The Official Bruce Arena thread

I heard Fioranelli wouldn't let Almeyda sign the players he wanted but will CL be the same to Arena?

I just don't see Da Bruce listening to Chris.

 

Matias obviously directed Jesse on who to sign because practically everybody we signed was a friend / former player of Matias's. The only "wouldn't let" had to do with working with a limited budget, something that Jesse did not control.

I think when CL took over, he wrested the "who to sign" control from Matias to some extent. I don't know how much input Matias had into it but I think he felt that he wasn't involved enough in that process. That's probably one of the precipitating events that led to Matias leaving. Once Matias could see that the new signings weren't going to help his team much, he was done.

Now that CL has shown himself to be not so good at identifying players to sign, having Bruce take that over makes sense. He is still prone to screwups but he's got a pretty good track record.

 

Even though they were friends, Almeyda stated Fioranelli was difficult to work with.

I don't think they had a great relationship at the end.

 

I don't think Almeyda had a great relationship with any of the Quakes executive staff by the end.

 

The problem with that is Leitch has already demonstrated he's not great at signing players? Like previous Quakes GMs he takes forever to sign players, will Bruce put up with that? "Oh well this season is already over because the reinforcements didn't arrive until May"... can't see Bruce taking that well.

Also under Leitch the Quakes haven't been making the sheer number of moves necessary even within MLS to field a competitive team, they are last in total amount of GAM traded (after San Diego who haven't played yet):

Had this idea for a project on "the balance of GAM," or the (guaranteed) amount each club has acquired/traded. Went through hundreds of press releases dating back to Jan 1, 2022 in search of transactions involving GAM, but let me know what I missed.https://t.co/66NkLlrkW7 pic.twitter.com/0AQAgazZlt

— Marc Machado (@MarcMachado8) November 4, 2024

 

You do know that CL will be working for Arena. Arena will be both the Sporting Director (who CL will report to) and coach. Arena will be the decision maker on player acquisitions, not Chris.

 

Exactly.

That reinforces my initial post.

Today at 10:13 AM

 

There are most likely two potential outcomes for CL:

1. He remains in the role because Bruce and him are aligned with roles/responsibilities and each feel that they can work with each other.
2. He is an interim role to help with the transition for a set period of time while he looks for other opportunities and Bruce gets a better feel of who he wants to bring in (or the person becomes available).

Your mileage may vary.

 

And that question was answered here at ~7:30am this morning.

 

Or CL can always carry a clip board taking statistics like Alex Covelo.

 

There’s a ton of stuff to be done outside of just picking players. Someone has to execute the deals, manage all technical stuff for the club at an administrative level, etc. All that stuff just doesn’t just happen by itself. He’ll be doing about 90% of the stuff he was doing before.

 

1. How many deals has Leitch executed competently?
2. How many deals has Leitch executed in a timely manner?
3. How many total deals has Leitch executed relative to other MLS front offices?
4. How many deals has Leitch executed that could be considered "good deals" for the team?

 

He’s signed a lot of players. Most of the starting lineup. The problem hasn’t been the execution as much as the decisions - who to sign. And that’s something Bruce is taking on.

 

Here is an Arena interview from 5 months ago where he discussed USMNT with some of the veterans. It gives some idea of Arena's personality:

 

IF we were Inter M or LAFC or any of the "other" destination teams he would probably have a better "hit" rate and a "better" quality of player signed. Just being the Earthquakes is a lot to overcome in regards to signing "good" players.

 

What’s the setting in that video? Seems contrived.

 

It's a show??

 

Is the guy on the right Harold Lloyd from silent films?

 

Landon Donovan assistant coach? Arena coaches a few years and decides to just focus on Sporting Director so Landon coaches the first team and Arena can stay home and not travel all over the country.

 

Here are a few pictures of Bruce Arena playing as a GK for the Tacoma Tides during the 1976 American Soccer League season.

 

Maybe it’s just me but I would guess that Bruce has a pretty strong Neanderthal component in his genetic makeup.

 

I still dislike Narcissus, but he was OK coaching in San Diego. If he becomes one of Bruce’s assistants in SJ … that might not be a bad thing. <emergency mouthwash break>

I’m still getting used to the idea that Bruce will be our coach. If Bruce brings some respected staff with him that might help us to recruit players from elsewhere.

But of course, if RottenFish won’t pay the tab, all of this is going to go up in flames. I just can’t believe that this will work out any differently than previous efforts. Fisher is an idiot, or maybe just doesn’t care. Perhaps Fisher will put more faith and money behind Bruce because Bruce is famous and has a great track record? I have to think that at some level Fisher does care, because if he didn’t he wouldn’t have hired Bruce and would have retain Ian, the cheaper option.

Nah, Fisher won’t spend enough more to make a difference and we’ll still be shit next year and Bruce will quit in disgust.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

I really want to emphasize this point.

Matías was a very high profile coach when we hired him. He was expensive. We paid for him and his crew of coaches. It was a BFD. But we wouldn’t pay for big time players, and we crashed and burned.

Then, after some delay, we hired Luchi, an assistance with the US Men’s Nats! Another big time hire. Again, we did not splash the cash for big time players until it was way too late, and then only one guy. And we went cheap on most of the rest of the roster. And turned in an epic disaster of a season.

So, what is the chance that RottenFish will spend serious money on stadium upgrades, a training center for our academy, and still spend upper third cash on the roster? Remember that he and his cohorts just agreed to drop $1B on a stadium for the A’s in Las Vegas. Is he really going to spend a ton of money on our Quakes?

I hope he does, but I’m assuming that he won’t.

Go Quakesfans!!