NYCFC Confirm Departure of PV. Nice Confirm Arrival of PV as Manager.
- Thread starter JayH
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In sports it's much easier to get a managerial or coaching job if you were a big star player than if you're someone who's been coaching his entire adult life but never played the game professionally. I've always found this weird. Being a professional coach seems more like being an actor than being middle management in that it depends more on how much someone else believes in you.
Consider Pablo Machin, the head coach of our sibling club Girona. He's only one year older than our Patrick Vieira yet he has 20 years of coaching experience. He played professionally for his local club CD Numancia, though he was mostly limited to the reserve team, only making 5 senior appearances, before he was forced to retire, due to a knee injury, at 23. He started coaching a local amateur team when he was 24, then he went back to CD Numancia to coach a youth team. Over the next 11 years he worked his way up, from youth team to reserve team, to assistant of the first team, to finally becoming manager of Numancia in 2011 at 36. In 2013 he became manager of Girona and got them promoted to La Liga in 2017. In short this guy is a paragon of perseverance. He was only 23 when he got injured. He could have done anything else with his life but he stuck with soccer and now he's managing a club with a really bright future.
Then you look at Arteta, who was linked to Arsenal at 36, the same age Pablo was when he became a first team manager, despite only having 2 years of experience as an assistant under precious Pep and it really makes you think. The soccer world is highly irrational (though anyone could tell that by looking at transfer fees recently.) Steven Gerard is going to be head coach of Rangers, Frank Lampard is top of the list for Derby County. And Patrick Vieira became the head coach of NYCFC in 2016 and has been learning on the job ever since.
It’s the same with former athletes getting FO GM positions or TV pundit positions. They’re not necessarily qualified for either other than having played the game, and frankly, there are thousands of fans that are more knowledgeable (sports nerdom) and talk more eloquently, but are not “names.” That’s not to say all aren’t qualified, but many aren’t. Tony Meola is one name that comes to mind.
You end up talking entirely about soccer, so maybe that is what you meant, but you said "sports" here and I do not think this is especially true in other major team sports. For example, here are all the new NFL coaches from the latest off-season: Josh McDaniels, Matt Patricia, Jon Gruden, Steve Wilks, Matt Nagy, Pat Shurmur, and Mike Vrabel. None were big playing stars, and I'm reasonably certain some of them never even played in the NFL. You can make similar lists in baseball, the NBA, and NHL. In fact, a lot of people in the US tend to think that big stars are unlikely to be very good coaches or managers, and that someone who was a journeyman, or maybe even topped out in the minors or college, is better suited for coaching. There are exceptions to be sure. On the whole though, I think the phenomenon you describe is true as a general proposition only in soccer, and there mostly outside the US. It might be a cultural thing. I don't see as many examples of this in MLS, with Vieira being an exception but his club is run by non-Americans.
Out of the group you mention, I believe Vrabel is the only one with extensive NFL playing experience.
Also throw in other coaches for top teams in the league: Belichick, Tomlin, McCarthy, Quinn, Reid, McVay, Carroll
I thought PV was making like $2MM a year here, the article says $300k to basically pay off more than half his salary, doesn’t seem right to me.
Could have gotten a big signing bonus to buy an apartment. Monthly salary a lot less.
$300k isn’t much to CFG but it’s something. Take it and run. He’s leaving regardless.
After last match, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
If he leaves now, my verdict on his tenure is Mildly Subpar. When you are in a playoff league and don't win a single playoff contest despite finishing 4th and 2nd in the combined table I cannot give you a "Good." Add in the USOC failures and the annual stretch of floundering and it's not that pretty. I appreciate the competent in-season performances, and turning things around post-Kreis, but with zero playoff and Cup success he's leaving with a job completely undone. I don't think he had to win hardware, but he had to win one round. That's more fail than success.
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dummyrun
Guest
I get this but it's not how I look at it. Playoffs are exciting and trophies are nice but knockout soccer tournaments are too random to be a good measure of quality. Vieira has made NYCFC a better, more fun team, and that's shown up on the 34-game table. We've got room to improve and so does he but I'm grateful to him for bringing a little more good soccer into a league where that's not easy.
It's a massive deal in Europe though, because euro and domestic cups are such a big deal and for many clubs, more important than the league table. His playoff and cup record should be a glaring red flag. Now if he finishes out the year and we win a cup, or at least a series, that improves his resume, but
mgarbowski original point that he has not yet proven himself capable of managing a cup style event is accurate, and that is a critical pillar to consider when analyzing his tenure here. He was hired to win cups, not just to provide an exciting team with moderate regular season success.The team has been exciting, but it's frustrating to see so many disaster matches. I'd also argue that our roster has been so strong, that any league finish worse than we have had would be underperforming, so i don't believe PV has exceeded baseline performance.
He has displayed some very positive traits, but he has made a very clear case that he is not ready for a top euro club, and may never be.
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American football isn't the greatest comparison for soccer because there are only 32 NFL coaching positions. Nearly all of them at least played in college which would be comparable to some type of professional soccer.
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dummyrun
Guest
Yep! Many (most star) college players are already getting paid by mysterious boosters/bagmen, so it’s very much a competitive professional game. And the stakes are huge for the coaches.
I similarly get your point. I think the regular season is a much better test, and I wish we were not a playoff league but we are for multiple reasons and that's that. What tipped me to my decision beyond just the results is the complete lack of competitiveness we have had in cups and playoff rounds. NYC was listless and scoreless against the Cosmos at Fordham, scoreless and embarrassed in 2 games against Toronto, and flat and scoreless against the Red Bulls in the Cup. In last year's playoff they were blown out in Game 1, and only came close because Columbus decided to play hold-on-and-pray for 90 minutes. Not once can you say we outplayed the other team and bad luck kept NYC from advancing. As a result, I give little weight to a truth I otherwise acknowledge, which is that playoffs are random. Nearest thing to bad luck was the red card in Game 1 at Columbus, but we let them blow that open when we should have held it close.
The point I countered concerned "big stars" getting coaching jobs. You are not a "big star" because you played Division 1. You are not even necessarily a big star if you played 10+ years in the NFL. Is your position otherwise, because I'm struggling to understand your point in the context of the discussion.
I think those are all legitimate points, but you also need to keep in mind how terrible our depth. It hurt our ability to compete in midweek games and it hurt our performance at the end of the year since we couldn't really rest core players and we basically ran Maxi, Villa, Jack, and Ring into the ground.
You don't have to be a big star, but having professional (or college experience in terms of American football) opens doors to opportunities that other people don't have. I think every MLS coach except for Sigi and the San Jose's Swedish guy played professional football. There's a reason for that. I hope that puts its in the context of discussion for you.
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