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Oh shit! That reminds me of the time when Klinnsman was announced by Anselmi as the guy who was going to take this team to the next level, and everyone assumed that meant he'd be made manager.Originally Posted by ExiledRed
Classic Tom! Still puts me in stitches when I think of it.
Last edited by Cashcleaner; 04-22-2012 at 02:29 AM.
Did the USA , of all countries, just fix soccer? - C. Ronaldo, May 27th commenting on the FBI-led investigations into fraud and corruption throughout FIFA.
These forums have always been a territorial mess. For what reason? I dont know!...............Its not like the team is worth the squabble.
Agree with many points made.
I don't want the turbulence of a leadership change, but if the string of losses continues how can the Winter/DeKlerk status quo continue? I think it was Jason DeVos on the radio who was complaining that Winter is not flexible when it comes to formation?
I have been annoyed at 4-3-3 and think every MLS team in 2012 has come to BMO ready to prove that they can beat it. Clog and cover the TFC midfield, pressure the TFC defenders who will either be hoofing the ball long or spending too much time on the ball hoping to find an option. TFC's front three are too isolated. Often they have the choice of taking on two defenders with no passing option near them or pass the ball back to Morgan/Eckersley. Is this now year three of longing for an attacking midfielder??
I would try 4-4-2 or 4-5-1. Get Aceval onto the field as a midfielder so that we have his shot on free kicks.
Plata as late game sub should be his role 50% of the time.
I'm not a master tactician, but if you've been around the game for a while, or have ever coached, you realise that although a 4-3-3 is good, you REQUIRE THE PLAYERS TO PLAY THE SYSTEM. It especially relies on the midfield to help distribute the ball. We don't have three good midfielders, heck, we only have one in Frings, and he is 35!
¡Vamos Celta!
If this was 2010, I'd understand all the fire Tom Anselmi stuff, but I don't get it now.
All TA has done is realized on non business side of sports, he doesn't know how to run a winning team. So what does he do, he goes out and spends MONEY and brings in someone with a background and pedigree who actually knows a thing or two (Klinsmann). Klinsmann listens to the fans (the fans said they were interested in a possession based/attacking/creative team. Anselmi then listens to what Klinsmann has to say and based on his recommendations he brings over someone who has the knowledge to put in place something what the fans are looking for as well as someone who knows how MLS is run. Then Anselmi has opened up the cheque book for two more designated players as well as a brand new training facility and academy and has promised management the financial support needed to run a successful academy. He has not put his toe in on any of the player signings. Would you really rather have a Jerry Jones or the late Al Davis, or a Daniel Snyder running this team playing fantasy manager?
If I stepped in tomorrow what would I do?
Simple answer is stay the course.
Why?
When you look at everything as a whole, we don't exactly have many options and things we can do currently. Our salary cap is so tight right now, we couldn't even make a move if we wanted to.
^ From many descriptions of the inner workings of TFC (and other MLSE teams), the interference is much greater than you'd otherwise want to believe and it mainly happens under the cloak of "approving expenditures". The board of directors is still meeting to approve large contracts for each team, my question is: why?
Set the budget, tell the manager the expectations, and revisit every once in a while to keep the ball rolling. Reviewing individual contracts? Garbage. Shouldn't have to happen unless it's in an extreme circumstance.
Dunno, I gave up starting threads long, long ago...
To the topic of this currently open thread:
- I would do everything I could to get The Guzman (a.k.a. "The bobblehead") to agree to a contract buyout. Even a buyout that saves a $100k would be welcome - it is the principle - he has not delivered and should not be allowed to continue. If he refuses I would put him in the game and then pull him everytime he wiffs a ball - after a while he can go practice with the second team - perhaps he could be waterboi for the Marlies since these two clubs are so closely connected... his contract has sucked the juices out of this organization and it needs to be dealt with - if nothing works, buy him out in June and be done with it.
- with the exception of "bobblehead" I would stop throwing any other players under the bus - they are not the problem at this point...
- bring Mariner in as coach, keep Winter in youth development - Mariner is a big, big part of this friggin mess, so he either fixes it now or he is out at the end of the season.
- ban zoomerang ticket sales, groupon etc. - these short term marketing brain dead ideas are very damaging to the club and the STH base
- the following is obvious: keep most of the current roster, find a friggin CB, stop playing a 3 man backfield so predictably often, get Frings out of the backfield permanently
- start working right now to land a decent coach for next year who can handle the MLS - money is no object.
