MLS success on a limited budget, could FC Dallas U25s beat the Quakes, and hiring a new coach

MLS Success on a Limited Budget

There seems to be a belief among many Earthquakes fans that the team doesn't spend enough money on players, possibly because they don't have their own stadium. But how much can we expect the team payroll to change after the team moves into the new stadium next season?

Here are the latest MLS salary figures:



There seem to be two tiers in terms of spending: teams that splash millions on DP signings and those that don't. There doesn't seem to be a clear connection between signing million dollar DPs and on-field success, only LA and Seattle are consistently successful from the former group, whereas teams like Kansas City and Real Salt Lake manage to be consistently successful despite not spending that same kind of money. Looking at the other teams in the Earthquakes neighborhood (red box), there's no reason to expect them to spend significantly more once they have their own stadium: Every other team in that group already has their own stadium aside from DC United.

If the Earthquakes are not going to throw around Seattle money, they need to look at how teams in their own spending range manage to be successful, and emulate some of their practices. The two teams that stand out from that group are RSL and SKC, they are consistently successful and widely considered to be well run franchises on every level. Obviously San Jose and every other team should strive to copy their success. But beyond those obvious examples, I decided to look at one that's more of a mixed bag: FC Dallas. Their owners, the Hunt family, have been criticized for years. Kansas City and even Columbus fans are glad to have had their teams sold to new ownership groups. Their stadium is out in the suburbs and the stands are hardly ever full. Grant Wahl ranked the Hunts 16th (Columbus) and 17th (Dallas) out of 19 teams in his 2013 MLS Ambition Rankings (San Jose was 12th). This season, with the Hunts down to just one team, Dallas rose to 15th out of 19 (San Jose was 10th).

Obviously winning now is the top priority in professional sports, but beyond that, certain teams set themselves up to have a good change of success in the future. While Dallas are having success this season and are currently fifth in points per game, what's more impressive is that despite their constraints (less than ideal stadium situation, payroll comparable to the Earthquakes) their front office has set the team up for long term success, based on youth.

1) Development Academy: 7 homegrown players have already appeared in games for the first team and there are currently 8 homegrowns on the roster.
2) Coaching: poaching Oscar Pareja from Colorado, who had previously run Dallas' youth academy while also managing their reserve side.
3) Signing and developing young star players: the club has filled its three DP slots, but all are young DPs (Mauro Díaz, Andrés Escobar, David Texeira). Fabian Castillo was a young DP last year, due to his transfer fee.
4) Drafting well: 7 of their draft picks are on the roster, including a current Rookie of the Year candidate.
5) Development pipeline: plans to field their own USL Pro team in the next few years.

Dallas has talented and competent coaching and front office personnel in place, and therefore has the confidence to both evaluate talent and develop talent. Instead of relying on established MLS veterans who are known quantities, they bring players into the team from outside MLS, whether it's through the draft, signing academy players to homegrown deals, or signing (often young and relatively unproven) players from other leagues.

FC Dallas is the third-highest scoring team in the league with 52 goals and 27 have been scored by players age 24 or younger (the Earthquakes have scored 34 goals this season).

Could FC Dallas field a U-25 team capable of beating the Earthquakes?

U-25 starting 11:

(Castillo and Escobar should be switched)
Homegrowns: 4
Signings: 4
Drafted: 3

U-25 bench:

Homegrowns: 5
Drafted: 2
Signings: 1
Lottery: 1

That's 20 players aged 24 and below, 2/3 of an MLS roster.

Their roster is filled out with 6 players aged 25-29, and 6 players over 30:

Age 25-29
GK: Raul Fernandez - 28
GK: Chris Seitz - 27
D: George John - 27 (Drafted by FCD)
D: Zach Loyd - 27 (Drafted by FCD)
M: Hendry Thomas - 29
M: Adam Moffat - 28

Players over 30: Blas Perez, Michel, Jair Benitez, Peter Luccin, Stephen Keel, Je-Vaughn Watson

Aside from at the goalkeeper position, they could probably replace all the production they're getting from their dozen age 25+ players in a year or two.


For comparison, the Earthquakes currently have 12 players between 25-29: Barklage, Cronin, Djalo, Francis, Fucito, Harris, Lenhart, Meredith, Perez Garcia, Pierazzi, Pintos, Salinas

And 9 players over 30: Bernardez, Busch, Goodson, Gorlitz, Harden, Hernandez, Stephenson, Stewart, Wondolowski

And here are the 8 U-25 players on the Earthquakes roster:


Drafted: 4
Lottery: 2
Homegrowns: 1

How many of them will be able to replace the production lost from aging players over the next few years?

