By Graig Carbino - ALBANY, NY (Feb 25, 2008) USSoccerPlayers -- Legendary Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz once said “coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.” A bit harsh? Maybe, but in today’s world of high stakes, high priced college and professional sports it is probably just about right.
With the amount of money that is put into - and then extracted out of - sports around the World, it’s hardly surprising that owners would have a quick trigger finger. Whether or not hastily firing a coach actually works to improve a team probably has more to do with the actual players involved and available than it does the coach.
The notion of firing the coach instead of the whole team has been questioned more times to even think about at this point. We all get that you can’t fire a whole team. It’s easier to get rid of one person and hope for a quick turnaround than to cut twenty sum odd players, etc. The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League and the Suns of the National Basketball Association are the latest teams to try this strategy on for size. We’ll see how it works.
Select squads like National Teams have there own problems. Yes, you can call in just about anybody with a passport, but that doesn't mean you necessarily have all the right pieces.
Bruce Arena’s tenure with the US program was as mixed bag as you get. He started out with people questioning whether the US could advance with a domestic coach. Winning calmed people down, and overseeing the high water mark for the modern history of the US National Team gave him all the credibility he should've needed.
Instead, he ran into that standard coaching problem the minute the results turned. The 2006 Cup campaign didn’t quite go as planned and when the US team returned home without making it out of the opening round you just knew Arena was doomed.
Federation head honcho Sunil Gulati never really seemed to fully warm to Arena. The airport meeting that decided Arena's fate was bizarre even by American soccer standards. It was hard not to get the impression that what he really wanted was a foreign heavy hitter that could take this team over the top.
Enter Jurgen Klinsmann. It appeared that the current Bayern Munich boss was in line to take over the US team until negotiations apparently stalled due to “total control” issues. Bob Bradley stepped in and led the team on an interim basis while Gulati and the Federation pondered their next move.
Talk about not exactly being setup for success. Not only are you the one who’s job rests directly on the team’s success. Now you are appointed on a trial basis to see if you can actually do it. Lose a game or two early and you might have the rug pulled out before you even truly step out onto the dance floor.
Fortunately for Bradley, his team simply did not lose early in his tenure. They won the 2007 Gold Cup, refuse to lose to archrivals Mexico, and seem well on their way to 2010 in South Africa. So far so good for coach Bradley.
That neither Bradley nor his predecessor were standout players. Arena had more success in pro lacrosse than he did in the professional soccer scene of the mid-70's. One National Team cap and some time in the American Soccer League beats Bradley's complete lack of professional playing experience, but neither of them would point to their playing years as impressive.
This notion that you had to have been a superstar player to understand the game still baffles many. Look at Arena and Bradley as two simple examples of how this antiquated, shortsighted viewpoint lacks any credence.
We all know that results matter and usually if you win, you’re still in. The point still remains that coaches are never number one when it comes to success. Teams win championships and players are lauded for their performances. If those teams lose the next year, it's often the coach that exists first.
Normally, that coincides with someone higher up the organizational chart using words like 'unacceptable' and 'disappointing' even when they likely had as much influence as they wanted. The days of coaches shutting out owners and - in the case of National Team soccer - pseudo-owners is long gone. Too much money on the line, after all.
The determining factors for who should coach your team, what their credentials should be and how much blame they should take for losing (or winning) seem to be pretty firm at this point. Maybe they could use some tweaking.
