MLS Coaches on the Hot Seat

For­mer Toronto FC coach, Chris Cummins

With the not too sur­pris­ing news this morn­ing that Chris Cum­mins is out as coach of Toronto FC, let’s look at the rest of the coach­ing can­di­dates for dis­missal in MLS. Start­ing from the team with the worst record in the league, the New York Red Bulls, and work­ing our way up the table, these men should be feel­ing the pres­sure from team own­ers for fail­ing to qual­ify for the postseason.

Richie Williams – Red Bull New York: When Juan Car­los Osario announced he was resign­ing as man­ager of New York on August 21^st, his assis­tant coach Richie Williams stepped in as the interim coach for the remain­der of the sea­son. Williams also held this post for six weeks in 2006, when he took over for the fired Mo John­ston, before Bruce Arena was hired later that sum­mer. Bot­tom line: Williams has served admirably guid­ing a club that had lit­tle chance of affect­ing the play­off pic­ture just one year after reach­ing the MLS Cup finals. With NYRB mov­ing into a new sta­dium next year, and look­ing to make a splash in the media by hir­ing a “big-name” coach, every­one expects Williams to resume his career as an assis­tant in 2010. Also, don’t be sur­prised if Jeff Agoos is jet­ti­soned from his post as Sport­ing Direc­tor – news has already leaked that the team was talk­ing with ex-Chelsea boss Avram Grant about tak­ing over both duties, before he accepted a sim­i­lar offer from Portsmouth FC in the EPL.

Frank Yal­lop – San Jose Earth­quakes: This one is tricky. While the first year expan­sion club Seat­tle Sounders FC enjoys their trip to the play­offs, the Earth­quakes 2.0 ver­sion fin­ished bot­tom of the West­ern Con­fer­ence for the sec­ond straight year. On the sur­face, it would seem that Yal­lop, and Gen­eral Man­ager John Doyle, should be fac­ing all sorts of pres­sure from own­er­ship and sup­port­ers. How­ever, in late August, owner Lew Wolff pub­licly sup­ported his man­age­ment duo in com­ments to the media. The dreaded “vote of con­fi­dence” usu­ally means it is time to pack your bags – but Yal­lop is not under any pres­sure at all, and con­tin­ues to be revered by large num­bers of the local com­mu­nity for his past accom­plish­ments. Excuses about player injuries con­tribut­ing to the team’s poor results might be valid, but not get­ting the most out of the ros­ter through curi­ous posi­tion assign­ments? Clearly those are coach­ing deci­sions that should have him held account­able. Instead, a strange opti­mism per­me­ates the club as they go into the off sea­son expect­ing vir­tu­ally the same ros­ter back for 2010. Yal­lop might be safe for now, but expect him to be fired if San Jose gets off to a third suc­ces­sive poor start in league play.

Peter Ver­mes – Kansas City Wiz­ards: The Wiz­ards are the sec­ond team on our list that ended the 2009 reg­u­lar sea­son with a dif­fer­ent coach then the begin­ning. When Curt Onalfo was dis­missed in early August, Peter Ver­mes stepped in to try to res­cue what was quickly becom­ing a lost sea­son. After mak­ing the play­offs in 2008, own­er­ship expected much of the same (see: NYRB) in 2009. With expec­ta­tions for Ver­mes min­i­mal, KC fin­ished the year with only 12 points over their last 12 games. The fact that he is still car­ry­ing the label of interim head coach sug­gests that man­age­ment will look to fill the coach­ing vacancy with a more proven com­mod­ity. Know­ing how well he was received by his play­ers, per­haps the Wiz­ards should remove the interim from his title and let Ver­mes guide this team from the start of 2010.

