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holger osieck is coaching japan in the asian cup final today. pretty crazy to think he led us to a gold cup championship and then a few players didn't like his disciplinary style and that was enough to have him fired from the job. its not like we have a roster of superstars yet guys were able to stand up and state they didn't like how he treated them. he was our best chance to shape a team that can qualify for the world cup. he truly understands world football. ten years later we are hanging on to guys like stalteri and de rosario. since him we have had a run of brutal coaches.

hart is a good coach, and can motivate, but on the international stage he has no experience understanding that sort of chess match that goes on in interpreting the nuances of a game or tournament. best of luck to him but as we near world cup qualifying, again we look to crash out early without a serious restructure of our approach.

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holger osieck is coaching japan in the asian cup final today. pretty crazy to think he led us to a gold cup championship and then a few players didn't like his disciplinary style and that was enough to have him fired from the job. its not like we have a roster of superstars yet guys were able to stand up and state they didn't like how he treated them. he was our best chance to shape a team that can qualify for the world cup. he truly understands world football. ten years later we are hanging on to guys like stalteri and de rosario. since him we have had a run of brutal coaches.

hart is a good coach, and can motivate, but on the international stage he has no experience understanding that sort of chess match that goes on in interpreting the nuances of a game or tournament. best of luck to him but as we near world cup qualifying, again we look to crash out early without a serious restructure of our approach.

I couldn't agree more with you.

I read a few months ago an article about a former Argentinean player, Pedro Troglio, where he says that he and his roommate were playing Mario Bros before a WCQ game (for Italy 1990) and they were caught by the coach at 3AM, still woke up, Troglio was supposed to start that match but he didn't. That's discipline.

Compare that to JDG partying after WCQ game back in 2008 and there's no consequence at all, starting against Mexico a few days later. Unacceptable.

The CSA and the Canadian players have a lot to learn not only on the field but also off the field, specially some players.

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Holger has done fantastically well to change this Socceroos team in only a few months. Pim Verbeek's Socceroos were stale and predictable. Holger has them playing better football and has started the process of refreshing the squad. They will feel unlucky to have lost tonight. That being said, Japan has played some brilliant football and their semifinal against South Korea was probably the best Asian match I've seen. The winning goal tonight, in extra time, was a superb volley that will not look out of place in any football hilight reel.

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A guy named George Best was pretty good at partying too. I'm not 100% behind it but there's an argument to be made for the night before a game - but after? What's it got to do with how well or how hard you try in a game? If a guy plays like a dog and has no idea how to leave it on the field and drinks in his hotel all night - is that better than a guy who plays well, leaves it all on the field and parties in the hotel bar?

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No, to look beyond.
You need to remeber Holger was also natonal technical director, and he got rid of the NCCP process of coach education for soccer in Canada, which has been a long term detriment and error. Holger was and is in my opinion directly responsible for the bogus B licence process that occurs in Provinces like Ontario.

Holger let the bogus provinical B licence process by the likes of Jimmy one foot Canavan exist and unfortunately years and years later the damage is still being done.

Just ask any candidate for a Ontario B licence and Pre B licence, they will tell you ... still your accent gets you further to qualification then the knowledge you have and how you transmit that to players.

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I couldn't agree more with you.

I read a few months ago an article about a former Argentinean player, Pedro Troglio, where he says that he and his roommate were playing Mario Bros before a WCQ game (for Italy 1990) and they were caught by the coach at 3AM, still woke up, Troglio was supposed to start that match but he didn't. That's discipline.

Compare that to JDG partying after WCQ game back in 2008 and there's no consequence at all, starting against Mexico a few days later. Unacceptable.

The CSA and the Canadian players have a lot to learn not only on the field but also off the field, specially some players.

Was that after the Honduras game in Montreal?

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Hmmm. I was with the team after the Jamaica game a month earlier in Toronto and they were all drinking, it was an official CSA post match party but they all seemed pretty tame. JDG ducked out of the event pretty early.

Someone posted (don't remember who) after the game that he was at the same hotel with the Honduran players. The day after they were working early in the pool doing some exercises. Also, I know as a fact that there are some players who smoke in our NMT.

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Holger has done fantastically well to change this Socceroos team in only a few months. Pim Verbeek's Socceroos were stale and predictable. Holger has them playing better football and has started the process of refreshing the squad. They will feel unlucky to have lost tonight. That being said, Japan has played some brilliant football and their semifinal against South Korea was probably the best Asian match I've seen. The winning goal tonight, in extra time, was a superb volley that will not look out of place in any football hilight reel.

The TS said he's coaching Japan and you're saying he's leading Australia. Which is it?