- if Dero has his regular outstanding season, I would consider a kiss and make up - make him a one-year DP and market the hell out of him (I am not trying to troll - I was asked a question, and I answered)
I would sell the team to a group of investors in Tampa Bay allow them to move this cursed franchise, form a supporters ownership group, raise the cash to buy Columbus and move the Crew to Toronto, even if it takes 10 years...
That's how shit this franchise has become.
This thread is focused on the answers. But what are the right questions? Here are a few of them:
- Which organizations are having MLS success, and why? What can be replicated, and what can't?
- Why are we horrible at identifying Central/South American talent?
- How do you ensure continuity, while maintaining the accountability/independence of the soccer operations people? (this issue is where MLSE has failed more miserably than anywhere else)
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Why would you dump Emory? Hes good at defending and with ball control
All the most valid questions.
-- It's worth considering that the most successful MLS coaches have all coached at a lower level in U.S. -- Arena, Schmidt, John Spencer, Steve Nicol, all of them had prior experience working with players raised in the american system.
-- The south america question is interesting, as my understanding of scouting is that it's not nearly as team-by-team focussed as most people believe; mostly, these are local talent scouts recommending players to multiple clubs in the league, and then choices being made from there. For example, I have it on good authority that we could've had Camillo (who is Brazilian) and Martin Bonjour, the Argentine centre back in Vancouver, as they were both offered around the league by agents last year. So few if any of these players are fully unknown. We're just making bad choices, indicating we have bad scouts.
-- To me, you separate soccer operations entirely from the rest of the business and put it under a community board management style, incorporating multiple individuals with a vested interest ... but MLSE would never go for it, of course. That's a european community model; it would probably work GREAT with the salary cap (as is the case in Seattle, where fans can vote on the GMs performance) but our team wasn't really built from the grassroots, ala the Sounders, it was built corporately and propped up on the backs of the grassroots supporters.
Then you hire a manager, give him a budget and get out of the way.
^ I agree
As for the general question? If I had total organization control?
1. I'd institute an internal anonymous complaint system and hire a corporate ombudsman, to hear and adjudicate staff concerns and look into those complaints, with particular reference to repeat areas and individuals. That would put a chill into the heaviest corporate douchebag manipulators instantly.
2. I'd sit down with Winter, De Klerk, and each player individually, and ask them what they think is best for the team. When people are given a chance to be honest without recrimination, it not only produces a lot of good and valid ideas, it produces common patterns of belief and behavior that can help determine who is most productive and who least, who's with the team and whose self-interest doesn't match up to their abilities.
3. If unconvinced that Winter can communicate effectively enough to turn the team around, or unconvinced that he understands the challenges facing the league sufficiently (cap, technique and player background, travel, development), I'd terminate his contract, and De Klerk's, and in the interim, for the remainder of the season, put Mariner or Rongen in charge. Whichever was not given the job would be bought out; we don't need internal emnity from hiring (ala Winter vs Mariner for the top job right now, potentially); either way, the interim manager would be clearly told that they are competing for the job, not auditioning for a coronation, and that if they don't develop a solid winning streak within short order, their chances of being in the job at the end of the season are slim to none.
I would then begin identifying candidates; there are several who fit the same sort of mould as Nicol, Schmidt and Arena already, so there are options. It's not out of the question that Mariner and Rongen could succeed, however, given that both have far more experience than Winter with MLS. I would leave the system up to them; the modern coach adapts.
I'd expand and properly train the communications department, which ... lord, some of them try. Most of them have very little real media experience outside of what they've learned on the job or their one news job before it, so they're kind of flying blind and it's easy to tell.
I don't believe Anselmi and MLSE are really the problem on an ongoing basis -- they just hire the wrong people because they have a limited, corporate groupthink mindset, and it usually takes a conflicting and critically different path to improve something drastically, not one focused on 5% returns and protecting one's own ass. As long as they stay out of the way during the season, it would work.
Yeah, you'd be surprised how often we do. I just get nitty gritty about the evidenced-results based approach.
I posted a little rant on big soccer about what I think the problem with the current management/setup is and I figured I'd post it here too:
the problem isn't the formation. The problem is Winter's inability to select the right players for the style. We have players who CAN play his way, the problem is that he doesn't select them. the Dutch style requires three midfielders, all of whom can: pressure the other team when they don't have the ball, pass accurately, see runners, think relatively quickly, etc. Players like Avila, De Guzman, Burgos, and Frings can do that. But instead Winter benches Avila and Burgos, plays Frings in the back line, and drops De Guzman because he's under preforming, even though he still plays better than Dunfield. And instead he plays players who can't do those things in the midfield like Johnson, Silva, and Dunfield, and plays with wide midfielders which don't add anything in the way of pressure.
