2 questions: 1. Has there been any - and I mean *any* - news on the coaching search 2. Not going to defend MA but if you think he sucked, then do you think that all of our coaches totally blew? Because mediocrity has been the one consistency with the FishQuakes, with 2 - 3 above par seasons. There is no way to criticize Almeyda without also concluding that every other coach has also been terrible. Which means you have to face one very obvious question: has every coach been terrible, or have they all been put in an unwinnable position? To call out Almeyda specifically seems asinine. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a spectator, unlike all of you experts.
Winning % of the last 4 past Quakes permanent head coaches: Almeyda: 32% Stahre: 14.3% Leitch: 41.2% Kinnear: 31.5% Leitch is the one that stands out there. 41.2 win % is usually enough to make the playoffs. 32%, - no, and obviously not 14.2%. But here's the thing: 1) If you make the assumption that the Quakes roster quality has been mid-table at best, then sure, you can't necessarily ding the coaches (except Stahre) for not doing better. But Almeyda was supposed to be a great coach, and we paid him possibly the highest $ in the league, and allowed him to bring his entire staff. And he had 4 years to figure it out. If nothing else, I don't think anyone can say that he did a "great" job here. He did no better than the other coaches (Stahre doesn't count) and worse than Leitch in his short stint as interim. So I think it's fair to "call him out" as not being "great" here, as he was expected to be based on reputation and compensation. 2) Before Leitch we had 2 GM's, both of them sub-par IMO. We'll see if Leitch turns out to be good or not, but I think our roster is going to improve over the next few years, and if we have a coach who is better than average, those 2 things should enable us to have better results.
I've only said: 1) MA is a mediocre coach as supported by his overall division 1 record. 2) Man marking only works temporarily and he gets progressively worse results. 3) He's an honor-less tool who won't live up to the agreements he's made. In fact, worse, he throws games thus throwing his players and fans under the bus as well.
To your first point, we aren't going to hear anything about the coaching hire decision until the season is over or nearly over. They aren't going to undermine Covelo while he's still trying to get the players to play. Covelo is not getting the job, I think we all know that. But it would be a real jerk move publicly announce that they've hired someone else now while there's still months of the season left. We already know who the finalists are, so we'll just have to speculate until the season is concluded. To your second point, two things can be true. The Quakes have not put together really competitive teams. They have also not hired very good coaches. Some proof of this is looking at where previous Quakes head coaches are now. Yallop plummeted into the depths of the US soccer pyramid where he did worse and worse. Kinnear is now an assistant for one of the newest MLS teams (who are having a decent amount of success currently), but will likely never be a head coach in MLS again. Stahre went back to coaching in his home country and has his team doing okay. Almeyda is now coaching in Greece, which, to me, seems like a step down from MLS in terms of profile and prestige at this point (that's just my perception so I'm willing to concede that it's a lateral move or even a step up depending on how you look at things). I think bad teams are actually really good tools to show how good a coach actually is. MLS is a challenge regardless of the quality of players you have, but you have a lot less work to do as a coach if you're stacked with top talent. It's a lot harder to get results from players who aren't top tier. However, it can be done and we've seen it. It may be less likely now and the Quakes aren't even keeping pace with the middle of the pack in terms of spending like they used to, but I do think it would be pretty obvious where the coach was doing good work and being let down by talent, versus the coach not doing a good job. It's pretty clear that Almeyda didn't do a great job, at least not after his first year and change. He was stubborn in his approach to playing, refused to really consider the strengths and weaknesses of the players (or just flat out couldn't recognize them, maybe), publicly criticized the team's lack of spending, which, incidentally, was a criticism of the quality of the players we was responsible for coaching. It's possible that Almeyda is a good coach, or was a good coach. But success can lead to failure. We saw Yallop totally unravel as a coach because he relied far too much on his past experience, which prevented him from adapting to the changes in the game. Kinnear was similar, where he thought you could create a blockade to prevent goals and squeak by with a goal every other game. That turned out to be untrue. Stahre simply didn't understand the league he was coming into at all, seemed like he didn't do any research on opponents at all, and didn't even have the basic communication skills needed to do anything effectively. So yeah, you'll see a lot of criticism of Almeyda here, and you'll also see lots of criticism of every single other Quakes coach because they all performed poorly over their tenure. And with that you'll also see endless complaints about the spending on the roster. Because both of those things are worthy of criticism.
