Holden … no more looking at the past!

And there it is. Jurgen Klinsmann going wide and expansive with his camp roster next week. The roster dominated by the return of golden boy Stu Holden and no place for Steve Cherundolo (or Carlos Bocanegra).

GOALKEEPERS (6) : Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Tally Hall (Houston Dynamo), Bill Hamid (D.C. United), Tim Howard (Everton), Sean Johnson (Chicago Fire), Nick Rimando (Real Salt Lake)

DEFENDERS (8) : DaMarcus Beasley (Puebla), Matt Besler (Sporting Kansas City), Geoff Cameron (Stoke City), Edgar Castillo (Club Tijuana), Omar Gonzalez (LA Galaxy), Clarence Goodson (Brondby), Fabian Johnson (Hoffenheim), Michael Parkhurst (Augsburg)

MIDFIELDERS (10) : Michael Bradley (Roma), Joe Corona (Club Tijuana), Brad Davis (Houston Dynamo), Maurice Edu (Bursaspor), Stuart Holden (Bolton), Jermaine Jones (Schalke), Sacha Kljestan (Anderlecht), Brek Shea (Stoke City), Danny Williams (Hoffenheim), Graham Zusi (Sporting Kansas City)

FORWARDS (5) : Jozy Altidore (AZ Alkmaar), Terrence Boyd (Rapid Vienna), Clint Dempsey (Tottenham Hotspur), Herculez Gomez (Santos), Eddie Johnson (Seattle Sounders FC)

Still in recovery according the USSF release.

—

The skinny:

» Perplexing selections based solely on fitness. Cherundolo, no; but he’s been playing since April. Matt Besler injured, but called in.

»Klinsmann calls five keepers and I think it’s a good decision. He’s going to rotate them into camp so that he respects the impact the keepers–all MLS based–have on their team’s success.

]]> http://theshinguardian.com/2013/05/16/stu-holden-klinsmanns-roster-for-belgium-germany/feed/ 61 matthewsf Holden ... no more looking at the past! Still in recovery according the USSF release. http://theshinguardian.com/2013/05/13/comparing-the-incomparable-on-sir-alex-ferguson-mls-ranks/ http://theshinguardian.com/2013/05/13/comparing-the-incomparable-on-sir-alex-ferguson-mls-ranks/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 21:14:31 +0000 matthewsf http://theshinguardian.com/?p=35130 ]]>

Time to hit the road…

Will Parchman takes a look at which MLS coaches got Ferg in them.

Alex Ferguson retired. Newsflash, Rick Reilly-style!.

Another bit for the ticker: Word is he was a good manager.

Sickly good.

There are the 38 trophies in 26 years at Manchester United–as crickets chirp at the Emirates–and his record both in Europe and in domestic competitions stands head and shoulders above any club manager in European history. But why?

It seems paradoxical at first that a single aging man should have such an otherworldly impact on a game that does not directly involve him, doesn’t it? Draw up all the tactical blueprints you like, but in the end the man on the touchline has nothing to do with their physical implementation. Sir Alex hasn’t scored a goal in a competitive game in 39 years. It’s clear that certain coaches are better than others, but logically, why is Fergie is far an outlier from the standard deviation?

And yet there is obviously something special about Ferguson and the small guild of elite coaches he heads. Four key traits came to define Ferguson’s coaching career, which MLS coaches best emblematize them?

Disclaimer: There are multiple right answers here. These are merely mine.

Without further ado, the four idiosyncrasies that undergirded Fergie’s unbelievable coaching career, which is burning toward its glorious conclusion.

Eccentric disciplinarian

The best coaches are odd birds. They stamp into losing press conferences and push fire out of their nostrils. I’ve interviewed them. They are not pleasant. At other times they clop into winning press conferences and walk that minuscule tightrope swinging over the pit of restlessness that swallows up their free thoughts. I’ve been in the room for those interviews, too. The coach’s temporary satisfaction is quickly subsumed by distraction. The chalk is already flying into furious motion even as his striker bundles in a goal for a 4-0 lead with 20 minutes left. The next game is already a topic of discussion.

What I’m saying is the best coaches are not like you and I. We don’t really understand them. They say odd things to the press, spewing forth an indignant, righteous anger based on vague, often entirely invented slights. I’m not sure anyone was a better, more successful eccentric than Sir Alex. He was unlike a horde of others in the disciplinarian mold in this respect because he was always approachable. Meet him out of his black sideline peacoat when the gum wasn’t squished between his molars and the visage is distinctly pedestrian slightly more reverent perhaps.

