Preki Over Soehn

It's official--Preki was chosen as coach of the year in MLS this season. While I personally feel Soehn was better (for a couple of reasons), Preki is a good selection and a worthy awardee.

On a related note, people spend all this time denigrating DCU nominees with "well of course Emilio did well, he was playing on a good team" ("of course Olsen looked good, he was on a talented team" and "of course Soehn got good results, he was on a strong team" and so on).

Yet ironically, we could end up with a situation with one player (Emilio--I'm assuming he beats out Donovan and EJ at forward) on the MLS XI....and no other DC United award winners (on defense, goal, rookie, coach, MVP, best newcomer).

 

First, I have no problem with Preki getting it--he did a great job (but I think Soehn did as well). I think what Preki did best was dealing with Guevara--his behavior and then the absence. Kudos to him.

Second, what we're talking about are expectations. Preki was a free-wheeling attacker who appeared to never defend, ball win or play structured soccer. Many folks wondered "how can he work as a coach then?" But as a coach he was organized, ran a tight ship, managed the team well--all stuff you wouldn't have expected from him based on his playing style.

You're right, people EXPECTED our team to win the East and challenge for the MLS Cup. The question is: were those expectations reasonable? Soccer journalism in the USA is pretty weak. You get people forming assumptions about teams based upon seeing them only 1 game (Frank Dell'Apa is the prime example in my mind--nice prose but he rarely knows what he's talking about and the tactical knowledge of most of them is feeble--we truly are fortunate to have Goff--but I digress). People nominated DCU as a likely MLS Cup finalists. But we ended 2006 as the worst team in MLS (even RSL was better than us over the last 1/3rd of the season). We started 2007 in the same manner.

Who do I think did a better job? I think losing Guevara and how he handled it was superb by Preki. OTOH, he took the BB foundation, stayed with it and built on it. Very few new players or new roles or changes from 2006. Bornstein, Kljestan, Guzan--all grown by BB. Furthermore, although the stats suggest the West wasn't that far off the East, I beg to differ. Chicago, Columbus and TFC all had their down periods this season where they were weak sisters. But all were very strong at times.

In the West, LAG was mostly an embarassment until a very late run. Colorado had one good run (fueled mostly by defense) and nothing. FCD was impressive except that had NO success against the top 4 teams in MLS (I seem to recall 1 win and 1 tie though my memory may be off).

Furthermore, I am more convinced now than ever that NO team in MLS will be consistently successful in MLS regular season and extended international play until that team either lucks onto a great player (ala our own Zidane) or their roster gets about 4-5 great subs and partial starters beyond where ANY team in MLS is right now (other than possibly Houston who could use about 2-3 great subs beyond where they are). I was originally disappointed about our overall results (no MLS Cup, no USOC cup, getting knocked out of the SuperLiga, CCC and SudAmerica) but looking in hindsight at our schedule and how Soehn managed that, I think the tools that MLS lets coaches have make this nearly impossible to be solid at.

I think it's no surprise that the year we had our international competition (2005--b/c we won the MLS Cup in 2004), we didn't win the SS and bombed out of all of the cup competition. Twice that year we played 5 games in 15 day spans.

I think that MLS (as the cap and roster restrictions currently exist plus the penalties of the expansion draft which for the next 3-4 years mean that DCU, Houston will each lose one good role player each off-season in addition to normal roster turnover) makes it nearly impossible to do well in the regular season, MLS Cup and international competition. There have been MLS teams that have been strong teams that almost lap the field. But they still don't have enough depth to be strong through the regular season and reload for the playoffs. Throw in a couple of cup competitions and you end up with teams good enough to nearly own the regular season who hit a down period and can't recover if it's a cup competition or the playoffs.

I think those who argue that Soehn rode a successful team that would have likely done well anyway or guilty of assuming that this team could have gotten nearly similar results with any kind of competent coach in charge.

I think if Steve Nicol had been coach of this team, here's what we would have seen:
--we lose to Olimpia in both games in the CCC
--we field reserves in the USOC initial match and still lose
--we don't take the Superliga serious and don't reach the semis
--we don't win the SSS (but probably finish as the #2 or #3 seed in the East)
--we don't take the SudAmerica seriously and lose both matches there
--we do well in the MLS Cup (probably winning the first round and reaching the Eastern finals where if we go beyond depends upon form and who we play and their form).

Nicols is a great MLS coach. He knows MLS well. His MO is, blow off the international and cup competition--it means squat. Don't focus on how you look as a team (who cares about playing attractive soccer?). Make sure you're hot and in-form for the playoffs (even if you have to blow off chunks of the regular season in order to do that or you start slowly so you have lots of energy for the final sprint). And even that isn't a sure thing (look at NE's form going into the playoffs this year and how they played against TFKAM).

I like the job Preki did. Now we complain about Soehn and our braintrust failed to get a good third striker for our team. How good of a job did Preki do? And if you look at how they fell apart as a team at the end of the season (just like we did), I ask you--don't you think it would have been worse if Chivas had also had to play.....CCC.....SuperLiga....SudAmerica?