There have been some pretty bad teams in Major League Soccer. Which was the worst ever? Who’s to say, but the argument usually boils down to two possibilities: the 2001 Mutiny and the 1999 MetroStars. Seems to me today there’s a third team vying for the title of worst MLS team ever.

Counting shootout wins as draws, the 1999 MetroStars currently hold the MLS winless streak record at 19 games. Real Salt Lake hasn’t won a league match since August 6, 2005. In the 17 games they’ve played since then they’ve amassed a grand total of two points. That’s right, in 17 games they’ve gotten two draws, the rest were losses.

Now, I know it’s not nice to laugh and point, but I will admit it’s fun. However, along with laughing and pointing I’m going to offer an observation. It is unconscionable and irresponsible to retain John Ellinger as coach after 17 games without a win. It makes the team (and the league) appear less than serious.

I can hear it now. “But, but, but … the COACH isn’t the problem!” Or how about my favorite canard: “Coaches don’t win games, players do.”

Yup, I’ve heard those confused cackles before. As a DC United supporter I heard them about Thomas Rongen. And then I heard them about Ray Hudson. It turns out, in both instances, the coach was the ultimate problem. The coach is the problem in Salt Lake too.

I watch an unfortunate number of Real Salt Lake games. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team take the field that looked fully prepared to meet the challenge at hand. They’ve gotten lucky here and there; a few times they played a team even worse off than them. But they haven’t won a game in a very long time, and there’s no sense that they’ll win a game anytime soon.

This morning I read the following John Ellinger quotes in the Salt Lake Tribune:

“People have to show up to play. And it’s disappointing and frustrating - I’m sure for the fans, I’m sure for the coaching staff and the teammates - when players don’t show up to play.”

“There’s no sense putting guys on the field who aren’t going to work. We’re not going to get through this if we don’t work. We need an honest effort every game - especially at home. It’s criminal that we didn’t get that kind of effort at home.”

John Ellinger is absolutely right. But he clearly doesn’t understand that in those statements he has condemned himself.

If a coach truly and consistently prepares his team to play then it really is “disappointing and frustrating” on those rare weekends “when players don’t show up to play.” Real Salt Lake, however, has never been truly and consistently prepared. Only Ellinger can be blamed for that consistent lack of preparation.

It’s true that it’s “criminal” not to put in an “honest effort in every game - especially at home.” But to put in an honest effort you have to have a solid mix of players and you have to be prepared for the game. By that standard Real Salt Lake has made dishonesty a habit. Ellinger fields “guys on the field who aren’t going to work” week after week after week.

Of course a coach doesn’t win the game on the field. He wins the game off the field. His two most important duties are player selection and player preparation. It’s his duty to select guys who can get the job done and it’s his duty to prepare those guys to do that job every single weekend. John Ellinger has absolutely failed in both regards. His team has shown neither ability nor improvement. Indeed, this year’s team is arguably worse than the one he fielded last year.

It is time to make a coaching change in Salt Lake City. The credibility of the team and the league is at stake.

Evidently the venerable Paul Gardner can be credited with discovering that RotMasters is an anagram of MetroStars. I don’t know what anagrams can be derived from “New York Red Bulls,” but it seems a shame to give up on RotMasters when the word continues to apply so fittingly.

Things will get better (they can’t get worse). But I’m increasingly certain that the Red Bulls will continue to be a league embarrassment for the remainder of this year. I’m a DC United supporter, and I’ll admit we’ve got a decent side, but we’re not as good as we looked on Saturday. That 4-1 scoreline (which was unjust, the Red Bulls didn’t deserve the 1) wasn’t solely the result of DC United’s solid play; it was the result of an old-fashioned MetroStar Meltdown. The Red Bulls still haven’t shaken that tendency.

Teams have meltdowns. Los Angeles appears to be melting down. Lots of teams implode and fall apart. But most of the time they do OK. Not so with CFKA MetroStars. They seem to make this an annual practice; for them it’s the exceptional year when they’re not completely humiliated.