MLS minutes in 2014:
SJE U-25s: 2,869 minutes / 5 players = 574 average
FCD U-25s: 13,575 minutes / 13 players = 1,044 average

SJE: Cato 1444, Koval 774, Thompson 522, Schuler 123, Jahn 6

FCD: Hedges 2430, Castillo 2023, Ulloa 2014, Akindele 1561, Escobar 1231, Hernandez 937, Diaz 891, Acosta 725, Zimmerman 680, Texeira 566, Garcia 282, Hollingshead 232, Walker 3

That's 10 of the 11 players (all but the goalkeeper) from the Dallas U-25 lineup, all with more MLS minutes this season than Tommy Thompson...

Hiring a new Earthquakes coach

San Jose should follow a similar path. They can start by hiring a coach who is can properly evaluate young prospects and develop them into quality MLS players. That is something the current Earthquakes coaching staff has not done particularly well. And the man rumored to be taking over as the next Earthquakes coach, Dom Kinnear, has not done much better:

Hugo Perez was inexplicably relieved from the U-15 team, and has stated that "it’s no secret that I have aspirations to someday coach at the pro level."
Given his track record with the U-14-15s that two and a half years later comprised most of the U-17 team that just beat Costa Rica 5-2 (plus Joe Gallardo who is out with a broken leg), the Earthquakes would be wise to consider him for the job.

 

The Earthquakes are closer in payroll to KC, Philly, Houston, and Dallas, than RSL is to the Earthquakes, and they're a perennial trophy contender. There's enough parity in this league that not spending enough isn't the problem for ANY team in MLS. It's how you spend that money that counts, and our front office is mostly spending it on aging and injury prone veteran players.

And really another problem is that because we're signing known quantities and not developing our own young players, we don't have many cheap players who are producing far above what they're getting paid. Almost every successful MLS team has a couple these guys, making only five figures yet playing a big role.

There are not many "steals" here:

$650k Wondolowski
$300k Djalo
$342k Goodson
$258k Lenhart
$240k Pierazzi
$216 Perez Garcia (pro rated?)
$213k Hernandez
$207k Gordon (not sure how much of that we paid)
$190k Harris
$188k Cronin
$185k Busch
$145k Thompson
$142k Bernardez
$140k Stewart
$133k Salinas
$130k Bingham
$123k Pintos
$100k Gorlitz

Back to FC Dallas, here are some cheap players that are producing:
$79k Kellyn Acosta
$49k Tesho Akindele
$76k Fabian Castillo
$50k Moises Hernandez
$37k Victor Ulloa

 

Since I've already covered Watson and Kinnear's distaste for developing and playing young kids, I'll add this recent tweet from the Chicago Fire to the mix:

Tonight's #cf97 Starting XI has a total of 1386 #MLS Regular Season appearances and an average of 126 GP between them. #PHIvCHI

— Chicago Fire FC (@ChicagoFire) October 2, 2014

They're bragging about it as if that's a good thing. Meanwhile Chicago has only won 5 games all season so that veteran leadership is really paying off for Yallop... get excited for more Logan Pause!

The coaching tree of Yallop-Kinnear-Watson is responsible for three of the six worst records in MLS this season, with a combined 97 points out of 90 games, for an average of 1.08 points per game. Their combined goal differential is -33 (Kinnear's Dynamo are actually the worst of the sorry trio with a -16 all by themselves).

If the Earthquakes hire Kinnear to replace Watson, every Quakes coach since 2001 will have come from the Yallop-Kinnear-Watson coaching tree:

• Frank Yallop (Feb 2001 – Dec 2003)
• Dominic Kinnear (Jan 2004 – Dec 2005)
  
• Frank Yallop (Nov 2007 – June 2013)
• Mark Watson (June 2013 – Nov 2014)
• Dominic Kinnear (2015 – ?)

That shows an unhealthy insularity, to put it diplomatically.

 

I'm talking about recent history here. Holden joined Kinnear's Dynamo team in 2006 (Cameron in 2008). That's like a century ago in MLS time given how fast things change. Frank Yallop won the Supporters Shield with 66 points and a +29 goal differential in 2012, so half a dozen years after that. We should just hire him, he must be a great coach! And of course Holden was doing fine already given that he was good enough to get to Sunderland before he played for Kinnear... before having his career derailed by an unfortunate bar fight in Newcastle that left him with a fractured left eye socket. Cameron spent four full years in college before being drafted by the Dynamo, so not exactly the same as a teenage homegrown kid that Kinnear refuses to play.

