loyola Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by Canuck Oranje On Cheeta's point, most experienced coaches have extensive networks. That means they have people whose judgement they trust regarding player evaluation. That also means that they do not always have to go and see young players before calling them because someone in his network has and has recommended. Club networks are even stronger and more developed. I don't think our MNT has that at the moment. At least, not in continental Europe. Of course playing in England for Ipswich for 10 years won't help you get contacts.......Coaching 3 years in the MLS won't help you either. I'm pretty sure FY receive good scouting about all of our players in the UK. I can't say that he has contacts in other coutries such as Germany or Norway but I can't say that he doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canuck Oranje Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 I will aware of Yallop's playing record, his club coaching record, and his MNT coaching record but it doesn't make me feel any more confident. At the end of the day, a MNT Coach is judged on his success. That is winning. In my opinion, the MNT is underacheiving given the talent at its disposal. At some point in the future, the Coach will have to take some responsibility for that. And I am not saying all of the responsibility because I know there are other reasons for that too. In any serious soccer playing country, the Coach is ultimately held accountable for underacheivement. I don't know when the day of reckonning should be; but, there needs to be one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tg-13 Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 I also don't know how much better the Greek league is compared to Norway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canuck Oranje Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 I agree. Comparing leagues is full of subjective assessment. The best approach would involve some sort of combination of assessing individual teams and the competitiveness within the league from top to bottom. Even then, it is difficult because varying styles of play and variation from year to year. quote:Originally posted by tg-13 I also don't know how much better the Greek league is compared to Norway... The best teams in Greece are better than the best teams in Norway (despite Olympiakos losing at home 3-1 to Rosenborg in the CL, Olympiakos are notorious for going to **** in European play). The bottom clubs in Norway are probably better than the bottom clubs in Greece (which are really bad). So if you want to see how good Daniel really is, monitor how he does against Olympiakos, Panathinaikos, AEK, and I guess Xanthi this year. Winning 1-0 against Panionios doesn't prove anything, IMO. PAOK is always one of the best 4 or 5 teams in Greece, so if Daniel is their No. 1 that means something. Take it for what it's worth... but then again the Greek league isn't known for its goaltending. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metro Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 One thing Fernandes will be exposed to while playing in Greece is playing under pressure, both from the media and the supporters. For example, there are at least four sports papers based in Salonica, and Fernandes can find himself playing in front of 30 000 - 50 000 very loud and slightly intimidating fans for the big matches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tg-13 Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by Metro One thing Fernandes will be exposed to while playing in Greece is playing under pressure, both from the media and the supporters. For example, there are at least four sports papers based in Salonica, and Fernandes can find himself playing in front of 30 000 - 50 000 very loud and slightly intimidating fans for the big matches. Good point Metro. In terms of pressure, for the bigger teams, the Greek League is as tough as any in the world. PAOK supporters are under the illusion that they can compete with the big Athenian clubs (nope), so there's that much MORE pressure playing for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
An Observer Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 Not sure about the size of the crowds in Greece, I believe someone posted here a few months back that most sides get in the low thousands and the big Athen's clubs between 10 to 15k which strikes me as MLS equivalent and fairly similar to the Skandi leagues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by An Observer Not sure about the size of the crowds in Greece, I believe someone posted here a few months back that most sides get in the low thousands and the big Athen's clubs between 10 to 15k which strikes me as MLS equivalent and fairly similar to the Skandi leagues. People are so funny on this board, talking about the 30-50K crowd in Greece and PAOK being a "major european club". Here are the crowd for this year in Greece, the 50K crowd are an exception, most crowd are about 2K. http://sports.phantis.com/soccer/championship/a.division/results.php average crowd for day 10: an impressive 2893 per game! PAOK average playing in front(home and away) of 7621 fans per game, which is better but a bit dissapointing for such a great european club. At home, PAOK draw an average of 6150 fans per game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonovision Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by loyola People are so funny on this board, talking about the 30-50K crowd in Greece and PAOK being a "major european club". Here are the crowd for this year in Greece, the 50K crowd are an exception, most crowd are about 2K. http://sports.phantis.com/soccer/championship/a.division/results.php average crowd for day 10: an impressive 2893 per game! PAOK average playing in front(home and away) of 7621 fans per game, which is better but a bit dissapointing for such a great european club. At home, PAOK draw an average of 6150 fans per game. I guess if crowd sizes dictated strength of competition and thus quality of keeper, our depth chart would be something like: Pat Onstad --> Greg Sutton --> Daniel Fernandes --> Lars Hirschfeld --> Kenny Stamatopolous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted November 23, 2005 Author Share Posted November 23, 2005 In this case, it was in regards to another poster's remarks on "big-crowd pressure". