Hart reflects back on WCQ + reaction to OO comments

[Grizzly]

I think we are getting completely off topic here and indeed falling into the trap that Hart is laying in this interview in finding reasons why he is not to blame. I have some strong reservations about how MLS is treating Canadian player development but also agree with BBTB that it is too early to say what the effects and benefits of the MLS teams will be in the future. We now have 3 first division clubs and one (soon to be two) second division clubs. The first division clubs do not play enough Canadians though they are promising to play more in the future. Even if they do keep their promise that is still not the ideal league structure like say in Germany but on the other hand I think a lot of the countries we are competing against have less than ideal league situations also. While most of the Central American and Caribbean leagues play mostly domestic players, the level of these leagues ranges from about NASL down to CSL level as we have seen from numerous games against the better teams from these leagues in Champions League competitions. I would say their player development systems are also far from ideal though they are more well established than our relatively new structure.

We can debate all we want about what will be the best structure, our current one, a lower level but national league etc. but none of that has any bearing on the discussion about the unqualified coach we hired to coach our national team and the extremely poor job he did in this role. I think those discussions should be continued on another thread of which several already exist on this topic. Now it goes without saying that if we had better players any coach we hired qualified or not would have an easier time and do a better job. I am sure FC Augsburgs coach would get better results if he had FC Bayern's players available to him but that is immaterial to the question of whether he is doing a good job coaching FC Augsburg. Now in answering the question of what Canada can do to improve its performance in soccer I have no problem if Hart states that the league structure must improve and MLS teams need to play and develope more Canadians. I have a big problem when he states stuff that try to find reasons for absolving him of the blame for doing a very poor job in coaching the players he did have available such as: “Everywhere I’ve travelled and sat down with some very respectable coaches, they want to know how you can do a job in a place that doesn’t have a league.”

[Grizzly]

Despite all of Hart's failings as a coach he at least seemed to have the redeeming quality of being classy and taking responsibility. If these quotes are accurate that seems to have been as much a sham as his coaching qualifications.

Which quote did you find so objectionable? Occean was the one who decided to air that dirty laundry in public so Hart was fully within his rights to point out the obvious regarding Occean's absences for (questinoable) injury and (reckless) suspension problems.

A better question would be to ask which quote I do not find objectionable because I find pretty much every statement objectionable. I have questioned Hart's ability right from the beginning starting from the very first game he coached as interim in Montreal against Jamaica which we won 1-0. And not because I have anything against him (I have never met him) but I have always found him to be unqualified for the coaching position not just on paper but also in what I have seen on the field. I will say he has improved over time and might (or might not) one day be a good coach if he started at NASL level and then MLS and got some experience but way out of his league at the present as national team coach. Nor did I see the type of improvement from him that I saw from another rookie coach in Jesse Marsh for example. However, the one thing he did have in his favour and gave me some respect for him was that he seemed like a good guy and took responsibility for the 8-1 defeat after the game (unlike Yallop who never took personal responsibility for anything) and resigned a few days later (unlike Mitchell). Nevertheless, one often finds out the true character of a leader when things go wrong and they take heat for it and now it seems like he is changing his tune. Now I will give him the benefit of the doubt a little bit because we did not hear the actual interview and have to depend on Larsen's presentation of it though it is also clear Larsen is very sympathetic to Hart and does not appear to have asked him very hard questions. So if Hart said things in a different manner or later were to explain things in a different way I would take that into consideration but what is presented in the article as his opinion I find extremely objectionable.

As coach Hart is both our leader and the captain of our ship and needs to accept responsibility for whatever happens. That is part of the job and if you do not like it do not go into that line of work. If the ship sinks because the navigator screws up it is still the captain's responsibility whether he is at fault or not. A good captain and leader does not blame the crew even if they criticize him publicly even if the captain is fully competent and did everything correctly that he should have done. It may suck getting criticized in silence but nothing can be won by publicly blaming others and it will only show your failings as a coach and leader. And in our national team's case I think Hart's mistakes and lack of competence and experience played a huge role in our failure. The best thing Hart could have done is to accept responsibility (which he did initially), keep silent about things, try to learn from his experiences and mistakes and try to continue his coaching career and improve as best he can.

Instead now we get statements/excuses like:

“The game belongs to the players,” Hart said when asked why things came unraveled. “(My friends asked) how do you go from giving up two goals in seven games to giving up (eight).

“I don’t understand it.”

and:

“Everywhere I’ve travelled and sat down with some very respectable coaches, they want to know how you can do a job in a place that doesn’t have a league.”

And stuff like the following really shows the mentality and lack of ability as a coach:

“I could see the game becoming way too open for the (Central American) heat,” Hart reflected.

“Even at 2-0 down … (I said) ‘let’s get into the dressing room.’”

