Stop dicking around and fire the bastard.

We all woke up on May 15, 2004 and read in the morning press that today was a day of reckoning for Greg Andrulis. Win that afternoon or face the axe. In retrospect Columbus probably should have thrown the match. Instead they won and delayed the inevitable for over a year. Yes, the inevitable.

There was not a single bit of difference between the Greg Andrulis whose team missed the playoffs in 2003 and went winless in its first five games of 2004, and the Greg Andrulis whose team beat New England on that unfortunate Saturday. Not one bit of difference.

When you come to that point with a coach where it’s win this game or else, that only means one thing. You’ve dicked around too long already; you should have fired the bastard a long time ago.

If you’re looking for a lesson from the 2005 Crew, that’s it.

The hokey name didn’t do them in, but it didn’t help either. In principle, Real Salt Lake could have worked. Ellinger was widely well regarded, and rumor had it that Pastorino wasn’t a complete schlemiel. And it didn’t appear that Checketts would meddle too much in the team’s on-field affairs. The signs pointed at least to mediocrity, but on the field the team was a failure.

I don’t feel any great need to diagnose Real Salt Lake’s litany of problems. I would rather sift through the rubble to draw a lesson. What’s the lesson that Real Salt Lake has taught us this season? You can’t change the man. It’s as simple as that.

Let’s get something straight. A great streak does not make a great player. Herculez Gomez may get call from Bruce Arena one day, but not because he’s scoring goals now. It’s because he may continue to score goals later. But if he stops putting them in – next week, next year – then so much for those call-ups. (I hope.) And, yet, even if the goals dry up there will be some remaining who beat a drum for him before every friendly. Why? Because he did it once, so why not again?

Clint Mathis had a brilliant, astonishing and legendary streak. It lasted a couple seasons back in 2000 and 2001, but when it ended, it really ended. Could he do it again? Sure. Maybe. Will he? Probably not. Why? What we can understand now that we perhaps couldn’t understand a few years ago is that Clint Mathis is incapable of consistent play. Is that because of his personality? It’s surely part of it. But we don’t need to play armchair psychologist to see the truth of the assessment.

Ellinger thought he could change Mathis, reshape him and turn him into a week to week team leader. Perhaps Mathis even thought that too. But you can’t change the man.

If I’m gonna start posting then why not get a thing or two off my chest? This one’s been bugging me all season long.

I watch a lot of Chivas USA games. It’s a guilty pleasure, to be sure. But I enjoy the theater. I’m not talking about the weekly downs and even downers of the team. I’m talking about the boys in the booth - Christian Miles and Thomas Rongen. Wrestling masks one week. A big-ass afro wig the next. It’s embarrassing and awful and genius all at the same time.

So it’s not that I don’t like Thomas Rongen. (Christian Miles is another thing entirely.) But I can’t for the life of me understand why the devil these two gringos ended up in the booth for Chivas USA games. I know, with his broadcast experience in DC Rongen was an apparently natural choice after they relieved him of his coaching duties. And Christian Miles has been the studying in the Max Bretos school of massacring soccer games for years.

I’m torn. On the one hand, for perverse reasons that don’t even make sense to me, I enjoy the duo of Rongen and Miles. On the other hand, if Chivas USA is supposed to appeal to the astonishingly large population of Chivas de Guadalajara supporters in and around Los Angeles, many of whom consider Spanish their primary language … Well, do Rongen and Miles really cut it in that regard? I’ve got my doubts.

If the otherwise incompetent MetroStars can manage to broadcast their games with a Spanish language SAP, then why can’t Chivas USA do the same? That strikes me as a straightforward and perhaps very effective way of reaching out to potential fans who thus far don’t seem terribly convinced the team is worth their while.