Schel­las Hyn­d­man – FC Dal­las: After rid­ing the sec­ond half scor­ing explo­sion of MLS Golden Boot win­ner Jeff Cun­ning­ham, as well as his much improved defen­sive back four, Schel­las Hyn­d­man appears to have done enough to earn the priv­i­lege of return­ing for the 2010 sea­son. The sting of miss­ing out on the post­sea­son after the 2–1 come-from-ahead loss to Seat­tle last Sat­ur­day was the first neg­a­tive result for the club in over a month. After their recent visit to San Jose, a 2–1 vic­tory, Hyn­d­man was vis­i­bly pleased with the late sea­son suc­cess that put his team in con­tention for the play­offs. The play­ers said all the right things about their coach as well. Don’t expect own­er­ship to dis­rupt the team now. Instead, FC Dal­las will look for coach­ing con­sis­tency through the win­ter, and a momen­tum car­ry­ing win­ning start to 2010.

Chris Cum­mins – Toronto FC: The first casu­alty in MLS coach­ing ranks occurred this morn­ing with the dis­missal of interim head coach Chris Cum­mins. This came as know sur­prise given how inglo­ri­ously Toronto exited the play­off chase with their 5–0 drub­bing at the hands of New York. Already hav­ing fired John Carver ear­lier in the sea­son, TFC man­age­ment has made it clear that qual­i­fy­ing for the post­sea­son was expected this sea­son. Enjoy­ing a pas­sion­ate fan base that clearly desires suc­cess, the third year MLS club antic­i­pated being among the league’s best teams. Even with mar­quee sign­ings like Dwayne De Rosario and Julian de Guz­man, Toronto could not play up to their expec­ta­tions, and the club was forced to make Cum­mins the scape­goat head­ing into another dis­ap­point­ing off-season.

Tom Soehn – DC United: Prob­a­bly the coach with the next best chance of being fired, Tom Soehn endured a dif­fi­cult sea­son at the flag­ship club of MLS. Often crit­i­cized in the media for his ques­tion­able player for­ma­tions and tac­tics, Soehn over­saw an ambi­tious 2009 sched­ule that saw DCU con­test the US Open Cup final (a loss to Seat­tle), the group stages of the CONCACAF Cham­pi­ons League (elim­i­na­tion before the quar­ter­fi­nals), and a near miss of the MLS Cup play­offs (a late KC Wiz­ards penalty kick away from qual­i­fy­ing in the last game of the sea­son.) As he com­pletes the last year on a three year con­tract, man­age­ment has stated that they will take their time eval­u­at­ing their head coach over the next month. Read­ing between the lines, it looks like DC United will qui­etly approach pos­si­ble replace­ments for Soehn, and then make a coach­ing change later this year. Miss­ing out on the play­offs for two sea­sons run­ning, after con­sec­u­tive sea­sons of win­ning the Sup­port­ers Shield, does not endear Tom Soehn to the sup­port­ers of this fine organization.

Gary Smith – Col­orado Rapids: The interim coach in 2008, Gary Smith assumed full respon­si­bil­ity for the Rapids this sea­son. For most of the sum­mer, Col­orado seemed poised to make the post­sea­son, but a string of draws against lesser oppo­nents (twice against the San Jose Earth­quakes in the space of a week), and a crush­ing 3–0 loss to Rocky Moun­tain rivals Real Salt Lake, leaves Smith’s squad as the last team out of qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Fea­tur­ing a potent scor­ing duo of Conor Casey and Omar Cum­mings, the prog­no­sis for this club going into 2009 was a low play­off seed. Smith had remarked in early Sep­tem­ber that the club tar­geted 40 points for a play­off posi­tion. Well, mis­sion accom­plished on that front – too bad RSL also reached 40 points, and then held the head-to-head tiebreaker cour­tesy of their last game vic­tory. Col­orado will rue their late sea­son fade, but don’t expect Smith to be fired this off-season. How­ever, like Frank Yal­lop in San Jose, look ahead to Gary Smith need­ing to start the 2010 sea­son strong in order to keep his job.

What about the coaches cur­rently involved in the MLS Cup chase? Bar­ring an embar­rass­ing per­for­mance in the quar­ter­fi­nals, none of the eight play­off bound coaches need worry about their job secu­rity at this time. They have earned their place by mea­sur­ing up to the stan­dard of suc­cess in MLS.

Tagged as: Chris Cummins, coaches, MLS, Tom Soehn