Yallop: Stay or Go?

[RS]

Since the result is on the front page, and in light of some of the other thread titles, I can safely start this thread without breaking netiqueet.

My question for you, fellow Voyageurs, is obvious. Do you guys, in all your infinite wisdom, think that Yallop should stay on as head coach, or be let go by the CSA following the Guatemala match? It's too bad this forum doesn't allow polls (at least it doesn't to the best of my knowledge), as I would like to get a somewhat scientific count of which way people vote on this.

Anyhow, I'll start.

I think Yallop should stay. It was almost inevitable that Yallop would not be able to get us through this time around, given the amount of time he had to prepare coupled with the group we were placed in.

He has a good rapport with almost all the players (he's not going to get along with everyone), and the ones that were "shunned" by him were done so with respect. Yallop understands what its like to be a Canadian national team player, and he knows personally the sacrifices and commitment that goes into being a Canadian soccer player. This is turn brought about a renewed commitment from everyone, most notably Radzinski who was sketchy at best under Holger.

You could also see that the players were beginning to get used to the system and style of play that Yallop wanted to implement, although unfortunately the amount of time it took was too long for Canada's hopes for 2006. Every game was an improvement over the last one, and that has everything to do with the lack of prep games/time that Yallop had to work with.

That said, I, like most of you, do question a few of his player choices, most notably the inclusion of Jaime Peters, who, while extremely talented, is far too green at this point to make an impact. Hopefully he will take these games and learn from them, because I have a feeling that Peters will be a MUCH larger part of the team that tries to qualify for 2010.

Despite some odd choices, overall Yallop made the right personnel decisions, IMHO. While I think Brennan would have helped the team at the left mid spot, I think everyone else he ommitted (Bircham, Aguiar) was with good reason. Bircham is not better than Imhof, despite Imhof becoming the new unofficial Vees whipping boy. Aguiar comes across as a bit of a head case, which is probably the real reason why he was left off the squad. Perhaps Nsaliwa should have been included, but can anybody honestly say that he would have played better than Hutchinson has?

One thing Yallop showed was a willingness to change the lineup when need be, which was a huge departure from Holger, who's starting eleven may as well have been written on a stone tablet. Apart from the obvious starters (Radz, DeVos, De Guz, Stalteri), Yallop was unafraid to change his players around whenever he saw fit, which in turn creates competition for spots, something the young guys appreciate and the older guys need to keep them from being complacent. That being said, I do realize that Yallop was still trying to look at a lot of the players, which is why some of the roster changes were made. Unfortunately, he had no other time to do this other than during WCQ.

I like the core of young players that is coming up (Peters, Simpson, Hume, Hutch, Occean, etc.), and I think Yallop deserves a chance at molding these guys into the kind of team that he wants out there. The go-round it was very haphazard, and everyone (Yallop included) was kind of thrown to the wolves. I say let's give Yallop a shot to do it the proper way, if he wants it.

[Bertuzzi44]

Yallop should stay...The National team improved every game and given some luck would still be in it. I hope he stays. He also seems to have a good relationship with the players.

[intrepid_]

After some consideration, I think Yallop should stay. With the exception of the first game, he had this team playing pretty well for the majority of qualifying. The team just couldn't finish and there were a few monumental defensive errors that cost us. The team showed extended flashes of brilliance, and hopefully he'll be able to build some consistency if given four years with our next group of players. He did make some, maybe even a lot, of questionable moves - but I'm willing to chalk that down to inexperience. Rough patches are going to happen with any new coach, including whoever replaces Yallop if we choose to send him walking.

[DjinnX]

I think he should stay. The team needs to build and Yallop has shown he is willing to look for new talent. It's a shame Canada couldn't get more friendlies so Yallop could sort the team out before the WCQ.

[Glenn]

Give him another few years. With better officiating, he'd have had a chance to recover from his mistakes. Granted, he may have fumbled that chance too, but we lost four points to bad calls, so we'll never know. Let's see who he chooses and what the results are through the next Gold Cup. If he builds a young team with a view to qualifying for 2010 and learns from the experience of 2004, we could be in good shape next time around. If we stumble again in 2006, there's still time for a new manager.

The CSA executives, on the other hand, they've gotta go and go fast...

[Cheeta]

Sack his sorry ass.

Those who credit Mr. Yallop for this new style of play just need to look at the players at their club levels to see what sort of football's being played. Even in good old England.

