Unto the Dogs

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Canada v. Jamaica: Thoughts on the Selections

Little to quarrel with here; the team looks very good. In the long term, it would be ideal for Lars Hirschfeld to get back into his club side – and back into the national team pool – but, since Greg Sutton and Pat Onstad have been in decent form, that is not pressing.

Ideally an 18-man squad would offer three options at each position, in case of disaster. For the most part this selection meets that requirement – if you allow that Kevin McKenna could fill in as a target forward in a pinch. The only minor shortage is at right-back. Adrian Serioux has performed well there with his club of late, and Paul Stalteri is solid, but both have a certain proclivity for red cards. If Tam Nsaliwa were available he would be a worthwhile alternative to Patrice Bernier, and would shore up the right. The best available option, Nik Ledgerwood for Iain Hume, is less attractive. Given the givens, Dale Mitchell has settled on the best possible squad.

Forwards

Rob Friend is the obvious favourite to start here; against Brazil he finally brought his improved club form to Canada. Despite his club issues, Ali Gerba could hardly be left off given his recent scoring rate for Canada.

Adding Olivier Occean, Andrzej Ornoch and David Hoilett to the mix, Canada could soon have quality depth up front for the first time since Alex Bunbury joined Dale Mitchell and John Catliff.

Midfielders

A wealth of good options present themselves in midfield. Dwayne De Rosario, Julian de Guzman, Atiba Hutchinson and Tomasz Radzinski are all givens, and, the question of who the fifth midfielder will be has four decent answers. Patrice Bernier or Daniel Imhof could be added to the central midfield or Iain Hume or Issey Nakajima-Farran could play out wide. Hume is best suited to the substitutes’ bench and Bernier took a step back last season, leaving the likely choice between Imhof and Nakajima-Farran.

Issey Nakajima-Farran has yet to impose himself on a Canada match, and has not shown flair to rival De Rosario on the left, but he is a streaky scorer for his club. Daniel Imhof is a safe, trustworthy choice who plays at a high level. Since this is a home game – and should be played to win – expect to see Nakajima-Farran make the start.

Defenders

The back four holds the only potential for Dale Mitchell to make a major misstep in his selections. He has been too loyal to Richard Hastings, who lacks the height to justify his inclusion given his lack of pace. Hastings should be seen as a depth player.

Mitchell should find room for both Jim Brennan and Mike Klukowski. This would involve shifting Klukowski to central defence, where he played several times for his club this past season. Both players tackle well and are good on the ball, and Brennan is strong on set pieces – not an abundant skill in this squad. Since Mitchell has yet to attempt this arrangement do not expect to see it for this match.

Ideally, Mitchell would pair Klukowski with McKenna, who has rarely appeared for Canada under the Mitchell. This would be a good pairing of a fast player with a tall one. However, given his recent selections, it would not be a surprise to see Hastings and Serioux start the match.

Paul Stalteri is a given to start at right-back.

Goalkeepers

Its a bit of a toss-up between Greg Sutton and Pat Onstad, but Onstad and the Houston Dynamo have been on a tremendous defensive run, having conceded only 2 goals in their last 8 league matches.

Ideal Lineup

---------------Onstad

--------McKenna------Klukowski
Stalteri----------------------Brennan

------Hutchinson------Imhof

--------------de Guzman
Radzinski------------------De Rosario

---------------Friend

Mitchell-being-Mitchell Lineup

------------------Onstad

--------Serioux------------Hastings
Stalteri---------------------------Brennan

-------Hutchinson-------de Guzman

---------------De Rosario
Radzinski------------------Nakajima-Farran

---------------Friend

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Canada 2- 3 Brazil

Absolute horror-show pass aside, I thought Canada would have been full measure for a draw. All-in-all I thought it was a very encouraging performance.

- The pitch was unforgivable. I know volumes have been written about the reasons that this match wasn’t played in Canada; but there are at least four venues where Canada could have hosted this match, sold as many tickets, and had a pitch no worse than the one at Qwest Field.

- Apparently, Coach Dale Mitchell listens. As suggested on these pages, against Brazil, Dwayne De Rosario played in a more central position. The squad clearly needs a little more time to make this work, but there were definitely plenty of hopeful signs.

- De Rosario and Atiba Hutchinson weren’t quite up to their normal standard. DeRo seemed more troubled than most with the quality of the pitch, and Atiba seemed to struggle a bit in trying to find his place with DeRo playing in the middle of the pitch.

