do w/the entire front office. How is this obvious? We change coaches, and the results stay the same, in fact this year they're worse than last year. It's the same w/every poor organization everywhere. It wasn't Ray, it wasn't Rongen, and it isn't Nowak.

The formula's the same-go after the youngest guys-the next great players (not the current great players)-and expect results. We've gone through Albright one year (he's playing well now by the way), Convey the next, Quaranta the next, Adu this year. And the next great players are supposed to be Ara, Gros, Carroll, Esky, Warren, Q2.

We got rid of proven production. Etcheverry, Stoitchkov were proven players who produced points and led teams to wins. Stoitchkov got the goal to get us into the playoffs-and some people wanted to run him out of town as if he was a disgrace. Ray Hudson had us at .500 and in the playoffs, better than the year before, making an improvement-and yet that's not good enough? He did the same thing with Miami-took a bad team and made them great before they folded (yes they didn't win MLS Cup I know that). It's hard to believe having Ray as coach would be worse at this point. So the offseason was spent doing crap-figuring out whether a coach should be fired when there should have been no question he should have been kept.

At the same time, we stick w/the unproductive. Earnie Stewart-he ain't playing defense, and despite how we talk about how great a leader is we ain't winning with him. So what makes him max salary, why we listen to this guy is beyond me.

Focusing on getting rid of the productive-and keeping the unproductive-and focusing on playing the next kid superstar seems to be the constant formula.

The formula for success IMO is to hire soccer guys-guys who really know the game-and Nowak seems to-and STICK with him. I ain't a Ray lover-I'm a soccer lover-someone who appreciates and sticks with someone who knows the game. With the way this front office does things, it's going to take a long, long time time to get better if they don't change the way they operate. The best thing they can do is hire Nowak for 5 years, a GM who isn't a yes-man and talks to the fans, and let them make decisions and learn from their mistakes over time. We already screwed up the offseason royally-no reason to compound it w/firing another coach.

 

This is a great post.

To be clear, no one is calling for Nowak to be replaced. At least, I'm not (though if that Jose Mourinho cat were to suddenly fancy a stay in DC for a few years, I'd be kinda interested). Even if he misses the playoffs this year and/or finishes with less points than Ray got last year - both a distinct possibility - I'd give him another couple of years. Otherwise, you risk becoming an organization like the Orioles or Washington Wizards or the Redskins before they brought Coach Joe back, one that lacks patience and vision and is constantly turning things over and either going with a new blueprint every couple of year or, worse, not having one at all.

And, I think the point about the front office being the constant is true - coaches get canned in this organization but no one else seems to lose their job even though they're the ones overseeing the philosophy to go with so much youth an inexperience. They make scapegoats out of the coaches and hide behind a confusing veil of vague job descriptions where we don't ultimately know who was responsible for what. It's a pretty cowardly way to go about their business, but it allows them to keep their jobs and avoid accountability.

Well, as this post demonstrates, despite their attempts to shade it, people are paying attention. And, it shouldn't just be Kasper. Kevin Payne deserves a LOT of the blame for this team going in the sewer. There aren't many organizations where you could have a five-year run as poor as the one DCU has had and still be able to keep your job as team president, let alone get promoted and be allowed to have more responsbility for a while but still oversea what goes on with your original club.

The reality is that Payne hired Rongen and Hudson and fired them both. The firings are an admission of failure yet he doesn't come out and say he screwed up. The reality is that Payne panicked in 2000 when he traded WAY too much to reacquire a washed up Raul Diaz Arce and then blew up the whole team the next year and traded away Jeff Agoos, Carlos Llamosa and a slew of others for players that aren't here anymore. BTW, the year after they were traded, Llamosa anchored the defense of a team that won the Supporters' Shield while Agoos merely lifted MLS Cup. The next year both players made our World Cup team.

In fairness, some of the picks that those players were moved before became Ryan Nelsen and Bryan Namoff, who have become good players. But, the wait has been very long, like Mr. Wiser said, and they haven't helped the team win anything while, at the same time the aforementioned players have helped other teams win now. And, for every Nelsen or Namoff the trades brought us, there have been Mark Lisis and Santino Quarantas, players that either haven't blossomed or who the team gave up on too early and then shipped out for little in return, only to see them get better after they left.

For going on too many years now in the post-Arena era, there just seems to be a lack of a plan, other than to can the coaches.

 

While I agree in general with the thrust of this thread...MLS ain't a normal sports league. DC carries two massive, massive salary cap millstones around its neck, Cerritos and Stewart. And the marketing repercussions of cutting them outweigh the on-the-field value of cutting them.

It's one thing when a team has a money sucking lump like Zizi Roberts due to poor health. You just hope the guy gets healthy, or cut him as soon as he is. Or if a team has a money sucking lump due to poor judgment...I'd put Joe-Max in that category. Yeah, he's been hurt alot, but the team got better when he got hurt last year, which tells me dropping him was addition by subtraction. The poor judgment can be rectified; the Revs can undo what I knew was a mistake a year ago, and cut Joe-Max (altho there's a marketing issue there, too.)

If this were the NFL, DC could just cut Cerritos and Stewart (or force Stewart to accept a salary more in keeping with his contributions). I mean, the Cowboys cut Emmitt Smith. But this ain't the NFL, and DC's two biggest cap problems are, I believe, beyond Kasper's control.

So I think crap like the trade of Ching for Barclay are fair game, I don't think the cap problems are.

I would add, being forced to allocate Adu's minutes based on marketing considerations rather than game tactics doesn't help either.

 

Not yet. I don't think we win in New England or Chicago-at which point I figure somebody will. I'm thinking ahead.

The process is the same:
-Write a note to the fans saying we're going to be a great team
-We're not a great team so fire the coach
-Write a note to the fans saying we're going to be a great team
-We're not a great team so fire the coach
-Write a note to the fans saying we're going to be a great team (don't believe me? Check out the Freekick manual and read Payne's note to the fans)
-We're not a great team so (fill in the blank all you 1st graders out there )

 

I haven't seen many more Salvadorans come to the game since Cerritos was picked up. They sit in the same corners every game and they seem about as empty as it was before he got here.

I don't know who's coming to see Stewart. Just about nobody that I know of. Pretty passes and traps-bad corners and free kicks and shots? Who comes to see that.

That said, the front office won't get rid of either, will they.

 

Cerritos and Stewart could leave DC tomorrow and no one in the stands would notice. Adu more than makes up for the supposed Salvadoran contingent Cerritos is bringing in (and I see Quintanilla doing more for the team in a role towards that market than Cerritos anyhow). Stewart, for all his supposed on field leadership, cost us a defender. If Stewart was moved to the back line, I'd feel better about him being on the team, but Stewart is an MLS signing, a payback for years of loyal service to the Country, and you have to have a place for him. Unfortunately, DC is it for now.

Thx,

Jay!