Every Central American team is going to try and open up the game against us at home and we need a coach who can prepare us to deal with that possibility not one who is completely dependent on a strategy of closing the game down. And his only thought/reaction at 17 minutes into the game when we go down 2-0 and he sees the players heads drop is to hope we can make it into the dressing room? As soon as they scored the second goal I (and probably many others) said he has to sub on Hume because it was absolutely clear we needed someone to spark the team and I am not even the biggest Hume fan either (love his attitude, less enamored of his technique) but he is clearly the type of guy to go on the field and motivate the team. And everyone jumped on McKenna for his halftime comments yet no one seems concerned that our coach is admitting:

When Honduran forward Carlo Costly put the game out of reach at 3-0 before the half-hour mark, Hart admitted he knew “it wasn’t to be” in front of what was a breathtaking crowd.

I think comments like this and in this article in general show a lot of the reason why we played terrible in both Central American games. I liked Limniatis even though I think he is not qualified to be national team coach yet whatever his limitations he had a real "balls to the walls" attitude and that was the reason the Impact played well in very intense Central American atmosphere's. Where was that from Hart? Instead we got conservative and docile. And the attitude of the team starts from the top and now we hear what Hart's attitude was and also we have heard his captain's attitude so is it any surprise this team did not have a lot of fight in it?

And then the article and Hart broach the injustice of everyone remembering only the 8-1 defeat? Well I agree we should remember more than that game. I remember the terrible performance at the Gold Cup before WCQ after which Hart should have been fired. I remember the poor performance in the previous round in which we actually tied two minnows 0-0. And I remember 3 poor performances in this round, 2 meidocre ones (Cuba and Panama at home) and one good one against Honduras at home in which we could not score like usual during Hart's tenure. It was all bad, not just the 8-1.

And his answer to Occean's criticisms is:

“It’s one player that made a statement,” he continued. “If this was coming from six or seven players you should take it seriously. It’s coming from one player so let’s be honest.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of players who have played at a much higher level than Olivier and a lot longer,"

First of all it is only coming from one player because the others have not been asked and probably would be politically correct and not say anything anyway. Even our Mitchell mutiny team only had two players come out publicly as far as I remember. Plus, Hainault was not exactly happy about at least some of the treatment he got from Hart, it would be interesting to hear his opinion on Hart's abilities. I strongly suspect despite reports of some players liking Hart (mostly the same clique that bailed on Mitchell) that there would be quite a number of players who would agree with Occean's assessment of Hart as an amateur. It certainly coincides with what I have seen of Hart in games, practices and warmups particularly when I compare them to what I have witnessed at Bundesliga clubs. (Yallop's practices were very poor in my opinion too, do Canadian national team coaches know any other drill then having the players play keep away with one player in a circle? ) And exactly who has he coached who has played at a higher level than Occean and longer? I can only think of JDG and a few games with Radzinski as interim. There are a few guys with similar level of play as Occean like McKenna, Simpson and Hutchinson but none of that constitutes coaching a lot of high level players. And those high level players he did coach were all solely through coaching the national team. Indeed that is exactly the problem, not only did Hart have little experience outside of the national team in coaching guys playing at the level of Occean, he had little experience outside the national team coaching guys playing at the level of Ledgerwood. Is he trying to fool us with this statement or is he just delusional about his qualifications and experience?

[Grizzly]

Now my point in all this and in the Occean criticism thread is that it is of utmost importance for our federation to hire a competent coach. Yes the players have to play better and accept responsibility Occean included and we have to improve our player pool. A good coach is not a panacea for all that ills Canadian soccer, nor a guarantee we will qualify next time and we can not blow our whole budget on one. However, a good coach is and should be the captain of the ship sporting wise of Canadian soccer and can influence the soccer culture of this country a lot. And he can certainly influence the play of the national team players we do have in a positive way even if they are not as skilled as we would like.

For all of the flaws in Canadian soccer, we have a team that is competitive with most of our CONCACAF rivals and should even be able to give a good game to teams that are significantly better than us like Mexico and the USA. We are constantly underachieving and did so again this WCQ. Hart was hired to make this team perform to the utmost of its abilities and he did not. It is BS for him to blame other reasons for this failure, this team did not play well throughout WCQ whether against minnows or teams our equal. And whatever failing our players have concerning skill level or attitude you can not expect them to excel if you do not hire a good coach for them. If an employer does not give his workforce a competent boss who can work at their level then his company is bound to fail whether the employees are good or poor. Indeed I would argue a team with a poor attitude and deficiencies in ability need a good boss/coach more than a good team. People can argue the players are not good enough or have a bad attitude all they want but until we give them a good competent international level coach how can anyone tell?

And given that our federation has made 3 bad hires in a row I am perfectly supportive of any player criticizing Hart or doing anything that might motivate or pressure the CSA to finally do the right thing. That does not absolve said player of any personal responsibility for their play or behaviour during WCQ. We can not blow the whole budget on the coach but we do need to spend more than we have in the past. And I think we would probably be surprised at how well Hart was paid. I do not know the figure but I was surprised at how much they paid Mitchell. I am sure we could get better than Hart even at the same salary and should be able to get far better if we increase the salary a bit. I could live with not qualifying if at least when I watched the national team they played their hearts out and gave their all both in the sense of effort and playing in a suitable tactic that emphasizes their positives and mitigates their negatives as well as showing some signs of improvement. Years and years of seeing the team play lifelessly in poor tactic formations and continually failing is hard to take.