The news that Real Salt Lake fired their coach Jeff Cassar just three games into the season surprised most close observers of Major League Soccer. It’s not like their season has been catastrophic. They have only one point but have only conceded four goals so they are not being hammered.
Rumors on the ever reliable internet suggest that former New York Red Bulls boss Mike Petke is already being lined up to replace him. Petke is currently coach of their affiliate side, Real Monarchs.
The suddenness of it prompted some thinking - why do coaches get sacked?
It’s not unheard of that a very promising available replacement pushes a coach that’s teetering on the brink over the edge, but usually it is fear of that replacement coach accepting another post. With Petke already at RSL, there would be no reason to think he may be about to become unavailable, unless he is known to be eyeing another post. Of course the specter of two former USMNT head coaches, Bob Bradley and Sigi Schmid, still being unemployed hovers over many MLS coaches.
No matter how many points Chelsea lead the league by, the story in the EPL always seems to lie elsewhere. The sacking of Leicester’s Claudio Ranieri didn’t so much draw differing reactions, as two distinct sets of outrage both amazed that anyone could not share their point of view.
Ranieri had taken an under resourced unfashionable club to EPL glory from the second tier. It was the greatest achievement in the history of English club soccer. You could say that Brian Clough doing the same with Nottingham Forest and then going on to win the European Cup (forerunner of the Champions League) was greater. I would point out that even the bigger clubs in England in those days did not enjoy the scale of the financial advantages over the rest, as is the case today.
And Leicester are still in the Champions League.
The other media obsession in England is over a coach that wasn’t fired, Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger. Arsenal sit sixth currently in the EPL table, with some games in hand. They are also in the FA Cup semi final. But there’s a feeling that seems to be pervade the Emirates that Wenger has just been in charge too long, and additionally hasn’t been as adventurous as rival clubs in the transfer market.
Wenger has however previously achieved success without splashing large amounts of money but I detect that the fans there want a different style of coach.
After all, their match day income is huge in a stadium that holds 60,432 and fans are expecting to see Arsenal compete with their rivals for superstars. To make matters worse, there is a severe chance that the Gunners may finish behind North London rivals Spurs for the first time since 1995. That was a season of unique chaos at Highbury as manager George Graham was fired for accepting an illegal payment of £425,000 (roughly $500,000 at today’s exchange rate) relating to the purchases of Norwegian and Danish players Pål Lydersen and John Jensen three years previously. They limped through the rest of the season with a caretaker manager Stewart Houston in charge of the first team.
It’s bad enough finishing behind Spurs, but this is purely in the battle to be the second best team in London. Once Arsenal at least had the pride of having the best stadium in the capital and could claim their financial resources were depleted by the construction. Now Tottenham are building one to replace White Hart Lane and of course West Ham, who are now a mere three miles away play in the modern London Stadium, built for the Olympics.
So if maybe Ranieri was fired for setting unrealistic expectations which he then could not meet, it would be fair to say that the expectations placed on Wenger are reasonable. But the feeling that it is time to end one era and move to a newer one might be the overriding factor.
The closest that we have come to a Wenger style departure in MLS is Sigi Schmid in Seattle. Obviously you can point to the league table when Schmid and the Sounders ‘mutually agreed their departure’ and that alone would certainly be evidence enough.
But even prior to that defeat in Kansas City, there had been a simmering feeling that Sounders needed a younger coach and that the players with whom Schmid had the best relationships, Brad Evans being the core example, were inevitably beginning to be a less crucial part of the side. I’ve been invited to write a chapter about Schmid’s departure and legacy for a forthcoming book and I’ll be going into this more deeply there.
Naturally, Brian Schmetzer’s subsequent success in winning MLS Cup altered the narrative on the matter. Does it prove Schmid was a bad coach, or that he built a great side, or even that certain players were underperforming deliberately to undermine him?
Or was it just the case, as has happened so often with sides battling relegation in England, that a new coach just freshens up the stale air and gloomy malaise hanging over a club like a dark rain cloud?
In an interview shortly before he was fired, Schmid lamented to me that he had had to wait so long for Nicolas Lodeiro to arrive. He was always slated to start in Seattle once his old club Boca Juniors were eliminated from the Copa Libertadores. Their progress to the semi final must have frustrated Schmid enormously. By the time the Uruguayan arrived, the German had left.
So while we wait for Wenger to announce his departure from the Emirates on his own terms, we wonder if Jeff Cassar will be the last casualty this MLS seaosn, or more likely who will be the next.
And why?