Crew v. Rapids*: Comparison After Week 1 (Plus, thoughts on the Crew’s win and word of a signing)

(* This project really needs a name – suggestions are 105% welcome.  A five-minute brainstorm yielded “Project Crewpid,” but I think something better is possible.)

I scanned this great sketch of Alejandro Moreno (well…I liked it) and was prepared to post that over a report on the Columbus Crew’s opening day win over Toronto FC.  Turns out I saved the scan as the wrong kind of file, I had too much shit to do yesterday, and there was that weird hangover that hurt my body less than my…my soul, I guess.  So, yeah, the Crew won their opener on the back of goals by Adam Moffat and Alejandro Moreno.  Moffat was most people’s man of the match, which is the point of the leading anecdote: I could draw a decent caricature of Moreno, but couldn’t swing Moffat – so, there you go, Moreno becomes my man of the match.

As for the game itself, it was a good enough win and I liked what I saw generally (though, admittedly, squinting through one eye by the end; where there’s a hangover in the morning, there was a drunk the night before – all y’all know how this works).  And that’s the weird thing – and “the weird” extends to the commentary several of this week’s games: yeah, the Crew won their opener – which seems a rare event, even if may not be (I don’t know) – but keeping the clean sheet required no mean exertion from Will Hesmer.  What I’m getting at, here, is that this was a nice win, but nothing more – so when I see something like where Goal.com placed the Crew in their power rankings, I wonder how I saw so much less than they did.

Crew TSII: More Tufts of Grass to Trip Over in Zurawski Chase & More

Soccer America’s Ridge Mahoney turned his pre-season maneuver series to the Columbus Crew this morning. While the piece focused on Guillermo Barros Schelotto – who seems both a wily one and happy to be in Columbus – some of what happened with the Argentine legend impacts the Crew’s surprisingly tricky pursuit of Celtic FC’s Polish forward, Maciej Zurawski.

Beyond discussing how the Crew plan to play Schelotto in their offensive scheme for 2008, Mahoney’s piece mentions that the team bumped his pay – quite probably by way of thanking him for 2007 and sweetening him on staying in Ohio (or bribing him to do so; interpretations can be tricky). The key details:

“Columbus doesn’t seem willing to pay DP prices for Zurawski, and with some allocation money being paid to Schelotto, might not have the funds necessary to buy out Zurawski’s contract and offer him an acceptable salary….Celtic had slapped a transfer price of $1 million on him and he’s also attracted offers from Germany, but after tomorrow those doors will close, so it may behoove the Crew to sit tight.”

Editorial Business: “TSII” Posts for Rapids, Crew

With the calendar turning from January to February tomorrow – which, if you adopt a really broad definition of time, puts the kickoff to the 2008 Major League Soccer (MLS) season just one month away – now seems the time to organize myself for what’s ahead. And this all needs to fit within the scheme I chose for the year – e.g. following, and that verb is crucial, the Columbus Crew and the Colorado Rapids.

To refresh some memories, and to introduce the concept to anyone new, I’ve adopted the Crew and Rapids for 2008. The unifying theme in this little study is to observe these two clubs – both MLS originals that, for some time now, have seemed weak at best, marginally competent at worst – as they try to get back to winning ways. A couple details about each club make for significant sub-plots, which lends subtle complexity to stories that seem similar on the surface. To give an example, one gets the feeling the Crew would sack Sigi Schmid if results in 2008 don’t come early while, based on the past year, one really wonders how many puppies Rapids Coach Fernando Clavijo would have to kill before losing his job.

The central effort in following those teams will be the most straightforward: watching their games, as many as I can; and when I can’t see the games – as I suspect will happen in preseason in particular – I’ll have to read match reports (lord help me). But this post is intended to introduce and explain the secondary piece in this project: “This Shit Is Important” Reports, or TSII Reports.