WCQ is not the place for player development and squad experimentation. Not on the scale we've seen from Mr. Yallop.

As to prep time. Well, it's never enough. But I don't think we've played as many friendlys leading up to this phase of WCQ as we have in the past. I'm including the Miller lead friendlys, but Yallop was already in the hunt by then so I'm going to. A Manchester camp, and a B camp in Vancouver? The resourses the CSA allowed this man would've made Holger giddy.

He's opened up a few new faces to a higher level of football. Fair enough. To their individual benefits though. Not ours. And I'll argue Grande is the only new face who pulled his weight out there, and not just tonight.

He's also re-introduced a rash of old faces. And I think we can all agree where much of the blame lays in our not qualifying further in this tourny. Same old suspects.

Sack him. He's been in over his head from the start. Three CA nations should have made this odvious.

He knew what he was getting into. Here's the mess. If you think you can make this work in time to qualify take on the task. If you can't, lay low until after we bounce out of qualifying then come in as the new saviour.

Where I come from if you can't find a way to get the job done, your fault, his fault, blame the fu'king Martians anybodys fault, it dosen't matter. Get out of the way 'cause someone else well be found who can.

Will sacking Yallop help? Probably not. Football in this county is as rotten as it's ever been and will continue on with more of the same. Will it hurt? Probably not either. We've won zero matchs, officialy scored 3 goals in 5 tries and will finish last in CONCACAF's Group of Death with the strongest squad in my memmory. That's harsh.

[The Ref]

Whether Yallop did a good job or not or whether he can continue to build a team is really inmaterial. If nothing else he's got to go for sake of appearances.

[Grizzly]

I have thought about this for a while since the game ended and although I am divided on the issue I think my conclusion may be surprising given the amount of criticism I have levelled at Yallop lately. I was in favour of both firing Ossieck (still agree with this decision) and hiring Yallop (obviously a mistake in retrospect). He obviously did not have the coaching experience to lead a team to WCQ on short notice despite the energy and improved player-coach relationship he brought to the program. We should have hired the best experienced national team coach that we could afford. At this point we didn't need a talent developer or someone who could relate to the Canadian situation but just someone who could look at the available talent, select a good team from it and bring them through qualifying. Obviously Yallop made major mistakes throughout qualifying and should bear full responsibility for them. The team did play better and at times much better than previous incarnations. How much of this was due to Yallop and how much was due to a vastly improved skill level in our players is still up for debate.

On the other hand we are in no hurry to make a move with four long years to go before the next WCQ. Yallop has a contract and it would probably be expensive to terminate it. He has been good for developing young talent, creating depth and getting players signed to clubs. His experimentation did not suit WCQ but will not be bad in the next few years of friendlies. One can only hope that his coaching will improve with more experience on the job at this level. Plus his friends such as Onstad and Watson will soon be too old for him to call and hopefully he will be more unbiased in future player selection. I think at this point with the number of young players in the program that some continuity may be important. However, he should be on a short leash and if he continues to make bad decisions, repeats his errors from this WCQ or starts to alienate a significant number of players then he should be let go. I also think he should be given to the Gold Cup.

Another factor is who we could replace him with. I think at this time 4 years before the next WCQ that our options would not be very good particularly in our price range. The list of top level candidates willing to give 4 years to Canadian soccer is probably not very long. However, in a couple of years this might change as the commitment would not be as long for either party but would still allow the coach adequate preparation time. We might also be better able to afford a quality candidate at this time as the contract commitment would be shorter. Thus, as Yallop is at the very least a decent talent developer and has not created rifts with a large number of players I don't see much risk in keeping him on. He does have to know however, that errors such as he has recently made will not be tolerated in the future.

[Canadienfan]

Keep Yallop on until the Gold Cup and see how he fairs there. I agree with Grizzly's point in that it's probaly cheaper for the CSA to keep Frank on for now, and that if we need to hire a new coach we wouldn't have to sign him on for so many years later. Also other than for money I couldn't imagine many people being interested in the job of MNT coach at this point in time.

[Paddy]

Yallop and Onstad to the glue factory.

Yallop failed and probably knows that he won't be around for the next WCQ, so why bother letting him damage the team any further. The last thing we need is a good peformance at the weakly contested Gold Cup to make people think that he is the man for the job.