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Someone posted (don't remember who) after the game that he was at the same hotel with the Honduran players. The day after they were working early in the pool doing some exercises. Also, I know as a fact that there are some players who smoke in our NMT.

That was my father who stayed in the same hotel as the Honduran team and was very impressed by the disciplined way the team followed the directions of the coach as they trained early the next morning.

After the Jamaica game I think several of them including JDG were hosting parties at various bars in Toronto so I imagine some of them left the CSA party pretty early. That doesn't bother me as much because as disappointing as the tie was, it was not a loss and if I remember correctly there was no other game coming up. But to party after the Honduras game in Montreal which pretty much killed our qualifying chances is really hard to understand especially with another super important/last chance to save WCQ game coming up in the next few days.

I think Ossieck was probably the second best coach in our history after Waiters. However, I don't think it was a mistake to fire him when we did. Coaches have a shelf life after which it is often better to change and Ossieck for all his abilities had some pretty strong negatives as well: poor man management, some disciplinary rules that went beyond reason and alienated players, sometimes judging players on where they played as opposed to how they played, etc. He did a lot for our program and won a continental championship but it was time to go in a different direction with a different personality. THE MISTAKE WAS NOT HIRING A COACH TO REPLACE HIM OF SIMILAR QUALIFICATIONS. We ended up hiring two inexperienced incompetents in Yallop and Mitchell (the jury is still out on Hart). If we couldn't afford better (ie. Ossieck was working for a below market level salary and couldn't be replaced) then we shouldn't have fired Ossieck. In retrospect, I would rather we kept him then hire those two but mostly I just wish we had hired a much better coach to replace him.

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The other face of the coin is that Holger didn't think that our players in general were good enough in football for him to bother. I got this one time I had lunch with him early in his tenure.

Yeah, I would have fired him for the things he said about our players.

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That was my father who stayed in the same hotel as the Honduran team and was very impressed by the disciplined way the team followed the directions of the coach as they trained early the next morning.

After the Jamaica game I think several of them including JDG were hosting parties at various bars in Toronto so I imagine some of them left the CSA party pretty early. That doesn't bother me as much because as disappointing as the tie was, it was not a loss and if I remember correctly there was no other game coming up. But to party after the Honduras game in Montreal which pretty much killed our qualifying chances is really hard to understand especially with another super important/last chance to save WCQ game coming up in the next few days.

Totally agreed.

As for Ossieck, he was an effective, pragmatic coach. Sure, he benefitted from tremendous goaltending (Forrest), timely scoring (Corrazin), and a coin toss during the GC 2000 run, but he did an excellent job of playing to the strengths of his players (younger guys with a ton of workrate). I thought the QF vs Mexico was a tremendously disciplined performance where the guys believed in the game plan and delivered the goods (thanks, Richard Hastings, for that goal!). (Four years later we watched another German coach lead a European light weight to the Euro crown in a not dissimilar fashion, but I digress). His subsequent downfall can be attributed to a number of factors of his own making, including the ones you have mentioned, but I also believe it to be a two way street with some of our players contributing to that situation, as well. The chemistry and collective spirit that carried us to the GC could not be rekindled.

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Managers are hired to be fired. Unfortunately in our case we have far too few players of international quality, or even close to international quality so once the relationship between a segment of that player pool and the manager becomes acidic it's time to move on. Happens all over the world all the time so why should Canada be any different?

Thought he was a great manager, realistic with an astute eye if a bit overly cautious to my mind but still more than capable. Do wonder what we'd see from him with our current (and getter younger ever year it seems) crop of players on the international stage. He's got A LOT more experience now and as much high level success to show for it so.

Yeah, blunt German manners rubbed some the wrong way. Poor choice of words can go a long way to knotting your own noose sometimes. Think some of the players (and Vs) were thinned skinned about it all at the time, not always, his manners deserved criticism on occasion, but there was certainly a sensitivity around here.

Remember when he said something like "Pat forgot he could use his hands" to the press after Onstad batted a harmless lob into his own goal and everyone went ape around here. Read it as a friendly jab myself, an attempt to shrug off and disarm an embarrassing incident for one of our NT vets but it wasn't generally interpreted that way. Some people can't do humour.

Anyway, congrats to Oz and their German Gaffer.

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A couple of things: I agree with Griz and Cheeta about managers having a shelf life, they are all hired to be eventually fired! I don't think Holger was ever adequately replaced, time will tell with Hart! I always liked Holger's frankness, he had some good blunt responses to questions by the media! As for the players partying after a match, there are different levels of partying and because a player has a couple of beers after the match at a social get together it doesn't necessarily mean it will influence his performance in three days time! These guys are pretty wound up after a match, I don't think you can expect them to go to bed an hour or two afterwards, hell, I can't sleep for hours after a game in my oldtimers hockey league!

