David Lee Departs NYCFC for SKC

[mgarbowski]

What's the term? Confirmation Bias?

Offseason Guides: Montréal and Sporting KC march into new eras

New folks at the top of the org, new hopes for a climb up the standings?

tacticsfreezone.substack.com

The footnote is better. If true of course.

"The word I’ve gotten – and I have not been able to confirm this because NYCFC is a black box – is that Lee is the one who pushed for the Hannes Wolf, Nico Fernández Mercau and especially Alonso Martínez signings."

 

[Fantazma]

What's the term? Confirmation Bias?

Offseason Guides: Montréal and Sporting KC march into new eras

New folks at the top of the org, new hopes for a climb up the standings?

tacticsfreezone.substack.com

while im sure that is true (doing what CFG wants) SKC is not known to be big spenders either. they all like their development or other local players. he will have more freedom but will SKC spend big for him?

 

[ALBNYfan]

The footnote is better. If true of course.

"The word I’ve gotten – and I have not been able to confirm this because NYCFC is a black box – is that Lee is the one who pushed for the Hannes Wolf, Nico Fernández Mercau and especially Alonso Martínez signings."

With Lee gone, what does this say of our furture signings?

 

[Gene]

while im sure that is true (doing what CFG wants) SKC is not known to be big spenders either. they all like their development or other local players. he will have more freedom but will SKC spend big for him?

Of course it was more than likely nothing but Silly Season bull shit, but didn't SKC make a big push for Ronaldo a few years ago? It might have been before Messi ended up in Miami.

With Lee gone, what does this say of our furture signings?

That's why I've said more than once, this off season is going to be interesting.
To be fair I don't think any one particular signing is going to prove anything one way or another, but but nevertheless it's going to be interesting to see what directions NYCFC and SKC go.

 

[mgarbowski]

With Lee gone, what does this say of our furture signings?

Nothing good If Doyle is correct.

 

[KevinJRogers]

Nothing good If Doyle is correct.

My takeaway too. It sure sounds like Lee was fighting a rear-guard action to protect our squad all along.

 

[gbservis]

The footnote is better. If true of course.

"The word I’ve gotten – and I have not been able to confirm this because NYCFC is a black box – is that Lee is the one who pushed for the Hannes Wolf, Nico Fernández Mercau and especially Alonso Martínez signings."

Dolye can’t confirm the NYCFC side of things, so I guess it’s safe to assume this whole story is coming straight from Lee and his camp:

“All the good signings? That’s me. All the bad ones? That’s CFG. Oh, and that Martínez guy, you know, the striker scoring all the goals? Yeah, that was my masterpiece. I convinced CFG to send him from one of their sister clubs, then we quietly announced him as ‘winger depth’ with a two-sentence press release and no video. Gotta keep the genius under wraps. Then I stashed him on the bench for half a season, long-term vision, you wouldn’t understand, until he finally went to Nick himself and asked to play striker. The rest is history. Exactly as I, David Lee, the master roster architect, intended.

Ask the NYCFC front office about it. They’ll say ‘no comment,’ which is basically confirmation that every word of this is 100 percent true.”

 

[ZYanksRule]

Dolye can’t confirm the NYCFC side of things, so I guess it’s safe to assume this whole story is coming straight from Lee and his camp:

“All the good signings? That’s me. All the bad ones? That’s CFG. Oh, and that Martínez guy, you know, the striker scoring all the goals? Yeah, that was my masterpiece. I convinced CFG to send him from one of their sister clubs, then we quietly announced him as ‘winger depth’ with a two-sentence press release and no video. Gotta keep the genius under wraps. Then I stashed him on the bench for half a season, long-term vision, you wouldn’t understand, until he finally went to Nick himself and asked to play striker. The rest is history. Exactly as I, David Lee, the master roster architect, intended.

Ask the NYCFC front office about it. They’ll say ‘no comment,’ which is basically confirmation that every word of this is 100 percent true.”

I had a similar reaction. Hard to know what's real.

Also thought it was interesting today in the press conference: Pascal was asked who is acting as sporting director right now, and he referred the question to Brad Sims.

 

[gbservis]

I had a similar reaction. Hard to know what's real.

Also thought it was interesting today in the press conference: Pascal was asked who is acting as sporting director right now, and he referred the question to Brad Sims.

Yeah, the "especially Martinez" part really got me. No one saw this coming.

With regards to the question of how screwed we are, I think we won't know until we see who they hire. Another up-and-coming internal CFG guy to me means Lee 2.0. If they hire someone from outside the org with an established resume, that will allow them to push back on CFG when the need arises, then there is reason for hope.

If this stuff about Lee is correct, however, and CFG picked all the young expensive flops, either the people making the call care far more about the CFG prospect pipeline than NYCFC results and/or they have no clue what types of players will be successful in MLS, and we are screwed.

 

[ZYanksRule]

Yeah, the "especially Martinez" part really got me. No one saw this coming.

