Thanks to Kristin Knowles pointing his website out
https://www.javierfootball.com/index.html
All stuff seems prior to his hiring this year but....he seems to have ideas.
Thanks to Kristin Knowles pointing his website out
https://www.javierfootball.com/index.html
All stuff seems prior to his hiring this year but....he seems to have ideas.
Interesting stuff. I am more than willing to give him a chance. Let's hope he seizes the opportunity and we can avoid searching for another coach.
Principles, point 8:
8. AVOID TOO MUCH MOVEMENT OF THE PLAYERS BY RESPECTING THEIR TACTICAL POSITION.
I like it. If he doesn’t already have PTSD from his old boss I think this is a good place to start.
He lists his top 5 formations as:
1. 4-3-3
2. 4-2-3-1
3. 4-4-2
4. 4-4-2 (diamond)
5. 4-2-4
Some quick facts from the TFC site. A solid resume, maybe he can step up and be the main man?
- Assistant coach with New York City FC, where he spent four seasons (2016-20).
- Perez spent four years with US Soccer, serving as head coach of the U-18 Men’s National Team and assistant coach with both the U.S. Men’s National Team and U.S. U-20 Men’s National Team.
- Part of the senior men’s national team’s staff at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the U-20 squad at the 2015 U-20 FIFA World Cup in New Zealand.
- Before coming to the US in 2007, Perez spent six years at Real Madrid as a head coach for youth teams from U-9 to U-19 at the club’s foundation development center (2001-2007)
- Perez holds his UEFA Pro License, UEFA “A” License and a Ph.D. in Sports Science from Universidad De Leon in Spain
https://www.torontofc.ca/news/javier...ssistant-coach
Other than not having head coaching experience at the senior level, Perez seems like exactly who TFC should have hired at the outset. Even without that, he has head coached a number of youth teams. Seems like the perfect steward for the team.
There's a number of videos on Youtube from his time with the US U-18 team. Nothing earth shattering, but no major concerns either: https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...r+perez+MNT+US
I have two mottos that I live by: look before you leap, and he who hesitates is lost.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
Much more confident in him now that it seems he has ideas that aren't Armas-ball related.
Frankly I think this season is a wash now but at least having him for at least a few games should make us respectable again
He appears to have co-authored the U.S. soccer development curriculum with Claudio Reyna:
https://www.slideshare.net/jafetwull...ing-curriculum
infinitely more qualified than armas and seems to have lots of good ideas.
hopefully can get us going again
He has nothing to lose. If the team continues a downward trend, they were demoralized from Armas and I did what I could. If he manages to turn it around, then the "interim" tag gets removed. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain, may as well go balls to the wall
Well, maybe I am too rushed in my opinion, but just by looking through his resume and his personal website, this guy seems a LOT more qualified to coach TFC than Armas was. Not even close...
I wish him luck and for this year to be an important forever upward tick in his coaching career!
He comes in at a very bad point in time for TFC and a very lucky point in time for him, because given all the circumstances, he has absolutely nothing to lose, but everything to gain.
Last edited by PizzaEatingYeti; 07-05-2021 at 04:59 AM.
I would be really careful ascribing any “symbolic” value to this website.
It's a nice, well organized collection of sensible soccer beliefs ... and fifty people here could do something similar given time and motive.
Hiring done right is really all about in depth conversation with previous colleagues, employees, employers. It is about asking really good questions and listening really carefully, because people mostly hide their criticisms, or are not totally straightforward about them. (People default to bromides when discussing ex colleagues 90% of the time, in my experience.)
It is about having deep networks, and then using them right - knowing who to trust, and how much to trust them. It is attribution analysis (who was really responsible for a particular success or failure?). It is knowing what you don't know. It is a lot of work (and this seems to me to be exactly where Manning/Curtis blew it with Armas and elsewhere).
Hiring managers is a truly elite skill. It is harder than evaluating players. Every candidate has a plan, is great at interviewing. Will tell you exactly how they will fix everything. There is no film.
We are not positioned to succeed from the outside in evaluating new hires. This is what they pay Manning/Curtis a lot of money for.
It's all on Manning/Curtis.
Last edited by ensco; 07-05-2021 at 06:16 AM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
I am with ensco on this - to me this is an introduction indicating what the man might be like.
I would point out that he came either
because Armas really wanted to work with him & sought him out as his second
or
because he was always the fall back guy in case Armas didn't work out
I would put this down as #2 and as such give Curtis/Manning a little credit for at least having an interim in place.