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You mean the truth. Because so far Osieck is still correct.

Frankness, blunt honest all are good.

But whining to the German press cause he was embarrassed to coach Canada and lose in his home country crossed a line.

I don't really care.

He failed, that hasn't changed either.

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But whining to the German press cause he was embarrassed to coach Canada and lose in his home country crossed a line.

I don't remember him saying this after the game. Do you have a source? I didn't like what he said when asked by the German press why he didn't make substitutions (we played pretty strong against Germany in the first half but they changed most of their squad in the second half and playing against fresh but still very strong players killed us). He said that he only had extras on the bench (as in people in the crowd scenes of a movie). This was very disrespectful to the players who were on the bench and also indicative of his attitude that anyone not playing in Europe was crap and incapable. (He underrated North American players and then we went to the other extreme with Yallop who overrated them.) It also was an example where he did not utilize his resource well because we absolutely needed some fresh legs on the pitch and a few of the bench players were more capable than he gave them credit for. It also ignored the fact that part of the reason the bench was so short was because he had pissed off so many other players in the past. I don't absolve our players of some of the blame either and player discipline has been a problem since Holger but he really went beyond what was both professional and needed to instill a disciplined team so has to shoulder a lot of the blame for players not wanting to play for him. If he said stuff like this in public one can just imagine what he said in private.

I think in judging Osieck we have to be very cogniscent of one fact. He has had some success at a high level but has never held a head coaching job other than the Canada job for more than 2 years. He is the type of coach you bring in when you have a pretty good team already that has grown lazy and needs shaking up. He can come in and instill some discipline and do a good job in the short term but probably isn't going to last very long. In Germany they refer to guys like him as Fireman coaches. We had him for 4 years and no other team has had him for close to that long. So once again our mistake was not to fire him but not to hire someone with a different style but equally qualified.

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He is the type of coach you bring in when you have a pretty good team already that has grown lazy and needs shaking up. He can come in and instill some discipline and do a good job in the short term but probably isn't going to last very long.

I tend think the opposite regarding Osiecck: at that time of his tenure a strong disciplinarian working with younger guys who had potential but not a whole lot of professional pedigree in their careers, guys who don't know any differently and simply followed instructions. Dare I say similar to the guy that coached TFC for the first 2/3 of last season? (Obviously that's a whole different can of worms open to question and debate). I'm sure his experience since his time with Canada has evolved his thinking and man management skills, but in the end I stll see a guy who will not suffer fools gladly, especially players who may overrate their worth.

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I tend think the opposite regarding Osiecck: at that time of his tenure a strong disciplinarian working with younger guys who had potential but not a whole lot of professional pedigree in their careers, guys who don't know any differently and simply followed instructions. Dare I say similar to the guy that coached TFC for the first 2/3 of last season? (Obviously that's a whole different can of worms open to question and debate). I'm sure his experience since his time with Canada has evolved his thinking and man management skills, but in the end I stll see a guy who will not suffer fools gladly, especially players who may overrate their worth.

Well you are right in that your view is opposite because I completely disagree. We had quite a few experienced veterans when he took over and it was mostly them he pissed off partly because he treated them like children. And I think if you are not going to suffer fools gladly you should also not act like one yourself and there were also many instances where his behaviour was as poor as any of the players. He may have changed and learned in the meantime (and we will see how long he lasts with Australia) but the fact remains that he has never lasted at any team other than Canada for more than 2 years and that says a lot.

That being said, the comparison to Preki is a poor one though other than they were both disciplinarians who acted like fools themselves at times. Holger for all his flaws was able to judge talent, use the resources available to him and had a pretty good tactical awareness even if he wasn't afraid to play unattractive football. My impression of Preki was a guy who was not qualified/competent to be a coach who lucked into a pretty good situation in Chivas that made him a reputation far higher than his actual skill level warranted (some parallels with Yallop there). Preki is a coach at a similar level to Yallop and Mitchell, ie. well below national team level, while Holger was a well qualified professional coach.

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Coaches have a shelf life after which it is often better to change and Ossieck for all his abilities had some pretty strong negatives as well: poor man management, some disciplinary rules that went beyond reason and alienated players, sometimes judging players on where they played as opposed to how they played, etc.

Coming to your first post Grizzly, I wonder what do you mean by poor man management, disciplinary rules and alienated players? I'm asking because I didn't follow the team closely back then during Ossieck's time.

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