Originally Posted by
jloome
THis thread got pissier than I normally like these days but watching everyone argue at cross purposes is somewhat frustrating.
Can I suggest a few realistic compromise positions here that reflect both sides, since it occurs to me that both have reasonable stances?
To whit:
1) You can't compare North American football with European football because the athletes themselves differ greatly.
Euro footie experts will tell you American soccer is about athleticism and battle, while European players grow up learning a different tactical -- and more team-based -- approach. The kids here play multiple sports growing up and then excel as soccer players. The kids there start as soccer players and end as soccer players.
So, you can't compare leagues directly.
MLS off-the-ball-movement and tactical play probably isn't much better than conference-to-league one, depending on the team. But our players' technique, inidividual skill level and athleticism ranges all the way from the Premiership to League One, usually well above what you would find below the top tier of league one/average Coca Cola Championship side.
Ergo, it is it's own game. YOu can't compare it. USL is MLS without the technique, that's all. Some in that league read the game well, others poorly. Given that scouts look at repetitive behaviours as a heavy indicator of future success, I'd suggest fewer at that level read the game as well as in MLS, either.
2) You can play defensively in almost any formation. So you don't need to be in a 4-5-1, but yes, it's easy to defend with an extra midfielder who lays back all the time by a flat-back four. Did we need to do it to play defensively against RSL? No, and it didn't work anyway, so it's moot. The coach himslef has admitted it was a gamble that didn't work, so to all those defending the choice, please, get your heads out: we lost.
He admitted it didn't work. And a coach's responsibility extends to putting players on the pitch who know how to make it work, so even if the tactic was good, and the players bad, it's still his responsibility. Good on him for manning up to it immediately, which shows more strength of character than most bosses in this league have shown.
3) Players don't need to be at optimum to perform well, but they are more likely to do so. You don't play Wednesday, fly Friday and play again Saturday -- AT EXTREME ALTITUDE - - without fatigue affecting things. It made sense, then, to have some offense on the bench so that if we held them close in the first, that person would b coming in fresh and with a slight (Davenport: read slight) advantage as a result.
Having said that, generally foreign teams only rotate when they have players of equivalent calibre. THat's why it's rotational policy -- because it rotates constantly. Teams have 25-30 man squads because of injury, mostly. One player plus one backup = 22 players. Throw in 3-to-8 more who are under contract but not making the team or youths, and you have a 30-man squad.
But we don't have the talent to rotate as a policy. Unfortunately, Preki's still so new and his players are so new, that figuring out which ones gel together as a first team is gonna mean some different looking sides early.
So we got a combo of rotational/rest/assessment this week and it went badly. But from his perspective, RSL lost has lost at home ONCE in 18 months, so it made sense to gamble there.
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