- I was pretty unconvinced by Issey Nakajima-Farran. He has a role for the squad, but I’m not sure he is the answer for the starting eleven. I think one wing is covered well by Tomas Radzinski and Iain Hume, but – between the recent performances of Josh Simpson and Issey – I think the other wing is an open question if De Rosario remains in the middle.

- Pat Onstad was fine – though I would have liked to see a better effort on the second goal – but, I will be happy to see Greg Sutton get the next start given his recent run of form.

- The back was a bit of a disaster – Mike Klukowski and Paul Stalteri were fine – in fact, at times, Stalteri was playing almost in a central position. I thought Hasting was terrible, looking too small, too slow, and too unsure. I am a Serioux fan, I think he has the quality to play in the Canada set-up – but Hastings and Serioux is nowhere near an ideal pairing. My own preference would be for a Brennan-McKenna partnership – two confident, experienced players, and a good combination of size and pace.

- Rob Friend played his best match in a Canadian jersey. He looked confident on the ball, strong in his challenges, and even surprisingly pacey in chasing down passes.

- Tam Nsaliwa’s chance in the 84th minute was tantalizing. It is not hard to imagine him as the ideal fifth man in the midfield; it is hard to imagine the CSA pushing the paperwork through to get him back onside.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Kansas City 0 – 2 Toronto FC

Just a quick report today. Its actually harder to come up with things to write about when Toronto FC plays a totally comfortable, competent match. That said, if I were to nit-pick, I was a little more impressed with the first forty-five last week.

- What can you say about Amado Guevara’s performance in this match; it was an absolute clinic in stylish, skillful football.

- Though Laurent Robert wasn’t a dominant figure in open play this week, he was still amazingly valuable on set pieces. Nice to see that he didn’t recede into the woodwork when he wasn’t a central figure.

- Great to see Rohan Ricketts make a couple of nice crosses, particularly with his left foot. Michael Harrington did an admirable job of keeping him from attacking the goal, and it was good to see Ricketts make the most of his possession by crossing from out wide. I liked John Carver’s choice to flip Ricketts and Robert, to get Ricketts off of Harrington.

- If I were a fan of USMNT – instead of hating them passionately (offside, my ass) – I would strongly prefer Harrington in the future to the hugely over-rated Jonathan Bornstein.

- Interesting to hear Bruce Arena’s opinion of Greg Sutton during his game commentary. Obviously the memory of Sutton’s horror-show first stint in MLS hasn’t died.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Rant for a Friday Afternoon

Mo Johnston is absolutely single minded.

He cares about results on the pitch, this season – period.

He is not concerned about future TFC squads.
Come May the 8th (when Jim Brennan turns 31) TFC will have 8 presumptive starters aged 31 or over; the average age of the likely starting eleven will be 30. Since the start of the season 3 of the 4 new players signed have been aged 32 (Laurent Robert will soon be 33). The average age of the four – including Rohan Ricketts – is 31.

He places no value on the development squad – except as a repository for deep depth players.
This is evidenced by his refusal to fully staff the 10-man squad and his summary dismissal of most of last year’s squad.

He could not care less about developing the game in Canada. Evidence on this point if rife: among other things; he petitioned to have his ‘Canadian quota’ reduced; he has been seen to drag his feet at every turn in the creating an academy; he turns every stone in England looking for an assistant coach, when the impressive Canadian coach Nick Dasovic is available.

On each of these points Mo Johnston takes the wrong approach for the future quality of the squad and success of the franchise.

Successful franchises in MLS – that is franchises that succeed year-after-year – simply do not build by recruiting older, pricier players. Perpetual finalists New England and Houston were both built on a core of players who were recruited young and who spent their peak years with the club.

In Houston, Wade Barrett; Brian Mullen; Eddie Robinson; Ryan Cochrane; Dwayne De Rosario; Craig Waibel; Ricardo Clark; Brian Ching; and Brad Davis were recruited to the squad at an average age of 23. Only Davis had a previous track record of success in MLS. Having built this nucleus, Houston simply added a couple of established veterans to form the squad that won the MLS cup.

In New England, Taylor Twellman; Andy Dorman; Pat Noonan; Adam Cristman; Shalrie Joseph; Jeff Larentowicz; Khano Smith; Jay Heaps; Michael Parkhurst; Wells Thompson; James Riley were recruited to the squad also at an average age of 23. Only Heaps had a previous track record of success in MLS.

Successful MLS squads are built, not bought.

As for building the game in Canada, this may or may not be a necessary element to building a successful franchise. Perhaps, Toronto FC could continue to rule the psyches and wallets of a band of fans large enough to fill BMO Field without building the game in Canada-at-large one iota. But, there is strong evidence against this model – dominating a small, devoted market without expanding general interest – working in North American sports.

The stagnation of the National Hockey League in America is perfect evidence of the failure of this approach. Without an abundance of home-grown talent, without the game taking root in local soil, Hockey has always been a niche sport in America. A guest sport, hosted by Americans, played by foreigners. This is the future for TFC if they do not move beyond token efforts to include Canadian players in its future plans.

When Mo Johnston waived Tyler Hemming it was clear that he was working at cross purposes to what is best for the franchise long-term, and the game in Canada. His goal is to win now and protect his own position.

For what its worth, this likely will not hurt Hemming, there are two teams – in Canada alone – that would be better suited to developing his career. By European standards, at 22 Hemming may not be as advanced as a player as he should be. But this is precisely the age when well run MLS franchises begin their player development process. Unfortunate then, that Mo Johnston is in the self-protection business, rather than the player development business.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Real Salt Lake 0 – 1 Toronto FC

It is obviously a great result for the boys to move to .500 for the first time in club history. However, as Carver said in his post match interview, it was clearly a tale of two halves – as the second half was a little troubling for TFC. It seemed as though, when they were not having the run of possession, the lack of pace up front caused glaring problems for Toronto. The Danny Dichio/Amado Guevara tandem works well in a possession game, but weak when possession is sparse and the offence is reliant on quick breaks against the run of play.

Game Notes

- The two wide combinations – Laurent Robert/Jim Brennan and Rohan Ricketts/Marvell Wynne – are both perfectly complementary. Robert and Brennan have similar skills crossing the ball, and Ricketts and Wynne both have great pace. This made the first half fun to watch. Teams with weak wide defenders are going to have a terrible time with TFC this season.

- It looks as though Carver may be asking a little too much of Danny Dichio. Even in the first half, Dichio looked a step slow, perhaps winded, and one wonders if the problem might be his additional duties tracking back. At the same time, there were still several flashes of the classic Dichio on display against RSL, particularly his layoff in the 81st minute which led to a good chance at goal.

- It is clear that Carver likes Marco Velez’ skill on the ball. Despite his remarkable knack for comedy in central defence, Velez is still Carver’s man on free kicks in the TFC half. To be fair, Velez is not a central defender – and not a starter at this level – when he makes the shift to back-up Wynne at right-back both he and TFC fans will be more comfortable.

- Amazing to see and here how impressed Laurent Robert was with the Toronto crowd. Coming from a man who has seen the crowds that he has, his comments at halftime were a real compliment to TFC faithful.

- Funny moment at the end of the match when Maurice Edu looked totally disgusted when Velez attempted to give him a congratulatory hug.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Canada’s Conundrum: Where does de Guzman play?

This piece could be titled ‘Can Canada clone Julian”?

At the Gold Cup, Canada showed flashes of brilliance using both a distributor – playing in front of the back four – and a creative attacking midfielder. Playing this arrangement Canada thumped Guatemala 3 – nil in what was perhaps the finest display in the history of the National Team.

Since the Gold Cup, the quest has been to find a similar arrangement without the defensive problems presented by Martin Nash in the distributor role. The only conclusion to reach at this point, is that Julian de Guzman is the best option at both positions.

In the first matches following the Gold Cup, Patrice Bernier and Daniel Imhof were used in a position similar to Nash, but neither acquitted themselves well as a distributor. Both seem better suited to the defensive midfield spot now ably filled by Atiba Hutchinson.

Against Estonia, de Guzman began the game operating in the distributor role, with Radzinski as the creative player in the hole behind Ali Gerba. After the break, de Guzman moved forward as Bernier checked-in and Radzinski slid into a wide position. Neither partner proved a useful complement to de Guzman.

So, what is left to try?

Bring in young player? In the not too distant Will Johnson may fit well in the attacking role. Tyler Hemming may well develop into an option as a distributor; he is composed on the ball and moves it around well. Its not beyond the realm of possibility that either could find themselves in the squad, but neither offers much comfort as a starting option.

Dwayne De Rosario as an attacking midfielder? He is the only player with skill to match de Guzman. He often plays in a central attacking role with his club. And Canada has good options to fill his role on the wing in Issey Nakajima-Ferran and Josh Simpson.

This set-up would look like this:

Nakajima-Ferran----------------------------Radzinski
-------------De Rosario----------------Hutchinson
----------------------------de Guzman

This squad may be questionable defensively, but no more so than the one that went the first 45 against Estonia. It also allows for a straight substitution – like Imhof for Nakajima-Ferran – to bolster the defense.