Truely a lost generation of Canadian soccer talent.

[Reza]

I think he should go. I am rarely for major coaching shake ups, but unfortunately, I think he has to go.

This has been our poorest WCQ performance. Irregardless of the poor ref calls in two matches, we still lacked preparations and mental toughness to maintain three very important and somewhat comfortable leads that we had.

I think his substitution of Iain Hume made no sense either and just added a dimension of mystery to his coaching career. Not including players like Klukowski and Nsaliwa who are both good players and play regularly and even Jim Brennan who has many years pro exerpeince and including, the untested Jamie Peters, and players like Carlo Corazzin and Mark Watson were another set of mistakes that he has to unfortunately pay for.

[brodycheese]

I say keep Yallop for the next two years, let him get players in Europe so they get exposure and increase our depth. He'll eventually get the depth and talent so we don't fit round pegs into square holes (Derosario a winger instead of forward). Yallop needs to stop depending on the old guys and start planning ahead.

My biggest worry is our backline, we have no central defenders ready for the next world cup qualifying. Devos, watson, are gone. Hutchinson isn't even a right back. Nsaliwa and Jazic and ???? Defending killed us this time around, for more often than not we were down a goal way to early in games.

[Marc]

Fire him. It's nice that he got Peters, Serioux, and Simpson jobs, but that wasn't his job.

Agree 100% with Reza.

[SeanKeay]

His player selection is by far the kicker, why we should fire him.

Putting on a guy who extremly over weight and will contribute nothing to the game, over a young strong Olivier Occean. And keeping a very sketchy keeper in net and not only that but making him the captian. Keeping guys like Bircham and Brennan out of the squad.

Its just time he has to go.

[fetajr]

Send him packing!!!... success in the MLS is worth peanuts in international soccer, the MLS sucks!

once again i stand by my notion:

GET AN ARGENTINIAN OR BRASILIAN COACH!!!

[Christian B.]

There is no reason to keep Yallop. He brought absolutely nothing positive to the team. He sticks with his friends instead of putting the best team on the field. Corrazin, Watson, Onstad what the hell is he thinking? That they are the best available players? Costa Rica beat us twice with their substitutions while Yallop was always making very bad switches. We were actually weaker after Yallop's changes. Corrazin for Hume I still can't believe it.

Thank you Frank. You're a very nice guy but the CSA made a huge mistake when they hired you. Go back to San Jose and take your favourite keeper with you. We need a leader NOW!!!!!!

[soccerbeast]

I have said since that first loss to Guatemala that Frank must go and that we had no chance to advance, but did any of you listen to the Beast, no, you pretended we still had a chance. This team had very poor leadership from Frank Yallop and we paid the price for it, as well as very poor goalkeeper from his mate Pat Onstad, friendships should not have anything to so with player selections, it's suicide at best. When i went to sleep last night the match was tied 1-1 and i was 100% certain that this team would find a way to blow it, not that a tie would do us any good anyway. And checking the Fifa site for the score i was not surprised by what i saw, now i'll get to see it on sporsnet this afternoon to see the disaster. Yes Frank must go.

[Moosehead]

quote:Originally posted by The Ref

Whether Yallop did a good job or not or whether he can continue to build a team is really inmaterial. If nothing else he's got to go for sake of appearances.

Agreed, it sends a message to the community that Canada means business and how important qualifying is.

[The Beaver]

First off, he will not get canned and will not resign. He said from the moment he got the position that he'd do his damnedest to qualify for 2006 but that this would be a very difficult challenge and that the more realistic goal would be 2010. He was NOT hired to be the immediate saviour of Canadian soccer: the CSA may be dumb at times, but they aren't that dumb. And neither is Frank.

Now, whether Frank has the chops to take a very young team and make them good enough to qualify for 2010, that remains to be seen.

I disagree with those of you who feel he should be axed because he did nothing for this team. I disagree entirely, and if you looked at the development as the games went on you'd see this team was really coming along. That first half last night was awesome. (Not sure what happened in the second half).

I say keep Yallop. It is too early to dump a coach who with proper time and more experience could very well become the sort of coach Bruce Arena has been for the Yanks. It would be unfair to Frank, our players, and ourselves to dump him too soon. We have to see what he can do given time and better preparation etc. And really, how does dumping him now let anyone know we are serious about World Cup Qualifying? I mean, who out there gives a damn that we are serious other than us die-hard fans? And really, what does that matter?