Doesn't mean he can't be crud & unlikely to mean Wednesday night is anything but a paddlin.....but I'll take this as a good start
I like that he is interim, and I am rooting for him but … let's be clear-eyed about a couple of things.
We don’t have any idea of how the players see him. Putting aside the question of who brought him here and why, this isn’t Robin Fraser stepping in.
This isn’t the right team/league to get your first job as a head man. He got passed over at NYCFC for this exact reason I assume…
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
It’s a bit odd to me that he’s been very involved in the game, but mostly as an assistant or more of a strategy level. He’s had a lot of time to move up but hasn’t until now. Wondering if he’s lacking the people skills? Wish him all the best, but as with anyone the proof will be in the results.
The thing I remember being taught was "let the ball do the running, save your running energy to evade and surpass"
I get the high press thing, but TFC isn't built for that. That is not our clubs style of play. Our identity is more possession and methodical passing and movement. That is what Vanney established and that is what we should build on.
Closing down the opponents with the ball is something we should be doing anyways, but not chasing players down in order to do it. If we are setup properly, it should only take a few steps to close someone down. Not 20 yard sprints like we were doing under Armas
His strategy #6 about creating numerical advantage is very similar to Vanney, that's using positioning to create "overload" situations and is part of intelligent footballing as espoused by more tactical coaches like Pep Guardiola. Our club should be very familiar with this type of strategy so it should be a quick relearn.
I agree. I made the point in another thread too, if you look at the history of Soccer in Canada and especially the GTA, you’ll face a pretty sceptical eye from some quarters if you’re playing a highly athletic game without a good element of skill.
Historically, for a lot of the ex-pat communities, a skilled, more possession-based game was their way. And they always felt overlooked / discriminated against by the CSA /OSA which ran a pretty dysfunctional setup and largely assessed players based on their athletic abilities. You dump a skilled game for a more athletic approach and that’s raising people’s ire. The fact it failed this time, again, just leaves one more reference point in people’s mind that says possession + skill > athleticism
Of course, a press at the highest level requires both athleticism and skill and it’s not bad to watch. But it’s hard to do that in MLS given the talent level.
I think it’s a no brainer that we should stick with what Vanney started, keep a possession based style, and tweak it very slightly when needed. It’s just the best fit.
Curtis and Armas are dopes for taking something that worked and trying to change it for their own preferences. If we had a functional board, that never would have been allowed in the first place.
When i was growing up, English and Scottish football approaches were rampant everywhere I looked.
"Kick and run", hockey equivalent would be "dump and chase", was what everyone seemed to be pushing.
The Italian clubs I encountered were doing the opposite, which is where I learned the more methodical approach.
The Spanish clubs I encountered were playing more Central American style football which I hated. It was basically run with the ball as far as you can go, quickly recover if the ball is lost and continue the pattern. Very selfish approach and lacked any sort of real tactical insight.
Spot on! MLS doesn't have a lot of players that have both skill and athleticism. It's one or the other. The high press was two guys (armas and Curtis) thinking too big.
Everyone is hating on Manning for letting it happen, but I don't. He trusted Curtis the to do something that he felt would work. That is what any good leader would do. He quickly ended it once he saw it wasn't going the right way.
In the presser Manning kept referring to "My Teams" when referring to projects he's be a part of in the past? "This TFC team wasn't progressing how MY TEAMS that have won championships did in the past"
A shitty leader would've let it go on and given it time to mature. Manning isn't an idiot like others believe. He knows what it takes to win.
Another major component for a manager is the ... man management. Can he deal with the egos that an elite locker room brings? Can he deal with a big personality like a Jozy Altidore? He's never played at a professional level, so he's never had those real heated "man-to-man" interactions before. He's never had those hard 1on1 conversations with players.
I see this guy as a caretaker only. Let's hope the players are willing to go along with it until we can find a proper manager.
You'd think at this point TFC would be an ideal project for someone to take on. With that being said, the MLS coaching pool is tiny and most of the big guns are taken.
MLS has multiple teams that can high press effectively. The difference is these teams are young and very athletic, which we really aren't at the moment
I try not to think of the historical rift as English vs Continental as much as it was old-school dysfunctional administrators vs. recent upstarts.
But the low-skill / preference for athleticism thing is very real. I experienced that myself as a player and later as a coach. I had a TD tell me if he had one more cut to make he would released my best player, cause he was undersized and didn’t really get stuck in often. Ended the year as the leading scorer and basically played his way into a better club than the one I was managing.