He was a pro athlete for how many years - some of which facing English press? He has more than enough practice.Originally Posted by cwell
He was a pro athlete for how many years - some of which facing English press? He has more than enough practice.
Nelson:
"We want them in as soon as possible," Nelsen explained. "If we have to pick [from] A and B and A is coming in January and B is coming in August, it's January. [TFC would take] a good DP that's going to score x amount of goals over a great DP who will come in August. Look, the team wants to get to the playoffs."
http://www.tsn.ca/soccer/mls/story/?id=435310
Press access is Europe is different than it is here. Often protocol is one player from each team ( usually best performing players on the day)+ managers... That's it. Yes, there is much more scrutiny in the broader press, but in terms of someone throwing a mike in your face after having a bad game.... Unlikely.
Regardless, he's not an effective speaker.
Few people were mentioning Spurs striker Adebayor recently as possible target. Turkish club Besiktas apparently back in for him again, possible Jan move.
The same way everybody else on similar wages manages. You live with a roommate or two (in an area where rents are lower vs right downtown), you limit your discretionary spending, take transit instead of owning a car, shop at bulk stores and sales instead of Metro, ect. Plenty of people do it. I did it in my twenties, as did my most people I knew at that age.
Now, being in a professional sports context would certainly be a bit bizarre - being that you have other around you that are quite wealthy, and there are certain lifstyles that come along with it Assuming you are not trying to raise a family, it's not like it is difficult to live of $35k in this city, you just need to re-align your expectations.
Thanks for that. Too bad TFC have yet to post RN's or Bez's interviews from yesterday online. Hopefully they get to it today.
I think Nelsen is, for lack of a better word, a bit of a meathead. He doesn't think on his feet, and gets led down traps way too easily.
I don't see an issue. I watch Match of the Day every week and EVERY manager will blame the refs and will defend what they do with the club. Nelsen is no different.
Some of them will say boneheaded things like, for example, this week AVB called out the Tottenham fans for bringing a negative atmosphere during the Hull game.
Last edited by PopePouri; 10-29-2013 at 08:40 AM.
Personally, I don't care what Ryan says or doesn't say. Give me a winning team, and you can call all the players over paid Cinderellas.
Mourinho calls his players unskilled children - but he puts out winning teams.
But that fits within their culture, it doesn't fit within our culture. A lot of premiership managers get away with this type of thing because there is a massive talent gap between certain teams and the concept of being screwed over one way or another resonates. And really, what are they supposed to say when they'll beat clubs like Manchester United one time in a hundred? They also have this weird concept of the manager "taking the pressure off the players" through saying inflammatory comments which could be more valid when you have very controlled press access.
Anyway, point being we can't expect this to be England / Europe / anywhere else in the world. People here want a sense of responsibility and a realistic road map to winning, not sob stories.
I don't buy that because managers have said similar things to Nelsen here in the MLS. How many times has Arena blamed something this year? Refs? Schedule? Turf? Managers will be complete homers to their team when they're talking to the press.
RE: living on a lower MLS wage - I'd speculate that TFC provide a basic rent allowance.
Agreed - not all managers are PR people. Most of them are ex-players and the rest are just sports people.
In the heat of the match they don't go up to players are say "Hey Steve, if you could try and make sure you don't loose the ball in the mid so much, that would be great". They say "Smarten the fuck up and keep your fucking head in the game. Next time make sure you don't loose that ball".
This isn't a corporate environment (at least it shouldn't be). It's professional sports environment. It's not about wether or not it happens in Europe/SAmerica etc. This type of intertactin by managers transcends country. It happens everywhere in this working environment and IMO should be happening here.
You see it in the NBA, NFL, NHL. It's not foreign for mangers to go off on players, say inflammatory things about player/team etc.
You would speculate incorrectly. Several of the lower-wage players usually split an apartment, but there's never been a suggestion of other subsidies, which would likely violate the league's collective agreement by being off the books.
(It might happen, particularly with certain underpaid players in Montreal; but officially, no.)
I think he's a Kiwi; my best friend's from there, sort of (half of the family), and they're pretty blunt if they think it's an honest assessment.
Bruce Arena also wins championships, makes the playoffs and has an established reputation.
At some point I will literally go through Nelsen's press quotes every game and post them here. He is by far leading the league in excuses, bad reffing, and "deserving better". He doesn't miss a beat, every game is something
Kiwi meathead?