IMO almost everything's being done fine EXCEPT for the game day lineup selection. That is on Winter, not De Klerk, and not Mariner. If someone has to go it should be Winter and no one else (well of course Anselmi and Cochrane have to go, but I mean lower management).
I think the biggest problem right now is that the management is currently set up so that nothing can change.
The way this club should be set up is with a general manager who's job is to implement everything that upper management wants done. He would be the one who hires youth coaches, the youth director, and chooses the coach. He could then also fire the coach if the team isn't playing the way he wants the team to play, and isn't getting results.
The problem is that they gave Winter the job of both GM and coach. The only person he's accountable to as a coach is an upper management that really has no understanding of soccer in general. I'd argue that from as a management team, him and his team have done quite well. If he leaves, it's suddenly up to those idiots in upper management again to hire a manager with a similar football philosophy (because that doesn't need to change) as the next manager. If we had had a proper general manager it would be as simple as changing the game day coach. We could probably even just promote De Klerk to head coach if we had a proper gm
Last edited by Ajax TFC; 04-22-2012 at 05:52 PM.
I am new here but...
Has there ever been a concerted effort to get rid of Anselmi?
Maybe a TIFO and a simple chant:
'fire Tom Anselmi' over and over.
He seems to be the common denominator to TFC's failures.
6 coaches, countless players, different 'visions' all overseen by Tommy Boy, why waste our breath on Winter/Players etc when it seems to me that the obvious culprit is Tom.
Thoughts?
Ahhhh Sky - out of the mouths of babes... Tom is the heir apparent to the MLSE conglomerate - the teflon don, so to speak - another way of saying it would be "yes sky you are 100% correct, and yes we are fucked"(pardone moi, mon fraincaise)
Last edited by tiberius; 04-22-2012 at 09:54 PM.
But how much money has he lost MLSE by not getting their teams to the playoffs?
Maybe Rogers and Bell have someone to bring in.
I don't think they will operate with the autonomy they enjoyed under teachers.
Teachers was all about 'safe' Rogers is a risk taking company (going back to Ted Rogers laying a cable to everyone's home and then hoping they would pay for something they already got for free)
Also since they stand to gain MORE from tv coverage of playoffs now (100% cut instead of just a piece) I would hope they start to put a lot more effort into results.
Now also may be the ideal time to start calling for Anselmi's head, if HE becomes the albatross around the neck of MLSE when they are taken over he is gone!
The Teachers were actually more vulnerable to embarrassment - Bell and Rogers are impervious to ridicule and humiliation. Tommy A. will promise and deliver a stream of profits - that is all Bell and Rogers really care about....
Well, I have no idea if this means anything, but the first thing Bell did when they bought CTV a little over a year ago was to fire the CEO and over the next few months a few more senior execs. And CTV was quite profitable. So, it's possible there will be changes at MLSE when the sale is approved.
I guess we can hope!!!
Close, but not quite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Fecan
Yes, officially he retired ( there was a rumour he was taking a job in the UK, did he? I'm not sure). And then his VP and other dvelopment execs were fired (I had a pilot in development when it happened) and Sandra Faire's show was dropped. Maybe Peddie's retirement is the equivalent at MLSE but it is possible that changes will be made.
I would lower the price of beer and food at BMO field.
I'd give everyone bum pats and tell them to buck up.
That's how you build a winning team... copious amounts of bum pats.
Last edited by Stryker; 04-23-2012 at 04:37 PM.
As a west ham supporter who has seen them live a few times this year, this is something that would lead me to giving up my tickets.
I'd bring back Andi Petrillo in the hopes of nailing her.
Like Avila's?
Honestly, I would dismantle the entire front office. I like the academy, I like the idea of what they are trying to do, not that I love or hate the 4-3-3, but you have to have a system of play a philosophy to build an organization.
I would try to look for teams on the level of Atalanta or Chievo ( I would also say Udinese)in Italy, who may are small market teams that build around their academies, and implement tactics which get them results against better oppositions. They also make money from selling the players they develop in order to keep developing players. I would try to build the chore of their FO and manager over to build a team. They would now how to build a team that can compete now and in the future, and in light of the lack of consistency in the league we could be the club in north america. By playing simple winning football.
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