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tg-13 Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by loyola People are so funny on this board, talking about the 30-50K crowd in Greece and PAOK being a "major european club". Here are the crowd for this year in Greece, the 50K crowd are an exception, most crowd are about 2K. http://sports.phantis.com/soccer/championship/a.division/results.php average crowd for day 10: an impressive 2893 per game! PAOK average playing in front(home and away) of 7621 fans per game, which is better but a bit dissapointing for such a great european club. At home, PAOK draw an average of 6150 fans per game. I'm not sure where you got that quote, but nobody said PAOK was a "major european club." The only thing said about PAOK's status was that it is the 4th biggest club in Greece and, given the relative strength of the two leagues, is probably better than the 4th place team in Norway. Attendance in Greece means little if we're talking about the pressure of that league. Ultras/hooligans have taken over almost every Greek stadium, so people don't feel safe taking their kids to a match anymore. I personally would never attend a match in Greece under any circumstances. So if PAOK plays in front of a crowd of 6000, that's probably the 6000 most intense and sometimes violent supporters of the club. And I invite everybody to read the Thessaloniki press the first time Daniel has a poor match, and see what they say about him. It won't be pretty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by youllneverwalkalone Why does Yallop have to "scout" him at all??? Scouting suggests the possibility that he's not really what we need right now. Does Yallop think we have such an embarrassment of riches at this position that he can ignore the 1st team keeper of a major European club? I'm not sure Canada could defeat PAOK -even with Murdoch, BA, and Face on the bench. WTF are we scheduling kick arounds with Luxembourg if not to give a young keeper an easy time of working his way onto the squad. Tg-13, you can read it here. Jonovision, I was responding to the posters talking about the crowd size in Greece, I put the real numbers. No words about the effects of the crowd on GKs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tg-13 Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 quote:Originally posted by loyola Tg-13, you can read it here. Jonovision, I was responding to the posters talking about the crowd size in Greece, I put the real numbers. No words about the effects of the crowd on GKs. Sorry Loyola, my bad, I thought you were implying it was something I said. All apologies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jeffery S. Posted November 23, 2005 Share Posted November 23, 2005 I feel obliged to comment on a few misconceptions here. First, regarding scouting. I think whoever says it is tough to scout with one game is right, and perhaps we do not have the budget to travel to Greece just for that, fair enough. But Frank can get the budget to watch games on tv or request videos, this goes for everyone who is in our pool. And that is a lot cheaper than travelling. Frank has a source on info on Fernandes if he wants right in Vancouver, the fellow at Metro (I think that's the club) who recommended him to the folks at Paok when he was playing winter league in Van two years ago. Second, regarding fans opinion of Fernandes at Paok. If you read the Phantis board they are very positive of him being starter, they were unanimously relieved when he was given the starting spot. They regularly chant in his favour at games (even after the kicking blunder the league game after his UEFA heroics), try to convince him to play for Greece, and he turned down an offer last May from a club that is above Paok normally in the table (one of the big Athens clubs) mostly due to support from fans, even when he was just starting the final games of the year when things were pretty well decided. (Oh, he has played more games for Paok than Lars for Tromso, and more than 11, it is about 20 in fact, including late last season, cup matches). Third, look at the Greek clubs goals for/against, they are very defensive overall. Maybe that is miserly defending, maybe it is good goalkeeping. Fourth, regarding attendance in Greece. For Paok at least those stats are only walk-up purchases, we have already spoken about this in a previous thread, folks still pull up the erroneous arguments. When stats say 7,000 at a Paok game they ignore the 8,000 season ticket holders who do not show in the Greek stats. So the Paok site says 15,000 at Toumba. Why do some have to dig up such spurious arguments to downplay a keeper's importance. Fifth, recently we have seen a Euro-club rating thread on these boards. Greece at 8th is above Norway 18th and way ahead of Sweden 26th (see http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method3/crank2006.html) Norway has only one club to do anything in Europe regularly, Greece has four able to hold their own. Finally, if Lars plays at Rosenborg and Kenny does not seem bent on joining Tromso in another relegation next season, I will give them full credit. On paper their playing for those clubs will at least give them a relatively close point of comparison with a club like Paok. That is all on paper, so I at least am not saying he should walk in as our starter. Just that Yallop is not showing fully good faith with him (and maybe with Bircham too, and maybe others, like in Scotland) while he is giving a huge benefit of the doubt to players who probably, as things stand, are getting called up for Canada on the basis of