I feel sorry for Minnesota fans. Their season is a complete failure and I don't even really blame Adrian Heath. Its clear that the Minnesota ownership put way too little preparation into the move to MLS and simply does not have the funds to compete even at current MLS level.
When I speak of a lack of funds I'm not even talking about just the lack of a DP. I'm talking about the lack of scouting apparatus, training staff, and front office that made this travesty possible. You cannot blame a team this absolutely awful on any individual component of an organization. Given the specific timeline of how Minnesota was created I believe in placing blame in the reverse order to normal sports failure.
Normally when a team fails we assign blame in roughly the following order, (coach and players are interchangeable)
Coach
Players
GM
Front office (the people connected to the sporting aspect of the team.)
CEO
Owner
I believe that the failure of the loons is so endemic that we must revise that order to.
Owner
CEO
Front Office
GM
Coach
Players
Its clear that the players and coach are largely blameless for the on field product at this stage. Adrian Heath is simply not an MLS caliber coach and, by in large, the players who are playing for him are not MLS caliber players. This is not their fault. The coach was not given the players he needs to succeed and the players were not given the coach they need to succeed, the blame must go higher than them.
The GM should take a fair brunt of the blame for hiring a coach so late in the expansion process and hiring a coach who already had serious questions about his capability floating around. Additionally he should take blame for hiring players who could not handle this level of game.
The front office should take more blame because they scouted out players who they believed would be capable when they clearly weren't. They failed at their one singular job, the most important job in a sports organization without a layer of abstraction from the direct on field product, finding quality talent.
The CEO takes even more blame than the front office, as it was his job to find the right people and put them in the right places to have the organization succeed. He's supposed to set the structures of success and prepare the grounds for which success grows from, and trim away failure. He clearly failed in his responsibilities.
The most blame falls to the owner. He made the decision to transition to MLS without the required funds, in excess of the $150mm buy in fee and stadium money, to find any success. He wanted to play Dallas ball without having invested the money into their youth programs or having invested the money in the office staff that allows one to play small money ball. He made the strategic decision to focus on doing well in the loon's last USL season instead of their first MLS season. He hired the people who hired the people who run the day to day operations. He chose incorrectly where it mattered and the loons are paying for it.