But the player acquisition purse strings didn't change. I get what you're saying though - I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's unrealistic to expect a coach to fly high if the players aren't good and we don't invest in roster-building. After 3+ years, Almeyda's deficiencies are obvious, so no point in relitigating them here, but I will say this: the baseline is not what other coaches achieved. The baseline is what would they have achieved under the same conditions as MA, which is, to say the obvious, impossible to calculate. However, let's recall that he came on the heels of Stahre and provided an immediate lift. That's significant. Yeah, his numbers decreased over time, which is an indictment of him and his waning enthusiasm for the gig. There's no denying that. I am encouraged by Leitch. I just wish he and MA had been able to partner up from the beginning of MA's tenure. Edit to say: your other points about his personal ethics are totally valid. There's no defending his actions re: escalating the disagreement and forcing the front office to fire him. With that action, he put his personal feelings above the team and the fans and assured everyone of a terrible year. So no... I'm definitely not sad about his leaving. I am disappointed that he didn't have much chance of succeeding. Even as a narcissist, I sense that he wanted to be a WINNING narcissist.
I'm sure I'm in a minority here, but I believe that we can build a good roster with the same kind of level in roster spending relative to the league (which is lower half). It's harder to do, but doable, and we've seen it many times in MLS. I think he is being very careful and deliberate in how he's moving his chess pieces. I'm hopeful for next year - it'll be the first year where he has his pick to coach the team, and an opportunity to work with that coach to acquire players. As for Almeyda-Leitch, I also thought it could work, but I don't think Almeyda really trusted Leitch to pull the right strings. He wanted more input, maybe more like the level of input he had with Jesse, which is to say - let me pick the players.
the truth, of course, is that they've all been placed in the same unwinnable position. the investment hasn't been there for this team to succeed since fisher arrived on the scene. look no further than our DP track record. same story today, look at what Covelo is having to contend with; depleted backline, losing more players than he's picking up, very little support from CL, etc.
I still believe a moneyball-type approach could work here, but the issue is that with the salary caps, pretty much every team has that approach, except for the 2-3 difference makers afforded under DP salaries. It basically means that your ability to slice and dice data has to be markedly better than any other team's, and... well, let's just be charitable and say the Quakes FO hasn't yet created the right set of ML algorithms.
when discussing the great coach Matias Almeyda it’s important for us to remember that he started in 2019 and by 2020 the whole planet was dealing with a raging pandemic from which we’re still recovering today. In the offseason before 2020 kicked off, at the first sign of trouble, Fisher used the pandemic crisis as an opportunity to spend even less on players! Imagine that. I think it was @JazzyJ who coined the term “super-austerity mode” to describe the bare bones spending Matias would have available for players, for the coming years...let’s be honest, all things considered it was pretty amazing that he did as well as he did.
Yes, of course, you need to be smart. That's been my point of view for a long time. The money is nice, but money or no, in the end you have to be smart. We haven't been remotely smart, but I don't think Doyle or Jesse were the guys to do it. They each had their strengths and weaknesses, but in the end just did not have the "what it takes to succeed in MLS" savvy to put us over the top. I think CL may, but it remains to be seen.
Leitch has done a lot of good things for the Quakes but in my mind he has to get the coaching hire right to show the long suffering fans he was the right choice for GM. To me his legacy rides or dies with the coaching choice. His good buddy Luchi gets the job and fails it will show a lack of professionalism from Chris in my mind.
That knife cuts both ways. He should have seen through his agreements. Had he not insisted on signing the FoMs to begin with, and continued focusing on the development of the yuts, he may have had more credibility to sign more expensive players.
Signing players was Jesse's job. Matias was the coach, he was adjusting to a new league and a new country, he shouldn't have been in charge of roster building to begin with. his two biggest misfires (Rios and Fierro) happened in 2019. Then, when it was clear that wouldn't be enough to help much, we entered the age of austerity and the Matias era was effectively over. I can't fault Matias for that, hardly seems fair.
Lots of teams in MLS are getting very smart very fast, backed up by resources. If you think that it is a choice between money -or- smarts, then you are 10 years behind. Willing to spend in MLS used to mean getting Pirlo on an overpriced contract. No longer. The best MLS teams are now using data, evaluating domestic and foreign players, etc. I exited the "coach 'em up" argument thread, but the same applies there. The best teams will attempt identify and pay what it takes to get the best managers as well. Why would our manager hire give us an advantage? The baseball example is instructive. Moneyball really only worked for the A's until everyone else caught up. Now the rest of MLB is on board. Do we really want to be the A's of the last few years?