I have a small number of sites I visit for news on both clubs (may as well plug them: Covering the Crew; Soccer by Ives (which, for some reason, does well with Crew news); FC Rocky; The Colorado Rapids Offside (when it’s operating); Black Panther: A Soccer Blog; Rapids Class VI; and View from the Couch. I’ll use those to keep current on team news, but I won’t pass on everything I read – which is where the TSII distinction comes in.

As I follow these teams, I’m mainly interested in things that effect on-field performance – e.g. the fitness and well-being of the players, what the teams are doing tactically, their respective forms, how they stack up against their conferences, etc. But things like what’s going on with each clubs’ supporters’ groups; front office personnel movement; player interviews or their happy accomplishments (e.g. Bouna Coundoul getting the nod for Senegal): I’ll generally ignore that….well, to the point where I can report open fan revolts against – oh, I don’t know – Fernando Clavijo, which has the potential to unsettle the on-field dynamics. In other words, the first category falls under the TSII label, at least in my view, while the second piece does not.

So, if you’re popping by for Crew and/or Rapids news, look for the “Crew TSII” or “Rapids TSII” labels. As for match reports, they’ll be pretty obvious – e.g. “Crew 0-0 Red Bull New York: Another Fucking Draw?” After that, regular service will continue. Hope this works for everyone…and me. And you’ll be seeing the first edition of one of these – a report on the Crew as it happens – pretty soon.

Columbus & Colorado: Two Founding Teams on the Skids

OK, I think I’ve settled on my two teams for 2008 as well as a proper theme to unite them…beyond the fact they both hail from places that start with the letter “C”.

The teams will be the Columbus Crew and the Colorado Rapids. While this will mostly involve watching them at every chance I get once the season starts*, I’ll also pay more attention to both teams’ 2008 draft, their signings, etc. For now, though, there’s no time like the present to start reading up.

MLSnet.com’s Columbus Crew Season Review
MLSnet’com’s 5 Big Questions for Columbus
MLSnet.com’s Colorado Rapids Season Review
MLSnet.com’s 5 Big Questions for Colorado

As for the theme, it’s two-fold: part one is a coach’s death-watch for both Colorado’s “10 Lives” Fernando Clavijo and Sigi “He Ate the Damn Pie Store” Schmid; OK, and where Clavijo is concerned, I have to admit to a modest longing for justice.  Part two comes with seeing which of these MLS originals will re-join respectable post-season company at the end of 2008 – a notion that assumes one of them will.  I know I’d put my money on Columbus today, but things could change abruptly if, say, Colorado drafts well and dumps “10 Lives” Fernando early – or, against all that is holy, he actually does a good job with the team in ’08 – while Columbus holds onto Schmid through August and loses Guillermo Barros Schelotto by June or July.

Anyway, the basic story is to see which team can avoid getting overtaken by the several recent and incoming expansion teams for the (thankfully) ever-dwindling supply of post-season spots. For what it’s worth, I think this story takes on a kind of urgency amid talk of Major League Soccer (MLS) expanding to 18 teams by 2010; if these teams keep falling behind one has to wonder how they’ll catch up.

One final note: I’m pretty stocked up on resources for the Colorado Rapids (Rocky Mountain News, FC Rocky and hard-copy; The Denver Post; Class IV; Black Panther, etc.) and I do all right with the Columbus Crew (Columbus Dispatch; Hunt Park Insider; some Columbus-area weekly, etc.), but I’d be obliged to anyone who can pass on further resources (and, please, don’t make me go to BigSoccer…so much bullshit to wade through…).

(* All of this is 100% contingent on MLSnet.com again offering MLSlive.tv. Failing that, this whole “two-team” project will fail and I’ll just watch and comment on whatever MLS deems fit for national broadcast.)

