Where Would We Be With Holger?

[youllneverwalkalone]

I admit completely I was in the fire the boring German, hire Yallop and play some positive football camp. But man, reading through the Dale Mitchell support thread, I notice we had a pretty decent manager a few years back.

Of course, Holger alienated his players and played a boring brand of football right?

But I'm wondering now if this is really true? I mean who did he really alienate who matters now? He was responsible for bringing along Hirschfeld, Nsaliwa, Stalteri, McKenna, Klukowski, De Guzman, Hutchinson, DeRosario, and Hume. How many of these guys were actually revolting?

If he had the today Julian, Atiba, and DeRosario, what style would we play? I can't imagine we could come out and sh*t the bed any worse than what I saw against South Africa.

Any thoughts?

[Duane Rollins1555362254]

quote:Originally posted by youllneverwalkalone

I admit completely I was in the fire the boring German, hire Yallop and play some positive football camp. But man, reading through the Dale Mitchell support thread, I notice we had a pretty decent manager a few years back.

Of course, Holger alienated his players and played a boring brand of football right?

But I'm wondering now if this is really true? I mean who did he really alienate who matters now? He was responsible for bringing along Hirschfeld, Nsaliwa, Stalteri, McKenna, Klukowski, De Guzman, Hutchinson, DeRosario, and Hume. How many of these guys were actually revolting?

If he had the today Julian, Atitba, and DeRosario, what style would we play? I can't imagine we could come out and sh*t the bed any worse than what I saw against South Africa.

Any thoughts?

Remember, Holger was losing it a bit at the end. What was it he said after the Germany game again?

But, it's crossed my mind that we'd be better off if we had kept him, yes.

[CanadasBest]

Actually I was thinking about the same thing when I just replied to the Dale Mitchell thread.

I was quite keen to see Holger take another run in 2006 and was dissapointed that Yallop was his replacement.

I really don't know where we'd be. On one hand Holger ignored players like DeRo. On the other hand he didn't have Radzinski, and also in my opinion he had less options up front. He got us some good results. We had a good defensive game strategy which was good, but generated relatively little offense. A lot of the offense was also generated off set plays and goals from defenders. In WCQ I thought we created a lot of chances but just had really poor finishing and some bad luck.

[jpg75]

Holger could not have lasted any longer than he did. It's like Mike Keenan kicking ass wherever he goes and getting short-term results, only to see the same tactic blow up in his face when the team stops responding to him.

Holger was treating them like kids, he publicly berated some of the players in a hotel lobby for goofing around and "acting unprofessionally". He also humiliated Marc Bircham by calling him to the Confederation Cup in Japan and then not playing him in any of the 3 games - knowing that Marcs' dad had flown in from England to finally watch his son play for Canada.

[BearcatSA]

I wonder if it's possible to tweak the focus of this interesting thread to something along the lines of what we have learned from Osieck's reign (and Yallop's tenure, for that matter) as the MNT manager and how these lessons can be applied to the current situation under Mitchell?

[Toronto MB]

Frankly, like many of us I think partially Holger just lost his mind trying to cope with the CSA and the reality of Canadian Soccer.

The poor guy went into his native Germany with what could not have been anything better than a C quality team. He had NO options up front, goals were coming form Watson, DeVos, McKenna and Stalteri for the lart part at that time.

For a German manager of his experience and pedigree, it must have been absolute culture shock working with football in Canada. Like Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse now, Holger ventured into the depths of the unknown and seemingly lost his cool.

You can't argue with his attempts to set-up a national technical infrastructure or his credentials.

I think unfortunately though the good luck he received to win the GC turned around and bad luck ran him out of the WCQ semi's.

[BearcatSA]

quote:Originally posted by jpg75

Holger could not have lasted any longer than he did. It's like Mike Keenan kicking ass wherever he goes and getting short-term results, only to see the same tactic blow up in his face when the team stops responding to him.

Holger was treating them like kids, he publicly berated some of the players in a hotel lobby for goofing around and "acting unprofessionally". He also humiliated Marc Bircham by calling him to the Confederation Cup in Japan and then not playing him in any of the 3 games - knowing that Marcs' dad had flown in from England to finally watch his son play for Canada.

These are examples of some of the negative things are learned from his MNT managerial experience, the issues with man management that emerged. On the positive side in his championship GC run, if you put aside for the moment the red hot goaltending of Forrest and the luck of a coin toss, he fit his tactics to the talent he had at his disposal and was able to get the most out of those players during that tournament.