But he’s not. He lambasted players who weren’t in shape. Early in his career, he developed the nickname “Furious Fergie.” He kicked over tea urns when his teams were losing. He manipulated the press for his own gains. He once swung through on a cleat that hit David Beckham just above the eyebrow in the Manchester United locker room. He petulantly recalled loans, criticized match officials and still holds a grudge against Gordon Strachan two decades after he snubbed Aberdeen for Cologne. Again, this is not a normal man. In some respects, he’s not a well-adjusted man either. Perhaps retirement and guarding his lawn suits him.

“I swear to g*d I’ll headbutt you…”

But for our purposes here, this is a good thing. These eccentricities federated him with his players. The ones who didn’t acquiesce were either eventually folded into the system or jettisoned. An endless rotation of willing bodies was then put in their place (many of whom came from the scouting network he so meticulously pruned). Alex Ferguson is many things, but he is a man endlessly sure of what he wanted, what works and how to meet those ends.

MLS’ closest facsimile? Jason Kreis.

The RSL head man is perhaps a bit less lyrical than Fergie, but his iron jaw, excellent eye for talent and unwavering resolve make him MLS’s most accomplished eccentric disciplinarian. His terse press conferences and inability to appear satisfied are hallmarks. I pity the fool who dogs it on Kreis’s watch.

Continuity and Simplicity

Jose Mourinho has often been hailed as the best manager in the world over the past decade. By at least some metrics, those folks may well be correct.

But how settled can you be as a player when your manager has an eye on the door before he arrives? Mourinho and those like him are compelled by the challenge of the thing. When the challenge pales, the chariot awaits. This has kneecapped more than one club. Inter Milan are still figuring out a way forward.

The effect is more than just psychological.

Coaches (or good ones, anyway) have systems. They have an approach to the game they champion, a way of life that filters from the tactics on the field to the environment at the ground. Ferguson didn’t always run a 4-4-2, but the mainframe was steady, the expectations never wavered and the players were never confused. When AVB got to Chelsea, he alienated the veteran core by trying to cram a youth revival down the club’s throat. It didn’t take, and the players won the standoff. In light of the news, Ferguson had to fire up a smoldering cigar in some dimly lit library, laughing knowingly as the flame’s embers reflected off his fleet of trophies. Ryan Giggs was in his thoughts somewhere.

“Why you….”

It’s important to understand that some of this (and sometimes a great deal of it) is out of the coach’s hands. Abromovich might’ve fired Fergie halfway into his second season at United. But even at a place where the stakes became increasingly higher, Ferguson never gave his owners reason to doubt for long. Any hiccups were almost immediately followed by lavish success. It cannot be understated how unbelievably difficult and taxing this had to be when spread over a quarter century.

When those systems change, when that expectation becomes radically inconsistent with the culture of the club, players mutiny and ownership stamps its feet. Fergie’s success and brutal honestly created a culture of understanding at the club. He wasn’t one to string you along. If he liked you, you knew. If you screwed your chance, you were gone.

“…little sh*t!”

In the end, Fergie’s mind games were almost entirely with external forces. If you were his player, you were under his cloak. The only unforgivable sins by good players were lack of effort and denunciation of the team. The players could see through everything else because Fergie wanted them to.

MLS’ closest facsimile? Dom Kinnear. He’s coached in two cities but with a single franchise, moving to Houston with San Jose in 2005. He’s fiercely protective of his players (see his rant earlier this year on FCD’s “diving”) and is brutally honest. Having sat in on his pressers, he has both the ability to disarm with his wit and cut through BS with an incisive eye. He can also pile onto it when it suits him. And players can trust that he won’t bolt at the first (or maybe last) opportunity.

“A shrewd eye for mixing young, aged, new and old players”

There are as many ways to approach the transfer market and the scouting circus as there are minutes in a day. The emergent 21st century theory is the Scattershot, whereby big clubs throw cash at whatever hot thing is out there and pile as many of them onto a team as possible. Chemistry, attractive soccer and sense be damned. Even with impressive financiers at his back, Alex Ferguson did it differently. Which perhaps makes it all the more impressive.

Why did you have to include a picture of Ferguson in shorts?

The 1995-96 season provides the simplest example. The initial headlines went to the transfer fees paid to Eric Cantona, Andy Cole and Roy Keane over the previous three years, but it was the youth movement led by the Neville brothers, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes that helped lead United to the league title that year.