Columbus Crew 2007 Review: Mid-Summer Mirage

Columbus Crew
Record (W-L-T): 9-11-10; 39 GF; 44 GA
Source Material: Schedule/match reports; roster

Overview
Streaks are part of the game. They happen for a lot of reasons – a missing player, bad vibes begetting more bad vibes, etc. And it’s worth suggesting upfront that “bad vibes” seem to have a special attachment to the Columbus Crew, a team that with 2007 missed its third consecutive Major League Soccer (MLS) post-season. Still, for a couple mid-summer months, the Columbus had good reason to believe they would break this jinx.

That brings the discussion back to streaks: Columbus experienced something closer “spells” in 2007. For two happy months – June and July, as it happened – the Crew rose to within one point of DC United for the Eastern Conference lead. Had the players looked down from that mid-summer peak – a little Midwestern Eden, if you will – they would have sighted two blighted valleys extending on either side, where bitter losses followed throw-away draws. Consider this: after picking up a gutsy, “hell-of-a” draw against the New England Revolution on June 16, the Crew went 4-1-1 – that could be 5-1-1 if you count the win over Toronto FC after the All-Star Break. Before this happy period, however, they cooked up a stinking 1-4-6. After, they passed a messy and painful 1-6-3, before wrapping up the season with two useless wins (over good teams…go figure).

Call it a what-the-hell kind of mystery – and, here, memory plays a role. It seemed like a lot of talk during the late summer slump rested on the view that all hope centered on a healthy Guillermo Barros Schelotto. Apparently, such stories grew larger than reality because a review of the record shows Schelotto missed only the month of September. While that certainly didn’t help, it’s worth pointing out that the Argentine played every game in the Crew’s crappy August.

DS, 10.31: Coaching Theory, Playoff Theory + Playoff Strategery

First of all, Happy Halloween. From what my wife tells me, I’m taking the kids trick-or-treating as a nun, so, yeah, I kinda have to get drunk. Dang it.

Oh, and I think I’ve got to get over shoving every subject under discussion into the title; that’s what tags are for, right? This frees me up to reuse the title “Daily Sweeper,” which, I believe anyway, implies a grab-bag of topics. Are we in agreement? Disagreement? Are you hungry too? I’m craving grease like a hungover pregnant lady…perhaps even a nun. Crap…where am I? Oh yeah.

– Apart from revealing himself to be a nice fella (through his reluctance to ask hunted coaches about their job security), USSoccerplayas.com Ian Plenderleith closed his column on La Vida Coacha with an interesting theory as to why a guy like, say, Sigi Schmid still has a job:

“The Crew is probably not sticking with Schmid because they’re in love with his coaching methods, but because there’s no one else around that could take his place. That’s not the best reason to retain a coach, but if you’re a club executive and the list of alternatives begins with, say, Bob Gansler at the top, you’ve probably no choice but to either keep the man you have, or submit to a prolonged bout of weeping.”

It’s an interesting thought. And it could explain why Frank Yallop feels more optimistic about continuing his mortgage payments in Southern California (wade past all the Chivas’ stuff; it’s in there), or why, in spite of multiple columns criticizing his competence and enthusiasm for his job, Bruce Arena still wears that, um…Tomcat Smirk (trying to come up with a phrase analogous to Chesire Smile, but one that actually matches The Bruce’s permanent expression).

On the other hand, I don’t see the limits to the coaching pool Plenderleith sees in the paragraph that follows the one above. A pool exists between former players and even coaches “tainted” by the college game. None of these will be sure-shots by any means, but the conceptual knowledge will be there. When it comes to managing players’ egos, training them well (enough), and fielding the right players in the right places, a fella will either have it or he won’t; a number of these guys will tank, naturally, but how’s that so different from the “name” guy already pulling the team down into the bowl with them? What the hell, right? Roll the dice. It’s a gamble, but you can’t win if you don’t play.

UPDATE: Longshoe makes this same point only better over on Who Ate All the Cupcakes.  It’s worth checking out.

