Ongoing Chivas USA Current News (Coaching Changes, Legal Issues etc...) Thread

I posted this on the weekly thread, but on second thought, it should probably have gone here:

A hard question remains:

What if Chivas USA starts to perform well on the field, maybe even really well, and fans still don't show up to see them play?

We'll see.

 

I'm sure sooner or later, some fans will come back. I mean everyone loves a winner.

 

As I said, we may see if winning truly is a cure for all of Chivas USA's ills. But I'm not so sure.

 

They stand little chance without some kind of real efforts at marketing the team in the area. I agree some folks will come back, but I doubt it's many.
MLS gets little attention from the mainstream media in LA, and even then it's star-f***ing - ala Beckham. (Same is true of Kobe and the Lakers, by the way.) But even Beckham didn't push the Galaxy to the front of the news or even the sportscast very often.
That means you have to work your butt off to get a base to come to the games and you have to do all the promotion and selling of your team on your own. I don't know of any sign that CUSA is making those efforts at all.
It's a shame too, cause Chelis is entertaining enough to make for some fun stories and the team is loaded with players who reflect the area. And hey, they look better than advertised.
You would think any smart marketing department could make headway with a Latino-American-loaded team in that area.

 

I keep thinking about this team we saw today -- not the prettiest side, but hard-nosed and determined. Powered by a bunch of young Americans in the attack, anchored by an excellent American in goal, but a distinctly Latin flavor overall. Probably the most charismatic coach MLS has ever seen -- a coach that infuses his whole team with personality.

Now imagine that team with a more inclusive, but still Latin flavored name -- East LA FC (like we were talking about earlier) or something else, who knows (Pocho FC!). Put a little marketing money behind that name. I wouldn't say it could succeed in LA, because I think it would succeed in LA.

That team we saw today had everything going for it except an inviting brand and some marketing oomph. You could see the potential out there. But potential isn't enough.

 

Well I guess that they are not the worst team in the league, this year it will be us.

 

Chivas USA seems well on its way to dealing with issue 2 style of play and issue 3 nationality of players but the most daunting issue 1 building fan base in SoCal is still a long term project though 2 and 3 have to help.

We even saw in the dismal crowd pockets of Chivas fans like in the old days.

I'm not quite marking my calendar but August 25 when we play them in LA already has a little more flavor for me than several other games on our schedule.

 

Yeah, I couldn't believe it when they said that. If they're right, and the number really is $0 ... well, it sure makes you wonder what Vergara thinks he's doing.

 

Buying TV ads and billboards is a waste of money. You'd get more marketing mileage out of a DP.

 

I think you are right on the ads, but if i was running CUSA's marketing department - and it had a budget - I would be involved in guerrilla marketing in the streets. In East LA and Santa Ana, of course, but also in other parts of the city where people think Galaxy is the only game in town.
Would it help if they brought in a big name? Sure. But there are a lot of things you can do to get your players well known in the community and especially in the parts of the community where futbol is a passion.
That said I still think the name is a huge problem. How do you get Club America fans on your side if the team is called 'Chivas.' The easy answer, it seems to me, is a name change to Club Deportivo Los Angeles. It still is the same as Club Deportivo Guadalajara, but it allows the team to at least dump some of the connection to Guad.
Of course I have no reason whatsoever to believe the owner of Guad wants to do such a thing with his American team.
It's kind-of sad. They are looking up on the field, especially compared with last year, but the off-the-field stuff is still a nightmare.

 

The Chicago Red Stars? Aren't they a women's team doe?

 

At some point during this thread, I'd love to see some analysis as to how they're winning their games. Because on paper, this club should be one of the greatest train wrecks of all time. Have they gotten lucky? Is Chelis a genius? Are the players just overachieving? Or is the "paper" just wrong? It's not their schedule -- their opponents so far are 7-5-3. Yeah, just one of their four games has been away from their home stadium, but they won that game and lost one of the ones at home.

Maybe Chivas USA will revert to their predicted form soon, but if they don't, and this team is actually competitive, I'm gonna be scratching my head so hard it bleeds.

------RM

 

Having watched all of the last two games I will say they look like they are in a mad scramble at all times. It is not pretty, but the work-rate is unquestionable. They outhustled both LA and Chicago, and by a wide margin. A couple of their players have very good quality: De Luna looks good, and Agudelo was good today.
Frankly I think some of these players most of us have never heard of are way better than we give them credit for. Most are at least up to the lowest level of MLS standards - some better than that.

Plus Dan Kennedy should be made an honorary Mexican or Mexican-American because he saves their butt a lot. If he falters the cinderella story will end way before midnight.

 

Here are some players on the roster that stand out to me...

- A top American prospect in Juan Agudelo
- Eric Avila who has looked pretty solid the few games I've seen him play
- Chorre Mejia was a regular starter at one point for Chivas Guad.
- Bobby Burling, as someone mentioned before, is a decent defender who played well for San Jose
- Minda, when healthy, is a tough box to box mid
- One of the best GK's in the league, Dan Kennedy

 

I think it's an open question and a good question. I don't have an answer yet. I look at some of the players ... and, well, I credit Chelis with a lot of their on-field success. But I haven't seen enough yet to know whether he really merits that credit.

I think next week's game against Vancouver will prove very interesting.

 

My Spanish is rusty, but let's give this a try:

No son las Chivas USA. Son los Trasgos USA. «¿Problema?»

 

Agudelo and Kennedy are carrying this team on their back. Agudelo is leaving in July, and Kennedy can't be so lucky the whole season. I'm pretty sure they reached their peak too early, its all downhill from here.