If Frank shows little or no results over the next couple of years, then I say he has to go. But he deserves a fair shake, and I have decent confidence that he'll get results.

[RS]

quote:Originally posted by soccerbeast

did any of you listen to the Beast, no, you pretended we still had a chance.

This is not the thread for your ego stroking.

I wanted objective analysis, which you seemed to give. But you prefaced it with this garbage. Start your own thread for that.

[argh1]

As disappointed as I am over the WCQ campaign . Would firing the coach after a few months solve anything ?

If we're gonna have a coach you gotta give him some time .

Give him the next 2 Gold Cups and maybe the next WCQ .

Who would want the job if we fire them with less than a year on the job , 'cuz we expect better results . Do they make enuff drugs for this job .

AD in the paper for coach of Canadian MNT :

Wanted expierienced soccer coach . Must have top level abilities .

Able to work in an atmosphere where no-one will notice your existence except during the 2 competions Canada enters . At which time success will be paramount .

Ability to locate , convince and enroll players spread all over the world to commit to the national team . Whilst convincing clubs you will not harm their players .

Ability to work in a vacuum a necessity .

Compensation comensurate with how cheap we can get you .

[marktci]

quote:Originally posted by The Beaver

I disagree with those of you who feel he should be axed because he did nothing for this team. I disagree entirely, and if you looked at the development as the games went on you'd see this team was really coming along. That first half last night was awesome. (Not sure what happened in the second half).

I say keep Yallop. It is too early to dump a coach who with proper time and more experience could very well become the sort of coach Bruce Arena has been for the Yanks. It would be unfair to Frank, our players, and ourselves to dump him too soon. We have to see what he can do given time and better preparation etc. And really, how does dumping him now let anyone know we are serious about World Cup Qualifying? I mean, who out there gives a damn that we are serious other than us die-hard fans? And really, what does that matter?

I'm with the Beav. To dump Frank right now looks like a panic move... and who is to say what we get is any better. The team has been improving. Don't get me wrong, there are some issues (questionable player selection and substitutions), but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Let's have some cool reflection, look at what we do in the Gold Cup and any other friendlies and then re-evaluate where we are headed.

[Whither Canada]

quote:Originally posted by argh1

AD in the paper for coach of Canadian MNT :

Wanted expierienced soccer coach . Must have top level abilities .

Able to work in an atmosphere where no-one will notice your existence except during the 2 competions Canada enters . At which time success will be paramount .

Ability to locate , convince and enroll players spread all over the world to commit to the national team . Whilst convincing clubs you will not harm their players .

Ability to work in a vacuum a necessity .

Compensation comensurate with how cheap we can get you .

:D

[The Ref]

I may be wrong on this but here it is. The general consencus seems to be that Yallop failed to qualify us and I say it is more than that. Let us assume that we would have been able to maintain the goal advantage we had when we were winning. Maybe that would have put us in the next stage the hexagonal. But that is not a qualification. We still would have needed to qualify out of the hex to reach Germany. The chances of that happening with Yallop's choices and playing were nil. The disappointment would have just been postponed and would have hurt even more. Watching the TV cameras views of the coaches you could see that the Ticos' coach was standing throughout the game at the edge of his box shouting instructions to the players, while good ol Yallop just sat there pensive and doing nothing.

We need someone that knows what it takes and can do the job of coaching. Maybe a comparison with the women is not appropriate, but just the same, people like Pellerud and Bridge have taken women soccer where no woman has been before. My point being that maybe, just maybe, finding coaches like that could take the men side to better levels.

[youllneverwalkalone]

Would anyone who was there last night care to disagree that the first 30 minutes were the most exciting we've seen in sometime (maybe ever) from the MNT?

Sure Holger or some other tactician of boredom would have gotten us through to the Hex. But then what? Lose 1-0 to T&T in the battle for 3rd?

Yallop's guy Onstad blew the game and we can blame both of them for our elimination. However, sacking Yallop now would be a disaster for three main reasons: 1) the players obviously love to play attacking football even if they're not so good at it yet 2) Yallop is known and respected abroad and his firing would certainly raise the eyebrows of potential candidates 3) he's Canadian, he's qualified, and he deserves a fair shake.

My only coaching change would be to appoint the Monster as a special assistant:

"Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack! Canaduh! Canaduh!"