This is the 7th Coach thread, right? On last night’s broadcast, the Austin announcer guys (who weren’t too bad) said that the Quakes have ten (10) finalists for the coaching gig. I don’t think they’re right, but that’s what they said. Sickeningly, they mentioned Landon and no one else. I’m hoping that Narcissus’s name recognition doesn’t make him the front runner. His track record as HC hasn’t been great, and the going word is that it’s his assistant who is the tactician. Ian has a better record as head coach and Ian is the tactician. I don’t know about Kah, but he’s well regarded around the league. Luchi’s track record isn’t great, and he worked in a youth heavy system, so that’s not promising. I still hope that we hire Ian. I’d probably be happy with Hugo Perez. I’d reserve judgement on the rest, excepting Narcissus. If they hire that bag of shit, I’m going to root for the Timbers. I’m completely out of patience. Fool me once, shame of you, fool me fourteen times, shame on me. I’m sick of the same old shit, season after season. Go Quakesfans!!
seems inevitable, the only remaining question will be why did we wait? he's been available since at least early January of this year.
Someday there may be enough smarts in MLS and the spending gap may be enough that we start to finally see correlation between roster spending and PPG, but we're not there yet. I like the way it is now, frankly. Unlike the euro fanboys I'm not anxious for MLS to become EPL2, and we have a league of perpetual haves and have nots. As Quakes fans, unless ownership changes, we should not want that. Here's PPG vs. roster spending for the last 3 years. Virtually no correlation and in fact negative correlation last year. Almeyda was reported to be the highest or one of the highest paid coaches. Didn't help us. He didn't do well. Moneyball is not about one set of ideas, it's about continually trying to find market inefficiences. Initially there was a lot of low-hanging fruit that the A's took advantage of. Soon after there were lots of me-too's, but the A's went on to the next thing. They are in full rebuild mode this year, but we should want to be the A's of the last 4-5 years. They've been pretty successful - way, way more successful than we've been.
Maybe Ian wants to take over in an off season? I think that CL is going to hire either Luchi or (goddess protect us) Landon, and the wait is for one of them to finish up his current contract. Green isn’t a bad color for me. Go Quakesfans!!
I don't see how it could possibly be Ian, given the timeline. It's got to be Luchi, Landon, or mystery candidate. Edit to add that maybe Ian is still in the running. Maybe he had a vacation planned for this summer and the Quakes wouldn't pay the change fee on his airfare. That's my smartass joke for the day.
I really don't know about Ian. He's the popular favorite around here (17 votes at the top of this thread, followed by 7 for Hugo Perez, LD gets two, none for Luchi)...I really don't follow USL, so, other than knowing Ian as a player, I have no idea if he could somehow succeed in SJ where all these other coaches have come up short. Seems like a long shot. LD, we've discussed. I'm fine with LD, one of the greatest players this country has ever produced...if he signed here I'd have to assume he's done his homework and received some assurance from CL and Fish that the Quakes are now (finally) prepared to at least try to make a little progress. And, I assume that he's well connected and could attract some great players. Ian and CL seem like a natural tandem, both low-key, quiet guys who try to work within whatever system they join, not likely to rock the boat or (god forbid) speak out publicly about what a cheapskate Fisher is, which ultimately (when Matias was doing it routinely) didn't change much even though it was wonderfully affirming of everything we know to be true about the Quakes of the past 15 years. So, Ian, Pep, Landon, Luchi...does it even matter? that's the bigger question. and if it does, I'd probably go with Landon Donovan on the off chance that he could maybe squeeze a little more competitiveness out of Fisher, if that's even possible.
I don't think the lack of an announcement means anything necessarily in terms of who the favorites are. I just think that it would be disruptive to announce it now. If you do, you have to either 1) have him start when the season ends, meaning you've got an unmotivated and potentially pissed off interim coach (we've already had one unmotivated and pissed off coach this year, we don't need two). Or: 2) you make a second midseason change with what, 10 games left, and really mess with your team, which is just getting used to their 2nd coach this season. And 3) I know the idea of really impressing is slipping thru Covelo's hands but I think CL wants to give him until the rest of the season to show what he can do.