Sunday, April 26, 2009

Just a few weeks in and already I've got the four men I think are most likely to be filing for unemployment before the season is over.

Tom Soehn, DC United: I've been calling for his head for at least a year now, and I hope I'm wrong, but I think he's got about ten games to go before I get it. Soehn is a victim of a little bit of "what's different" reasoning (more on this later), but mostly it's the in-game tactical idiocy which makes him endangered. Take last night, when he watched his team dominate the midfield for 45 minutes, and made two halftime substitutions, including Clyde Simms. Fifteen minutes later, Christian Gomez, who had been their best player on the night, knifing through and around New England's defense and setting up most of the chances, was yanked, leaving DC with no subs remaining for the last half hour. United came away with a draw despite these changes, not because of them.

Soehn is also the league's worst violator of one of the cardinal rules of any sport: play to win, not to not lose. When you're starting Andrew Jacobsen four games into the season after two draws and a quality win, you're clearly more interested in preventing collapse than making use of the talent you have to make some kind of move. Remember when Craig Thompson and Dan Stratford were making starts last year? Remember when United couldn't hold a one-goal lead to save their lives because the word went out immediately to cease all attacks and let the opponent come to them? When you look the list of his predecessors, Arena, Hudson, Rongen and Nowak, it should astonish anyone that Soehn still has a job.

Robert Warzycha, Columbus Crew: What's different about the Crew this year? Their roster isn't noticeably worse, in fact it's basically what won them the double last year. But Sigi Schmid is gone, making huge waves with a team he just assembled, while his top assistant is struggling with the defending champions. It's not a foolproof system, but sometimes asking "what's different" and coming up with the answer "the head coach" can explain a team's sudden fall from glory. See also: Peter Nowak to Tom Soehn, who in his defense won a Supporter's Shield with a roster mostly assembled by others before the downturn began.

Juan Carlos Osorio, Red Bull New York: In most sports, the hot seat is basically the permanent address of any head coach in New York. In MLS you have to actually deserve it, but Osorio is going to feel his cheeks warming soon. More people have started noticing that last year's playoff run was the exception, not the rule, total roster overhauls destroy team chemistry, Jorge Rojas is not the next Javier Morales, Danny Cepero was never that good to begin with, Juan Pablo Angel needs a strike partner, Khano Smith is just slow, and yes, the defense really is as bad as Seattle made it look. Osorio basically gets to take credit for all of this, as he has put more of an imprint on his team than any other coach in the league besides Schmid. Not content to tweak his roster slowly to build chemistry and mold the roster around a style of play, a la Denis Hamlett, Osorio apparently believed all his own hype. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that he also believed the hype of any number of guys who play for him.

Schellas Hyndman, FC Dallas: He may have ten black belts (!), but any team this bad has a coach on the hot seat. I blame the front office more than Hyndman, as their strategy has been totally unfathomable. What was the grand vision they had? Instead of building around a decent if unspectaculare core, they sold Juan Toja, willingly dismantled their own defense, made Kenny Cooper the only viable star, and started picking up all the oldest players they could find. Hyndman shrugs and says he'll do what he can, but if Jeff Cunningham and David Ferreira aren't the answer, the rest of the season will basically consist of DC United's 2008: throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. Note: this strategy never works.

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