Yallop should be next

Tom Soehn has finally been fired.

Correction.

Tom Soehn has finally been "fired". Apparently even he had to point out to his superiors what a disaster he was. It was one of the weirdest terminations of a head coaching tenure I've ever seen. But whatever, the decision was effectively taken out of Kevin Payne and Dave Kasper's hands. All signs point to the head coaching job going to someone unexciting and not on the level of Peter Nowak.

So with my favorite scratching post gone, and my fire hydrant (Juan Carlos Osorio) gone too, who am I going to complain about next? How about San Jose's Frank Yallop? If Soehn was MLS' worst in-game tactician (and he was), Yallop has got to be its worst judge of talent. One wonders sometimes which league he thinks he's coaching in. General Manager John Doyle is either still gamely cleaning up after Yallop's disastrous expansion draft, or gets paid by the trade. Either way, I haven't seen a less coherent personnel strategy since the gory days of the Golden State Warriors up the road. Even Soehn had to deal with a brutal multi-competition schedule and a rash of injuries.

Forget the players Yallop puts on the field, just look at the players that have left San Jose since the rebirth of the franchise. Nick Garcia, Cam Weaver, Kei Kamara... see a pattern here? These are all guys who were supposed to be in San Jose's core, but failed in those roles and wound up being effective role-players elsewhere. Garcia was brought over for the number one overall draft pick that wound up being Chance Myers, and doesn't San Jose wish they had him around right now! Kamara came over in a trade for the expansion-drafted Brian Carroll, who has been way better in defensive midfield in Columbus than anyone has in San Jose.

Yallop was behind on all of those early moves, and is simply phenomenal at getting no return on any investment he makes. By all accounts the players love him, but I have a feeling they'd love a playoff chase more. And in the case of a few (Brandon McDonald?), they clearly love him in part because he's the only coach in the league that would ever send them out there in the starting eleven.

This team needs defense, sure. But what it really needs are professionalism, resolve, and chemistry, or they will continue to watch Alvarez weave around defenders, Johnson slice deftly into the box, and the team lose the game 3-1.