Life After Smith, Day One

Well the first 24 hours after the Smith announcement has brought some interesting fall out.

• Nick Thomas tweeted that Paul Bravo is not a candidate for the job.
• The Rapids asked for, and were denied, permission from the Portland Timbers to speak to John Spencer about the job.
• ESPN's Jeff Carlisle dug into the story a bit to find out what the real issues were.

I never thought Bravo was going to be a candidate, and I knew the Timbers wouldn't allow the Rapids to take a run at Spencer.

The most interesting story was the ESPN article. Some good information in there. The part about the CMO being involved in roster decisions is odd. I can understand that if they were discussing the potential return of signing a big-name DP player, because you want to consider extra ticket sales, sponsorships, jersey sales, etc. when you sign a player like that. I don't know why a CMO would be involved in deciding to sign Ababio or Comminges though.

One quote from Smith that I want to highlight:

Not once did I ever come into conflict about wanting a designated player or needing more money, either personally or in terms of support

Given this can we put the whole "KSE didn't give Smith the money he needed for players" meme behind us? Apparently Smith doesn't think money was an issue.

In the long run it appears Smith wanted final say on roster decisions, and Plush (and/or Bravo) wanted it to be more of a collaborative effort. In the end that's a hard gap to bridge and I'm not surprised that the parties went their separate ways.