Clavijo - Clueless

Class VI has posted their questions with Clavijo after the loss in Toronto. His responses make him see even more clueless than normal.

(On why he didn't start Gomez)

"I was certain that Christian Gomez would help us close the game down after going a goal up early on the game, missing the chances we had early on changed some of the outcome of our plans. Having a lot of young players on the field you open yourself for mistakes and inconsistency."

So the master plan was to somehow get a goal without Gomez on the field, then throw him on to kill the game? Really?

(On Zambrano's play in his first MLS start)

"I felt that Zambrano did very well for his first game, and was punished in his mistake"

The defender you threw into the fire gave up at least one goal, but somehow played "very well".

(On why the Rapids don't show up in the first half)

"We are moving into a second pace in our season in which young players need to produce every game, the learning curve is over, and results are a must"

Or you could, you know, start the veterans instead of the young players if you want more consistency. Just a thought

(From a question about addressing concerns through player acquisition)

"We need to be realistic here, we are not going to address any foreign player because we do not have allocation money or designated player slot, so we can only dream."

Wait, I thought making Gomez our DP (essentially) was supposed to solve the problems. Now he;s complaining we don't have a DP? And what did we spend our allocation money on?

"I believe that the biggest factor we need to address today is keeping our players in town and healthy, Bouna with national team but has not play one minute Pablo out with an injury in last US game vs. ??? Ihemelu missing the game vs. Toronto to play for Canada and later finding out that he may not be eligible to play for Canada,"

I'll give him the point on Ihemelu, but he really couldn't come up with Barbados as the opponent for the Nats on Sunday? A head coach in MLS is so disinterested in the U.S. team that he forgets who we're playing in a World Cup Qualifier? He's complaining that Pablo was gone with the Nats, something he's been doing for longer than Clavijo's been in Colorado? Yeah, Bouna's been riding the bench but considering he's come from a low draft pick out of college to the backup National Team goalkeeper for his country that's actually a positive for the Rapids.

So in Clavijo's world, if the rookies had played like veterans, except for the veterans that were with National Teams had also played and our lineup of 6 defenders and 4 attackers had scored a goal with the 2006 MVP sitting on the bench then we would have been fine. Really, what could have gone wrong with that plan?