Reply With QuoteYou misunderstand me; in my opinion, liking a sport because it is foreign is as stupid as not liking it because it is foreign.Originally Posted by argh1
I don't like the idea of having and American coach in 1 of the 3 Canadian clubs in MLS. It may sound biased but from what I remember, I think that Canadian content dropped a lot on the field when Preki was TFC head coach. The same could be said from Tom Soehn, Canadian content dropped significantly with him compared to Thordarson.
Coincidentally, rosters during Preki and Soehn era were/are filled with lots of American players, some of then good players, and a lot of them average or mediocre players. Also, the team performances with Preki and Soehn were/are really disappointing. From a NMT perspective, always in the context of Canadian clubs in MLS, I think that having a European coach increases the chances of seeing more Canadian content on the field.
You misunderstand me; in my opinion, liking a sport because it is foreign is as stupid as not liking it because it is foreign.
Well Mo Johnson also wanted to get rid of Canadian content. Also, all of Vancouver management pushed this issue which forced MLS to eventually drop Canadian content for now.
BTW, I notice Winter doesn't rate American players highly compare to Canadian and European players based on the moves he has made since the window opened. Of course we got couple of young American players recently but I think that was Mariner who bought them in instead of Winter.
The first priority is to get the best coach available that can communite with the players. Being able to speak french would be nice but not a requirement (but then I'm not from Québec).
It's not a requirement you are right. As Marc Tougas tweeted today (paraphrased): Dear media types: if you hold the Impact to the same conventions that you hold the Habs you will be wrong a lot.
I believe he's referring to hockey media types who are talking about having a French coach for the Impact.
It's a totally different situation: with the Habs, first of all it is has been a cultural institution or rallying point if you will for 100 years, plus many of the best hockey coaches in the world are French Canadian so there is a huge talent pool to choose from; therefore it's not an unreasonable criteria. Neither of these are the case with the Impact.
My biggest concern with the hiring is that the Impact have hired an ex-player with no experience as a head coach. He has no coaching experience at the club level, only at the National team level which is quite different that the ongoing day to day management with a club. He may turn out to be a good coach but definitely not the direction I would want for my team. Vancouver did much better getting Rennie (although we have to suffer through Soehn to get there)
I think one should choose the best coach available regardless of language. Nevertheless, if language is going to be a factor I do not agree that it would be more important for the Habs to have a francophone coach than the Impact. There is an equally large number of quality French speaking coaches in soccer as in hockey even though they are not from Quebec. Additionally the French speaking player base is much larger in soccer than in hockey and unlike the hockey players, many of the potential soccer players do not speak English well. PR and political factors aside, I think a stronger case can be made for the Impact having a French-speaking coach for sporting reasons than for the Habs. Marsch did state in an interview though that he was planning to take French courses.
Regarding hiring the best possible coach, on the surface it seems the Impact are very far from having done this. It is very worrying with years of ownership and management interferring with coaches that an unknown inexperienced coach is selected. As always one must give him a chance and hopefully he will live up to the potential that some have said he has. Also Limniatis was a surprising choice when he took over and turned out very well. Nevertheless, I doubt very many people would have even had Marsch on their list of people to be interviewed for this job while many of those who would be on most people's lists were not even contacted and that is worrying.
There is a 6 minute interview with him in English on RDS. Go to http://www.rds.ca/impact/ and click on: Jesse Marsch excité par son nouveau défi
If a deaf man incoherently babbles in the middle of the forest (and then a tree falls down or something like that) does he have an accent?
I agree. My comment was to point out that for us down here, he will still be considered an outsider, like a coach from England or France would have been (he doesn't just have an accent, he doesn't even speak the local language!). That said, it was a requirement that the coach had to speak english fluently and it would have been nice if he spoke french too (as a marketing tool, but also to help attract francophone players who don't necessarily speak english [some on our current roster don't]). Anyways, I'm glad we picked the better option and didn't just select the best francophone available.
Maybe he will be successful, but even taking into consideration who might have been affordable and available, I find it hard to see how Marsch would be even close to being as good a canadidate as the best francophone available. I don't think he is close to being the best anglophone available either. He was probably one of the cheapest options available. And even more worrisome, he may have fulfilled some requirements for the job that are even more worrisome than language. In other words I think many of the critieria that Joey and Nick may have used to select someone for this position were probably not the criteria that should be used in selecting a coach.
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