Saturday, March 1, 2014

Not To Sound "Ridiculous" But...

We are now inside of 14 days until the opening kickoff of the season and we still have no head coach.  This can't be considered normal or a logical strategy.  I know the FO is focused on finding the right fit who will stay in Colorado a long time, but how much of the current team are they willing to sacrifice for that future?  There's really 4 scenarios I see.

  1. Pablo is the guy and its already settled.  If so, why hasn't it been announced yet?  I can't think of any benefit to locking up Pablo for the job and not announcing it, so that leads me to believe they haven't locked Pablo up yet.  So either they don't know if he's the guy yet, or they haven't gotten him to agree to be the guy.  Neither one of those instill confidence that we've got a guy ready to lead the team into the season in 2 weeks.
  2. Metgod is the guy and this scrubbing of the website has something to do with it.  Why you would try to downplay the presence of the guy who's going to lead the team in the next couple of weeks though?  And again, referring back to #1, if he's the guy why haven't you announced it yet.  If he's the guy, why isn't he taking more of a public leadership role in Tucson?  Right now Pablo is, publicly, the leader of the team at the Desert Diamond Cup which doesn't seem to mesh with the idea that somebody already on the staff has been picked to take over.
  3. The team has picked an outsider for the job.  That's a disaster no matter how you look at it.  Bringing somebody in within the last two weeks before the season who hasn't spent any time with the team yet?  How would that work beyond spending the first half-dozen games of the season watching the new guy figure out his team?  And still going back to #1, if this is the plan then why haven't they announced this coach yet?
  4. They don't have a candidate yet, so they're letting Pablo continue to run the team while they figure it out.  I don't need to explain why that's a bad situation to be in just 2 weeks out.
My guess is that its somewhere between #1 and #2.  They want Pablo or Metgod to be the guy, but there's something not completed yet that's preventing them from announcing it.  What could still be in the way more than 7 weeks after Pareja officially left is beyond me, most teams figure this out by now.  My fear is that its #4, which means we're in a world of hurt.  I highly doubt its #3, but that would be almost as bad.

At this point the FO needs to bite the bullet, get a deal with Pablo or Metgod done, and announce the coach.  Every day they don't is another day that points to them not getting the logistics done, which is a lousy way to enter a season.

BTW, the prior MLS record for hiring a coach was 29 days.  Well its about 6-8 weeks for a number of coaches, but last year Toronto FC announced Ryan Nelsen in January when he was still playing for Blackburn Rovers.  He didn't actually join TFC to start coaching until February 1st though, 29 days before their season kickoff on March 2nd.  I figured that was a good tiebreaker for the record.

3 comments:

Rod said...

Seems like there could be a variant on #2 - Metgod is the guy, but they have visa issues to work through. That would explain the scrubbing of the website and lack of announcement. Perhaps they don't like the idea of minimizing Pablo by saying Metgod is the guy "pending visa" just in case the visa issue can't be worked out.

Or they want Pablo to finish out the pre-season before announcing him. Hard to say....


Jason Maxwell said...

True, but if so, why did it take 7 weeks (it was 7 weeks to the day almost that the website scrubbing happened) to figure it out?

idiovoyager said...

#5

They plan o having Wynalda coach the team via Skype.

#6

They were planing on Vergara firing Cabrera 3 weks into the season and picking him up on the cheap. MLS stepping in has sent the FO into their second tailspin of the offseason.

I honestly think we are looking at #4 and would not be surprised to see us go into the season without a coach. I'd say its Bravo's job but I think he knows he is much safer where he is. Who knows what is going on down in Commerce City these days. Maybe they will close a deal with Robin Fraser when the team gets to New York, but I think he is still holding out for the Jamaica job.