memory, history, past performance, or way out-of-date scouting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 Well, if someone tells you that you that attendance in Greece are between 30K-50K, you try to find some sites who'll tell you this. But the site that I found has lower numbers. Maybe you're right with the season holders but I've never seen that kind of stats anywhere(without season tickets holder). I'm not trying to downplay the importance of a GK, I'm trying to find out the real numbers for attendance, who aren't near the 30K per game. Stop the paranoia and conspiracy theories please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youllneverwalkalone Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 quote:Originally posted by loyola Are you suggesting that DF is what we need without having seen him play? This is what I'm suggesting. Exactly. I've never seen you play, yet I'm pretty sure you're not cut out to be our #1 keeper. I guess I'm totally insane for making this suggestion becuase I haven't scouted you? Fortunately for you, and me, people get opportunities based on their resume. How many people have to perform on their job before they get an opportunity to perform at their job? How does that work exactly? 1st team keeper for PAOK is the best resume we have right now. Okay, it's true I haven't scouted him, but according to your system Jose Theodore should be our #1. We have nothing to play for for minimum a year, probably two, and there won't be a better opportunity to develop a prospect who is already game tested in UEFA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrennanFan Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 quote:Originally posted by youllneverwalkalone 1st team keeper for PAOK is the best resume we have right now. I'd say possible/probable first team keeper for Rosenborg, with an excellent track record playing for canada is the best resume we have right now. however, we should see what fernandez can do internationally and the time to test him is now. who knows how many games we will play in 2006, and by 2007 we should have our WCQ team set and playing together at every opportunity. Personally, I dont know what all the fuss is about. Fernandez would have to prove himself the second coming of craig forrest before he bumps Hirschfeld, taking into account Lars' equal club level and experience in concacaf. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manuel Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 All the fuss is that he should at least be given a chance. We're not saying he should be Canadas #1, but based on his cluc performances, why hasn't be been called? And what does Yallop have to lose by calling him? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Massive Attack Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 I think Fernandes deserves to have a chance, mind you, giving him a chance against Luxembourg would have been a waste of time. Hopefully we'll get to see him against Austria in March. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gian-Luca Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 quote:Originally posted by Massive Attack I think Fernandes deserves to have a chance, mind you, giving him a chance against Luxembourg would have been a waste of time. That's true, we could have won that game with a mannikin in the nets given how much work Kenny had to do. However, if Thunder Dan ends up playing the whole winter for PAOK while Kenny & Lars (and Greg for that matter) have been idle during their respective off-seasons, Fernandes should be the prime candidate for the start March 1st against Austria. Given our lack of depth in goal in recent years, we can't afford not to give Thunder Dan a look & some international experience. It would be nice to know we have 4 keepers in the national team pool (all in their 20's) with a couple more prospects like Begovic on the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metro Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 As someone who follows the Greek League regularly, I would agree with virtually all the points made by Jeffrey S. above, IMHO. (Jeffrey, I would argue defensive tactics best explain the lack of goals in the League; the lower teams don't have the talent to compete with the others so they do their best to prevent goals. But goalkeeping has improved the past few years. Furthermore, watch for Greece's UEFA ranking to decrease within he next few years.) When it comes to attendance, don't just look at the internet statistics; they have always been understated. PAOK frequently gets almost 30 000 at home (sellout) for a European Cup game or whenever one of the big 3 make the trip from Athens. (If there's less than 30 000, it can be due to security reasons.) Fuerthermore, when PAOK goes to Athens to play one of the big 3, there can be crowds of up to 40 000-50 000 depending on the importance of the match and which stadium is being used. Of course, they don't get these attendances every week so my apologies to those who misunderstood my original post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanKeay Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 All i ask, is for people to stop being haters!!!!! DONT HATE JUST LOVE oh btw, Daniel Fernandez is no Lars!! (ps all you guys who were anti lars before can goto hell!) Ohh snap, now im a hater!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted November 24, 2005 Share Posted November 24, 2005 Youllneverwalkalone: Right now FY is looking more indepth of DF resume, he's a good boss, a very good one, he wants to know more about him. He'll look at your resume and will also check some game tapes to be sure you're not the next Terry Dunfield or Joey Torchia and that you worth a call. That's his job and he's doing it right now. I'm a fan of having the same GK (if he does well) in goal for 80% of our games until 2008. The same apply for the players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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