The Official John Doyle thread

Yeah I was looking just at Jesse’s intl roster signings. I did include the Stahre era - Eriksson - another maddeningly not bad but not good enough Jesse signing. I did not include the left back guy who didn’t work out.

As for coaching choices, Stahre was obviously horrible, Matias is probably not going to work out at this point - I think the writing’s pretty well on the wall. The thing is it’s always a risk signing the intl guy. Doyle made the safe known quantity MLS domestic choices. I think one of Jesse’s biggest mistakes if not biggest mistake singular was replacing Leitch with Stahre. I would have liked to have seen what the team would do with an offseason to train to Leitch’s style of play + get a few more players suited to it. But Jesse couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help himself believing that we needed a euro coach to teach us not to have bad road losses because “bearing walls” or something.

 

Hard to believe that was all 30 years ago, isn't it?

 

Yeah, also, I don’t feel 30 years older, until I look in the mirror or try walking downstairs first thing in the morning.

 

Valid Question:

Who was a better GM, John Doyle or Chris Leitch?

 

Or Jesse Fioranelli? None of them were good enough, unfortunately. We somehow lucked into a Supporter's Shield while Doyle was GM, so I guess he'd have to be considered the best, sadly. And he was bad.

 

Which brings us to another question....

Are the clubs failures the fault of the GM or the owner?

 

And we don’t face a GM right now. Right?

 

Since the owner hires the GM, I'd have to say it's the owner's fault. But GM is the most important position for the success or failure of the club. You have to get that one right - they hire the coach, they help build the roster. The GM decision is more important than the money thing. We've seen that born out in MLS over and over - smart teams who are mid to low spending being some of the best teams in the league.

There's a kind of a basic impedance conundrum here in that you have the owner, who knows about business but not soccer, needing to hire the right soccer person. How does an owner who is not a soccer expert (and this applies to pretty much all of them) make the decision to hire the right soccer person? Ideally they would leverage the services of a consultant - an expert in their sport - like a Bill Walsh or Jerry West or even Johnny Moore. But then again, you have to hire the right consultant, so we're back to the same problem. Of course with these kinds of folks you can hire someone who is unquestionably an expert in their field, but also someone for whom the game has not passed them by. I don't think we've ever done this. I think we've hired "consulting firms" to help with these hires, but that's not the thing.

Maybe this is the answer. None of our GM's have been good. Maybe the "null GM" is the way to go . But let's face it, Bruce is the acting GM - he's making the calls on the roster, he's chosen the coach (him!). Most likely he's got someone helping him with the administrative stuff who's not "GM". Maybe Woly.

 

Didn't realize that he played for Seattle. Probably because his air is short and he is a target forward.