With regards to the question of how screwed we are, I think we won't know until we see who they hire. Another up-and-coming internal CFG guy to me means Lee 2.0. If they hire someone from outside the org with an established resume, that will allow them to push back on CFG when the need arises, then there is reason for hope.

If this stuff about Lee is correct, however, and CFG picked all the young expensive flops, either the people making the call care far more about the CFG prospect pipeline than NYCFC results and/or they have no clue what types of players will be successful in MLS, and we are screwed.

It is such an oversimplified thing to say "CFG picked all the failures and Lee picked all the successes." Real life isn't usually that easy. The answer probably lives somewhere in the middle. Some of Lee's signings have worked, some have not. Some of CFG's signings have worked, some have not.

Ultimately, NYCFC has been near the top of the league for most of the last 10 years and we have a good up-and-coming team with a great coach that is going to contend for championships if the core stays together. We are doing something right, even if the details have been, at times, frustrating.

 

[mgarbowski]

I’ve noticed that MLS staff seem kind of clubby. I expect people at other teams got some of this from Lee and some from other NYCFC staffers.
The youth directive stuff Is 100% believable. The bit about Lee getting credit for Wolf, Nico and Martinez is believable in this light: I think Lee chose everyone with possible exceptions being Talles and Jovan. But guys like Ojeda and Fernandez were chosen under constraints that don’t apply to the more successful picks.
But Lee still choose them, and we’re not the only team using U22. On the third (fourth?) hand, CFG maybe forces us to go younger than U22 requires. But I can understand people around the league thinking that when you let Lee cook by himself he’s very good. On the 17th hand, he’s been cooking with the CFG recipe/scouting book.

 

[Marito]

"After analyzing this problem, I realized with 100% certainty that the guy you build a team around was not Chris Wingert, but rather a guy traded for peanuts from the Belgian 2nd division, who had been stashed at the end of the bench for a year. It was crystal clear. I would have done it sooner, but CFG didn't let me". The 1 in a million emergence of superstar Alonso is making everyone look better, but we will never know the truth.

 

[gbservis]

I’ve noticed that MLS staff seem kind of clubby. I expect people at other teams got some of this from Lee and some from other NYCFC staffers.
The youth directive stuff Is 100% believable. The bit about Lee getting credit for Wolf, Nico and Martinez is believable in this light: I think Lee chose everyone with possible exceptions being Talles and Jovan. But guys like Ojeda and Fernandez were chosen under constraints that don’t apply to the more successful picks.
But Lee still choose them, and we’re not the only team using U22. On the third (fourth?) hand, CFG maybe forces us to go younger than U22 requires. But I can understand people around the league thinking that when you let Lee cook by himself he’s very good. On the 17th hand, he’s been cooking with the CFG recipe/scouting book.

All of this sounds plausible to me. As much as I complain about Lee, the Jovan signing in particular always felt like a CFG directive. He was expensive, very young, and unproven at a time when the team badly needed consistent scoring. On top of that, he was an extremely poor stylistic fit. None of it adds up to a move that someone like Lee, who was directly responsible for NYCFC’s success, would have made on his own.

The two things I still can’t figure out about Lee, assuming this narrative is true, are:

1. Why did Sims, in multiple interviews, specifically praise Lee for developing the “go younger and develop” model if that approach was actually coming from CFG?
2. If Lee disagreed so strongly with some of these signings, why did he never speak up about it? Claudio would occasionally make subtle comments about differences in opinion between him and CFG. If Lee was frustrated, why stick so firmly to the company line right up to the end? At the very least, in one of his end-of-season interviews, he could have mentioned that the team needed a few more experienced players to push to the next level.

On that last point, it will be interesting to see whether Lee takes a more outward-facing role with SKC than he did at NYCFC. I don’t think there was another sporting director in the league who interacted less with the media and fans. He basically stayed in his office all season and only did two tightly controlled interviews with the internal media team per year. Was that just his personality, or was it a CFG expectation? It’s hard to believe it was entirely dictated by CFG since Claudio was far more visible and engaged with the media.

 

[EganSoccerWords]

Hard to speak up if you only do one media appearance a season in the beginning of the year with actual people that cover the club.

 

[gbservis]

Hard to speak up if you only do one media appearance a season in the beginning of the year with actual people that cover the club.

I guess that's part of my point, why did he do so few and only currated appearances? Is that a Lee thing or a CFG thing?

 

[ZYanksRule]

I guess that's part of my point, why did he do so few and only currated appearances? Is that a Lee thing or a CFG thing?

I think it's a team/CFG thing, personally. NYCFC has always done the bare minimum when it comes to league-mandated press conferences, and the league doesn't mandate any press conferences with sporting directors.

The only press conferences you have to do are a pregame presser and a postgame presser. The team doesn't open its locker room postgame even though that's also mandated by the league, so technically they do even less than the bare minimum.