DS, 10.16: US v. Swiss, Rosters and Previews; Onstad: Am I Crazy?; Ives Eyes Some Scalps

– Tomorrow’s friendly against Switzerland sucks up ever more copy and ether as we get closer to it. Among the highlights: Jeff Carlisle’s preview for ESPN, because it contains good stuff on the Swiss…of whom I’m more or less ignorant; USSoccerplayers.com answers the inevitable “Who’s that now?” about four new faces on the U.S. roster; and Ives Galarcep unrolled his regular post on who Bob Bradley should start…so, check out the (updated) roster and see what you think. Speaking for myself, I don’t care who we start so long as we field an experimental line-up; the obvious adjunct to that is that I don’t care so much if we lose either. I just want to sound our depth a little bit; we’ve got two years to mold a roster – and before you point out that World Cup qualifying starts well before then, let me me just say, dude, it’s CONCACAF and there are 3 1/2 spots up for grabs…we’ll make it.

– After posting an angry rant against all things Pat Onstad this morning, I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m the only one who saw what I saw. So, what did I see? Pat Onstad watching Yura Movsisyan out of one corner of his eye while RSL players cleared the area; when Movsisyan got close, Onstad stopped, stood in his way, and then collapsed when the Armenian shoved him; that’s when Onstad bolted up, eyed the ref, then flailed his arms wildly as two Houston players barged into Movsisyan. In other words, that’s all Onstad in my book. But here are excerpts on the incident from two Salt Lake City papers:

(Deseret News) “Two minutes later RSL was reduced to 10 men as well when Yura Movsisyan was sent off for apparently trying to take a swing at Houston keeper Pat Onstad.”

(Salt Lake Tribune) “But Beckerman couldn’t convert the ensuing free kick – Houston’s Richard Mulrooney cleared it from the left post – and moments later, RSL’s Yura Movsisyan appeared to throw a punch at Dynamo goalkeeper Pat Onstad after a scramble in front of the goal. At some point amid the pushing and shoving that ensued, Onstad was knocked to the ground, and an infuriated Movsisyan had to be restrained by his teammates.”

Now, I’ll grant that Movsisyan had to be restrained, but he was probably incensed about getting attacked by Houston players after Onstad played him as the chump. Well, I’ll have to review the video later today when I have a machine that groks MLSnet.com’s feed.

Whoops. One more thing: the pre-game ceremony for Jason Kreis and Eddie Pope was a really nice touch. Both men seem the decent sort to me and I wish ’em both the best.

– Getting back to Mr. Galarcep, he’s doing a little reputation busting over on Soccer by Ives, posing two career-defining questions in one day: 1) is Denilson a bust? 2) should Sigi Schmid keep his job? Answers:

1) Yes. The Brazilian suffers horrible from comparison to young American Arturo Alvarez, so, yeah, do the math and swap their salaries.

2) How long has Schmid been in Columbus? Two years. OK. While this is by no means an easy call, I’m with Ives: let Schmid stick around. I think they’re a better team to watch than in 2006 and expect more in 2007, now that I’ve decided to be a Crew fan…we’ll see how long that lasts.

Daily Sweeper, 10.9: Playoff Omens & Predictions; LandyCakes; MLS’ Best Youth Set-Up

By way of continuing my tradition of burying the lead, I think I’ll lead with something outside the title…

– The Columbus Dispatch, in the course of dissecting the corpse of the Columbus Crew’s season, gets some inside dish that suggests Sigi Schmid and his belly will stick around for another year. So, Crew fans (assuming any visit this site), any thoughts on this one?

– Why this came up again, I’ll never know; maybe we can credit/blame (depending on what you think) the reserved and tasteful kiss Andrea Canales’ planted on Landon Donovan for ESPN’s site. Whatever started it, people are picking up on it. If you want to know what I think, check out the comment I left on the post Laurie wrote for the LA Offside; and, naturally, Laurie’s thoughts are well worth the time. But I have to credit Nick Green’s 100 Percent Soccer for the best post on the recent Donovan-chatter: he looks at how the Galaxy rate him (through the eyes and, naturally, the mouth of Alexi Lalas), but he also asks the ever-relevant “Europe” question. I found Donovan’s answer surprising and unsurprising all at once.