 

Yeah I think Wilmer Cabrera would be another candidate worth considering. And I certainly wouldn't hold his time at Chivas USA against him, that is an impossible situation and everyone knows it. And even still, Cabrera has 7 wins in 31 games with Chivas this season, despite all the uncertainty, 3-6k fans in the stadium, being league owned, facing contraction, etc. Watson has 6 wins this season. Frank Yallop has just 8 wins in his last 46 games between the Earthquakes and Chicago over the last two seasons, and is talking like he expects to still be employed in 2015.

 

Soccerwire has a four part series on "The MLS Rookie Experience" and this story is from part 3, The dark side of the MLS rookie experience:

That is almost certainly a reference to this Garza - Wondo incident from 2013:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23089004/san-jose-earthquakes-coach-says-sam-garza-lacks
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22813288/san-jose-earthquakes-chris-wondolowski-apologizes-outburst


And there's more on the second page:

That would be Garza's 2014 loan to the San Antonio Scorpions:
http://www.sjearthquakes.com/news/2014/02/quakes-loan-bingham-garza-san-antonio-scorpions

With Arizona United:

I was never impressed by Garza (still can't believe that's who we picked out of such a deep draft class, another example of this team not doing their homework), but this story is still a good look inside the team from a young player's perspective.


Of course a good 1/3 of the article on "the dark side" of the MLS rookie experience is about the San Jose Earthquakes. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be...

 

Sports Illustrated article on FC Dallas:

Oscar Pareja's trust in youth paying off in FC Dallas' MLS resurgence

FC Dallas is growing. Its season may end next Monday, but a foundation unlike any other in MLS has been established in Frisco, Texas. The 17-12-7 record and the club’s first conference semifinal berth in four years are just the start. The FCD youth system, which Pareja ran before becoming the Colorado Rapids head coach in 2012, has produced an MLS-high 13 professionals. Eight are on the current roster. FCD’s homegrown players logged 4,607 regular-season minutes this year, the most in the league by more than 16 percent.

Among the 10 MLS Cup playoff qualifiers, Dallas’ postseason participants are the youngest by more than eight months. On average, the players who drew Seattle were nearly four years younger than their opponents. Captain Matt Hedges, a candidate for the league’s Defender of the Year award, is 24. And the conveyor belt continues to churn. Midfielder Alejandro Zendejas, a U.S. U-17 international, signed a pro contract last month and Top Drawer Soccer, which covers U.S. player development, has ranked FCD’s U-18 team the second best in the nation. Its U-16 team is rated eighth.


Some numbers:

FCD’s three academy teams (U-18, U-16 and U-14) are free and sit atop a development pyramid that includes pre-academy teams for players U-12 through U-15 and, below that, more than 4,000 boys and girls playing at various competitive levels. The Toyota Soccer Center is anchored by the MLS stadium and includes 17 additional full-size fields. FCD employs some 100 coaches and technical staffers. It is as close to the sort of traditional, comprehensive club so common in Europe and Latin America as there is in the U.S.​

I'm not sure I even want to know how our numbers compare to those....

 

Contrast Sam Garza on young players with the Earthquakes, to what Victor Ulloa has to say about young players at FC Dallas:

Garza:
"I felt that maybe I wasn’t really getting the chance I deserved. We had a bunch of older guys and that’s just kind of how it goes.”

Ulloa:
“That a 24-year-old [Hedges] is captain of the team, it’s a motivation for us that young guys can speak up and be leaders,” Ulloa said. “When we have meetings or we’re watching video or anything, young guys speak up. We have a 17-year-old [homegrown attacker Coy Craft], and he’ll say some words and everybody takes him seriously. There’s no veterans that say, ‘Hey, don’t talk.’ We’re a family. Everybody can speak up and help the team.”

 

Teams like FC Dallas (7 homegrown players) and the Vancouver Whitecaps (lowest average age in MLS at 24.3 years, and 8 homegrown players) should be the Quakes model if they're not going to spend money on high salary DPs. Those teams bring in younger players from South America like Castillo and Diaz, or Laba and Rivero, and fill out their rosters with quality draft picks and homegrown signings. Neither team has big stars yet they are currently first and second in points per game.

With players away on international duty (including one of their homegrown players who is a regular starter), FC Dallas set the MLS record today by starting five homegrown players:

.@FCDallas setting a new @MLS record tonight with FIVE Homegrowns starting including a 1st ever start for @coycraft pic.twitter.com/5TbynHVddy

— FC Dallas (@FCDallas) September 6, 2015

Oscar Pareja hails young FC Dallas squad after "perfect game" vs. Crew SC: "The boys are growing"

A 3-0 win on the road against one of the top eastern conference teams, that's how you handle playing through the international window...

There is already an alternative pathway to success from that of the Galaxy and Sounders for the Quakes to emulate should they wish to do so.