I thought an MLSE condo unit is loaned to some lower paid TFC players? Honestly, that shouldnt be an off the book offense all thibgs considered.
Maybe. It's an astonishingly conservative nation -- a fair number of people never bothered to replace their old rotary dial phones until forced because it seemed wasteful, he was telling me. But most Kiwis I've met have seemed quite bright and well-spoken, so I doubt it's a cultural institution to be meatheaded. You get more of that in northeastern Australia - or western Canada, lol.Kiwi meathead?
I really want to know the source of this "Montreal players get paid under the table thing"
I totally believe it, but I just want to see it myself sort of.
As others have mentioned, I have no issues with Nelsen's demeanor off the pitch as long as he can lead this team on a positive trajectory moving forward.
A massive part of the job of being a football manager these days, in any country and any league, is media relations. He's not been effective in this part of the job. He's got a good chunk of the fanbase pissed off at him for no real reason. Who knows, maybe referees have it out for him, and are a bit more strict on TFC than other teams? That's the kind of stuff you can work to your advantage if you're smart about it.
Neslen certainly has flaws, like all managers do, but his level of complaining etc is a non starter for me. Tactics, man management, squad rotation, player selction etc are attributes you target when discussing a manger's faults, not how his level of complaining in post game interviews.
BAM! Right here.
Rate him on what he was hired to do - manage a football team.
I'm not sure why people think he's going to come out and say:
"Well XX players played like shit this week that's why we lost"
and then the following week say
"Ya XX players are still playing like shit that's why we lost again. Same shit every week from these guys eh?"
and then the following week say
"XX players are still shit, but we can't seem to get rid of him at the moment so we're just going to have to keep playing him till we can get rid of him"
It's speculation based on circumstance...
Nesta, arguable the best defender of his generation, could have EASILY gone for a big payday in some other league.
Instead he comes to Montreal for a paltry (by his standards) $300k?
It just doesn't add up.
Add to that the fact that he's from Italy, Montreal's owner is of Italian heritage, and that Montreal is well-known as a city that has major issues with mafia connections and curruption...
Voila! - It's assumed something is going on under the table.
Exactly! At the end of the day it's about winning. Problem is that Nelsen hasn't been able to produce a winner - although I understand he hasn't exactly had all the right tools. Now he gets an off-season plus a ton of cash, so starting March there will be no more excuses. We can't go through another season full of excuses. Refs are bad - but that applies to everyone. Time to win some games!
Losing. It's easy to blame the manager, no matter the circumstances.
As someone of Sicilian heritage (mother), I take serious offense to this generalization / speculation. Saputo has never been tied to the Rizzuto crime family, or any other, and those bad apples shouldn't paint the picture for a whole community.
There are other ways MLS salaries can be reduced, like allocation. On top of that, none of us have any clue as to what Nesta's options truly were at the time of signing or what salary he was looking for. It's all assumptions.
Like mentioned previously, Nelsen has a certain personality; whether cultural or learned from being a pro for a bunch of years in MLS and the EPL, the guy handles the media and general scrutiny of the team by deflecting blame to luck and praising effort by a team whom he is well aware is simply is not good enough to compete with the better teams of the league. It's fair to criticize his lamentations as simplistic and self-serving, but the question is, what is the alternative? He simply does not throw players under the bus. We do not know what is said behind closed doors, what he does after a player had a howler of a game and what he does at practice to ensure the player learns from his mistakes - please explain to me how handling of the media is in any way a reflection of an athlete's ability or performance - i would extend that arguement to coaching as well
There is no motivation for a coach to tell you what he really feels - you can say he owes it to us as fans, but if honesty is detrimental to what he hopes to accomplish or does his team a disservice somehow, why would he choose to show true colours?
The hope is that he may be a little more forthcoming once he fields a team he has full confidence in.
Last edited by Red I; 10-29-2013 at 11:55 AM.
Maybe he needs to break out the thesaurus haha, gets a little annoying hearing the same thing every week.
Losing is part of it, but people talk more about his deflection of blame for the losing than the losing itself. Or other issues, like going after Koevermans yesterday, his treatment of Eckersley, telling David Miller off, etc etc. Those are all in his control if he's smarter about it. Being media savvy absolutely is part of the manager job in football, and he should be judged on it.
This whole topic probably should be in his annual rating, not in player movement.
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