– The best youth system in MLS: Sideline View’s Luis Bueno makes the case for Chivas USA’s. Well, OK then.

– Finally, the playoffs: people are getting serious about this stuff, whether it’s the Chicago Tribune’s Luis Arroyave making predictions about future games and post-season match-ups or Luis Bueno from Sideline Views reinventing the abacus to tell us who clinches what by myriad results and combinations of results. (I’ve never had the patience for this kind of thing and will thus nod dumbly and smile.)

But the scariest thing I read today was this (and that came from here):

“After five months of injuries, poor play and unfulfilled expectations, the Galaxy’s late surge has put it in a position that only weeks ago seemed preposterous: They’re masters of their own fate.“

Son of a BITCH!!

At least that’s what I barked at my computer before Ives Galarcep brought me the perspective I needed to return to my happy place:

“That just might be enough to get the Beckham hype machine rolling again, only this time the added attention would be focusing on the MLS playoffs, where the league’s best teams and players would be on display.”

And there you have it, the Devil offering a deal: is the risk of LA repeating the Act of Extreme Asshole-ism* worth the exposure a Beckham-iffied Galaxy would bring to the MLS playoffs and, yes, the (formerly) better teams they would face therein? I’ll only say this: the Devil is one tricky motherfucker. (OK, OK, I’ll answer – put away the screws: Yes! Yes! I’ll take the publicity. God help me! I feel so dirty!)

* “The Act of Extreme Asshole-ism” refers to LA scraping into the 2005 playoffs as the 8th seed and going on to win MLS Cup; this rendered the good work many teams put in over the regular season – back when LA was sucking eggs – irrelevant to the point of mockery.

MLS Coaches’ Listings (e.g. Endangered, Threatened, etc.)

With it looking a whole lot like no current head coach in Major League Soccer (MLS) will lose their job by the end of the year, now seems a good time to look at who might suffer the fatal blow after the(ir respective team’s) season ends. Coming after the season, this is less a “hot seat” phenomenon than a coup de grace for a career that sloughed its mortal coil at some point in the season. The transitional nature of the off-season, when re-tooling represents a norm of sorts, might even expand the pool of candidates for the sack. For what it’s worth, I think it should; if I worked a front office, I’d certainly mull over a new direction – especially if an early exit from, or missing the playoffs altogether, afforded a little more time for such considerations.

Before getting into potential candidates for “spending more time with their families,” I’ll start by listing the coaches whose tenures seem safe: Tom Soehn (DC United); Dominic Kinnear (Houston Dynamo); Preki (Chivas USA); Juan Carlos Osorio (Chicago Fire); Bruce Arena (Red Bull New York); Jason Kreis (Real Salt Lake). Yeah, I know: Jason Kreis? I’m fairly confident he’ll get more time – e.g. one year at least to build his team – before being judged against his record. As for the rest, call those 100%, dead certain. (DISCLAIMER: barring changes in health (e.g. heart attack), lifestyle (e.g. becoming trans-gender), social sanity (e.g. saying in a public space “’Minority A’ makes me uncomfortable.”)

By now, you may picked up on some curious omissions from the above. As I see it, the realm of possibility should be pretty roomy (though, clearly, not roomy enough to include Kreis). Put another way, five games to go (give or take) means changes in circumstance remain relevant.

With that in mind, I have listed the remaining MLS coaches below flagging each as either “watch-list,” “threatened,” or “endangered” (can’t imagine the inspiration for that one). In the comments, I’ll get to details like how a given coach can move from the watch-list to threatened status and why I think this coach or that is endangered. And, so, going from the least at-risk population to the most: