Jump to content
  • Carver


    Guest

    The “It’s Called Football” crew was stranded in a stairwell at Bay and Dundas when the John Carver era ended at Toronto FC.

    As a cell phone objector, I was left looking on in amusement as Duane Rollins and Ben Rycroft barked into their Star Trek communicators, chipping loose details of the story as we waited for someone to show up and unlock the studio door.

    High tech meets no tech – but we got the story on the air.

    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

    Which leaves us to wrestle with the strange and entertaining enigma that was Toronto FC bench boss John Carver.

    The very first time I saw him do a post-game press conference, he took issue with the first question he was asked. Dismissed it as uninformed, said he didn’t want to start with a bad question, and moved bluntly to the next. “Oh brother,” I’m thinking to myself. “Another one of THESE guys.” But then came the surprise. A few questions later, he pointed to the scribe he shot down, and said “All right. NOW I’ll do your question.”

    It really broke the ice. He was blunt – but funny. A passionate, dedicated man who was deeply and deliberately rough around the edges, who went on to give some of the most honest, relevant and entertaining post-games you could ever hope to be in on.

    At the same time, his record wasn’t good. Not much experience, and the team was losing. But how much of that was Carver? TFC was a clear and present bad team. It takes time for a coach to mold them in his image.

    He was refreshingly honest. He’d tell you what a player did well, and when he didn’t. He’d consider points being raised by reporters. If he didn’t agree, he’d carefully take the time to explain why.

    The most stunning moment was not one of his frequent, anguished outcries over lousy MLS officiating. It came in the awful aftermath of TFC’s elimination from the 2008 Voyageurs Cup by the upstart Montreal Impact. Asked about striker Jeff Cunningham’s unbelievable last-minute miss of a five-yard empty-net sitter, Carver wondered aloud how the player had ever scored 99 goals in MLS.

    Coaches just don’t cut their players that dead, that publically. And yet, all objectivity aside, just about everybody in the room was already thinking that or worse about Cunningham, who was dumped to Dallas just days later.

    When Carver went off the rails, in other words, honest watchers of the game couldn’t really help but sympathize. So what if Toronto slumped uselessly through four tedious, terrible months last spring and summer? They rallied late, and put in a good September. So Carver must finally have reached them, right?

    Always, always the illusion. If you liked John Carver – and I certainly did – you could find enough good stuff to convince yourself he wasn’t the problem.

    Even now, with Carver gone, problemship is still tricky to assign. But one important fact now seems clear:

    John Carver never was – and never would be – the solution.

    This was laid brutally bare by TFC’s last two games.

    In Dallas, under Carver, they were shapeless, clueless reflex hoofers of the ball, with no continuity and no apparent plan. Last Wednesday, home to red-hot Chivas USA, they kept it on the carpet, controlled the game, defended well, built carefully, and scored a wonderful goal to win it.

    All of this, apparently, under the direction of assistant coach Chris Cummings, who was tossed the keys after Carver went off on the ref in Dallas.

    There are multiple versions of what exactly happened, but it appears today that Carver has not, in fact, signed a deal to coach in England, with the heavily rumoured Newcastle United or anyone else. It’s also coming crystal clear that his head was on the block, and his resignation saved the headsman some minor wear and tear on his axe.

    The man – for all his heart, charm, character, wonderful gruffness, refreshing honesty, commitment, strength, passion and perseverance – just isn’t a very good head soccer coach.

    I’m sure most of the players loved him, but the tactics weren’t there. When a team – as Toronto did in Dallas – bypasses two of the most creative central middies in the league (DeRosario and Guevara) with endless high hoof jobs to struggling strikers – well, Carver can argue all he wants that a bad penalty call led to the loss, but these rebuilt Reds never should have been in that position in the first place.

    Those four bad months were, in fact, ineffective generalship as much as poor talent. If it hadn’t been for that happy little blip in September (which was cruelly snuffed out by a terrible late penalty call … in Dallas), I doubt Carver would have even returned to start ’09.

    I will miss the man. He made my job better and easier. But I won’t miss the awful drifting lack of direction Toronto FC displayed far too often in the Carver era.

    And a little side note to Newcastle’s desperate new manager Alan Shearer:

    Before you offer this guy a job, you might want to do what Carver himself loved to do above almost all else … check the video.

    Onward!



×
×
  • Create New...