 

Well... I've seen all their goals. Most of the goals come from Route 1 play. Two of them have been moments of individual brilliance from Agudelo, both times involving Agudelo surprisingly bringing down long balls under pressure, and three have been the result of launching a long ball and pressuring defenders as soon as they receive the ball. And if you look at the Opta chalkboards on the MLS website, one thing that's immediately apparent is that most of the "key passes" by Chivas that lead to shots are long balls, while their opponents show quite a bit more variety. Right now, for all the talk of Latin-style play, Chivas USA looks like one of the most direct teams in the league.

Otherwise, it's all Kennedy. Kennedy has faced more shots on target than any other goalkeeper in MLS.

All the metrics suggest dominance by their opponents. In their four games, their possession has been: 47%, 50%, 38%, 43%. They've had fewer shots on goal than their opponents in all four games, and fewer total shots in three of four games. Their passing accuracy has been worse than their opponent's in all four games; it's only touched 70% in one game, while the norm for the league is mid-to-high 70s. All four of their opponents have won the majority of 1v1 duels. They've fouled more than their opponents in all four games, and lead the league in yellow cards. The tackling has apparently been really awful: Chivas commits more than two fouls for every successful tackle, whereas all four of their opponents have won at least half of their tackles cleanly.

So my conclusion is: they're playing English-style Route 1, and negating opponents' technical advantages by physical play. Exactly the opposite of what Vergara and Chelis talked about all preseason. And Kennedy is singlehandedly keeping them from hemorrhaging goals.

It actually seems pretty similar to 2012, when Chivas had a pretty solid record through June. Then, in July, Kennedy's form dropped from superhuman to merely very good; for the first half of the season his play had been masking the team's defensive frailties.

 

I speak spanish and i dont know what "trasgos" is ....

 

I don't think it matters how much Chivas wins if people don't even know that Chivas is winning. If you're winning, you want to sell to the people that, "Hey, look, we're winning!" That's where marketing comes in huge. There's no local TV deal, so locals aren't watching them to know if they're winning or not. I would imagine that the most local media coverage they get is a blurb in the paper and maybe someone saying that score on TV during the news, if that at all. What you're seeing from Chivas's fanbase is that the diehards are attending. It's all of the other people who aren't. Just look at the attendance in Chicago yesterday. The only people who showed up are the diehards. The casual fans far outweigh the diehards, and casual fans don't want to sit in 30 degree temperatures with a 30 mph wind in their face. Casuals come out in good weather when the team is worth watching. Other than that, they can't be bothered because it's not important to them, and it's not worth freezing their ass off.

Chivas could rip off 25 straight victories, and they'd still have crowds that barely approach 5,000 because Vergara is apathetic to his own cause. It's eerily similar to Jeffrey Loria and the Florida Marlins. The Marlins exist to make Loria money, not to be good or win championships. So long as Loria continues to put a baseball team - any baseball team - on the field, he'll receive money from Major League Baseball's luxury tax. He has no incentive to win. For Vergara, his primary objective is to keep the team afloat for as long as possible, and then sell it at a profit to whoever will buy it. In the mean time, why not try to develop some players for Chivas de Guadalajara? For Vergara, it's win-win, and so long as he makes cash call, there's no one there to say a word. He doesn't care about attendance or marketing or any of the stuff that makes a team successful because it's not important to him if Chivas EE.UU is successful. If Vergara puts $40 million into the team all at a loss, and then sells the franchise for $100 million, he's still made a massive profit, and that's what he's looking at now. It makes absolutely perfect business sense. Is it fair or right? Who cares about fair and right when it comes to business, and that's what all of his decisions are predicated on.

Personally, I am rooting for Chivas to succeed on the field for many reasons. I know others are not, and it's perfectly acceptable. Wanting Chivas to fail horribly so that Vergara looks like an idiot is a perfectly acceptable feeling. The only problem is that Vergara couldn't give a shit less whether the team fails or not, so Chivas's failures really are only hurting those 2,000 people who show up every week and actually make the time and effort to care about Chivas EE.UU. In reality, it's not even worth it to root for Chivas to fail because it's really a lost cause. It's better off to be apathetic and just dismiss them rather than hate them. I'll root for them, though, because they seem like a fun team to watch, and after having to watch the Union the last few years, I need to watch something fun and exciting.

 

It's "Google Translate Spanish" for goblins.

 

Even if they truly have a $0 marketing budget, having their game on UniMas should help.

 

Let's say that you're a casual fan of basketball. You like basketball. You think it can be exciting to watch from time-to-time, but you don't really go out of your way to watch it. Now, let's say that the only time you can watch your local basketball team is if it's on a Spanish television network that you may or may not get over-the-air. Are you really making a full-fledged effort to find the Spanish network that is showing that basketball game, especially if you're a casual viewer? I highly doubt it. The only Chivas fans watching games on UniMas are the diehards. Casual fans aren't tuning in for it. If they're watching games broadcasted in Spanish on UniMas, they'd be out at the stadium to watch them. TV is a part, but it's not the be-all end-all. People need to be marketed to if they're going to come out to the stadium. Teams wouldn't spend a lot of money advertising on television networks if it didn't work. Television advertising is damn expensive. Radio is less so, but it still works. If you're not getting your message out there to the casual fans, how are they going to know? It's like a restaurant. Word of mouth is great, but you can't rely on it. If no one knows when you're open or what you serve, then no one is coming out.