Ryan Giggs was already installed by this time, making for a young, malleable group of youngsters who knew each other, knew Ferguson’s wiles and would run through a brick wall for the club. Every player who was added to that mixer was either spat out automatically by its own design or was dealt with swiftly by Ferguson himself. So it was easy, then, when someone like Dwight Yorke fell out of the team lockstep to snip him loose.

Ferguson and his scouting staff were not perfect. They paid more than $7M for Bebe and shelled out (got swindle?) an incredible $28M for Veron. But when glancing back at his history during the silly season, there was typically very little silliness abounding at all.

MLS’ closest facsimile? Peter Vermes. Few are better talent evaluators, and nobody in the league is a better judge of team chemistry. Since he was appointed technical director in 2006 (and then head coach in 2009), he’s helped reel in guys like Roger Espinosa, Claudio Bieler, Graham Zusi and Aurelien Collin while maintaining an excellent draft standard and an attitude at the club that’s tough to top. It’s tougher to compare apples to apples here since coaches are more limited in who they can sign in MLS, but Vermes has proven himself to be one of the best.

The ‘Wow Factor’

This didn’t develop in full until later in Alex Ferguson’s career at United (perhaps not fully until after the treble season of 1999), but Sir Alex always had an aura about him. Talk to anyone who met the man and he was so devilishly charming that you nearly forgot he was a living legend. But you never could. You’d crane your neck because somebody caught a glimpse of the man and you couldn’t miss it. The man with the knighthood, who’d wrangled Cantona and unleashed Keane and lifted trophies until his triceps screamed.

Aberdeen fans knew it before United fans did. It’s just that something indescribable that clings to people who’ve been in tight spots and gotten out with just their wiles and uncanny skill nobody else on earth possesses. You want to know what it is, this quality. You want to be near it.

“What did he…slip on a banana peel?” “No, no…he’s wearing Diego Forlan’s cleats!” HAHAHA!”

It isn’t just fans who find themselves caught up in the aura. Just hours after Ferguson’s retirement went viral, Cristiano Ronaldo tweeted “Thanks for everything, boss,” with a picture of a young, precocious-looking Ronaldo next to Ferguson assuming that typical attack dog stance in the midst of the press. A player hears Manchester United and they think titles. They hear Alex Ferguson and they think of the reason why. Playing for Ferguson is a cultish event of its own, replete with a sort of soccer genuflection that can only occur internally in the presence of greatness. Look at it this way. A bronze statue of Ferguson went up outside Old Trafford last year. While he was still coaching. This needs no further explanation.

MLS’ closest facsimile? Bruce Arena. The undisputed dean of MLS coaches. Nobody has done more than Arena, and he has the honest flippancy to prove it. He has the cache of coaching the first MLS Cup winner, dealt (at times grimly) with the Beckham Experiment and the Donovan absence in equal measure, coached in two World Cups, groomed his predecessor to coach in yet another, and sports an MLS winning percentage north of 50. If any MLS coach is instantly recognizable in an airport, Arena is the guy. Does he have the same groupie status as Ferguson? Of course not. But Arena is the MLS Fergie. Think about it.

It’s been real…

Raise your hand if you had Ryan Giggs retiring before Sir Alex Ferguson?

The iconic Red Devil manager confirms that he is retiring at the end of this Premiership campaign. That darn Nani red card.

Manchester United announces that they will name his successor within the next 48 hours. Davie Moyes in pole position.

As always, click on the link for the interactive version.

.. Click link below for interactive version …

Click here for interactive version

—

While not a whole lot of direct or even indirect conclusions can be made in isolation here, the date–to me on a cursory review–speaks to the importance of crosses, goalie play & where you play your defensive line.

Interesting stuff and I’ll try to get more information on the source data here.

Holden rocks the mesh against Haiti, Summer 2009

Late last night in a release on US Soccer, Jurgen Klinsmann threw (fixed!) gasoline on Stu Holden’s slow nearly three year burn to rejoin the USMNT senior squad in a meaningful capacity.

After Bolton handled him this year–appropriately–with kid gloves and Holden excelled in a short stint at Sheffield United, Klinsmann stated that Holden will be back in full effect this summer.

The former Dynamo player will be called in for the May-June USMNT WCQ camp as well as for the Gold Cup with no limits put on his participation.

What’s more, Klinsmann stated that Holden was being called in for his resolve and intangibles. Back in 2009, after Holden was a leader on the 2009 Gold Cup squad, TSG christened him a future captain. Holden’s a unique player; the type of guy on a bench that brings the skills, but also raises the lockeroom.