It’s strange. If you measure “trying” in terms of player and coach turnover then no other team in MLS history has tried harder to improve itself. And, it would seem, the Red Bulls are getting ready for another round of “improvement” because word was Mo Johnston’s temporary stay of execution would be overturned if he didn’t win this last game against DC United. Given the result, let’s face it, if you’re looking to fire a coach that’s the kind of game you use as your excuse. (Logan’s Revenge say’s Johnston got the reprieve because Red Bull couldn’t get they guy they wanted.)

But maybe that is the problem, perhaps that entire mindset is the problem. No other club has tried so hard to set itself apart from Major League Soccer. Even before Alexi Lalas coined the phrase, the team always wanted to be the first MLS SuperClub. Even today with Red Bull in charge the team still strives for that goal.

The problem is that the club has never once tried to be an ordinary, average MLS team. In other words, the club has never been serious about building a real foundation for the future. They’ve always wanted it all now, they’ve always been too impatient, too hasty. They’ve always tried to take shortcuts.

“Bring in this player. Bring in that player. A new coach. Another coach. More players. One day Tab Ramos will be healthy, then he’ll save us. Meantime, let’s make some trades. Lothar. Youri. Let’s bring in Ronaldo! And, hey, how about a new coach! I’ve got an idea, maybe we’ll make Tab Ramos general manager! This time it really will work. We swear. Really. We’re gonna be MLS’s first SuperClub!” It never works. It’s not how you build a team in Major League Soccer. But that’s the way of the RotMasters.

In Major League Soccer you have to build your teams from the bottom up. Los Angeles is now, perhaps, learning this lesson. Landon Donovan can’t save you every week if you don’t have a solid foundation. You simply can’t build an MLS team around “star” players, you have to build it around guys like Brian Carroll. The MetroStars never understood this. That’s why they were always losing. Until the Red Bulls finally learn this lesson they too will always lose.

Wow!

More wow at Kenn.com.

Did I say wow?

Hat tip du Nord.

Tucked away in a story about Red Bull New York possibly trading Thiago Martins to the Colorado Rapids for Jean Philippe Peguero (yeah, Fernando, I know your ways are enigmatic, but that’s an utterly idiotic trade) is news that David Arvizu might be heading to Chivas USA after all. Apparently the Martins for Peguero trade is contingent upon another trade “That deal would send U.S. Under-17 forward David Arvizu and defender Danilo da Silva to either C.D. Chivas or the Los Angeles Galaxy for draft picks … Chivas coach Bob Bradley, who directed the MetroStars last year, is said to covet Arvizu and da Silva.” Not only does Bradley covet Arvizu, but Arvizu has long been known to covet Chivas USA. As this old story notes, “The Mexican-American expressed a wish to play for Chivas USA, which would keep him near his hometown of Santa Ana.”

I hope this Arvizu trade goes through. Why? Because the Red Bulls never should have had the kid in the first place. As far as I’m concerned minors who enter the professional ranks in Major League Soccer should play for their “local” team. Period. It’s one thing to send a kid thousands of miles from home to when you’re sending him to a youth oriented environment like Bradenton, but it’s another thing to pick a kid up from LA, remove him from his family, and plop him down in New York City. It was obvious from the moment the then MetroStars won the lottery that Arvizu was unhappy. Mo Johnston wasn’t even sure if Arvizu would show up to camp.

“I actually spoke to him last night,” Johnston said. “I gave him three, four days to think about it. He’s excited about coming here. Obviously, it’s a tough decision for the kid, coming all the way from L.A. to the East Coast. Listen, if the kid comes in, we welcome him with open arms. If he feels a need to stay there, then we have to work out something with someone in the league. if that doesn’t happen, then we’ll bring him here. Look, we ain’t going to keep anyone if they don’t want to be here. If someone wants to be somewhere, we’re going to try. We have to get the right pickings for us.

These situations could be avoided completely if MLS would get those youth academies up and running and give teams the rights to the guys they trained as youth players. But for now we still have this perverse system that randomly distributes young players around the country. I know some say an academy system would give an advantage to teams located in soccer hotbeds like New York and Los Angeles and leave teams in - say - Colorado at a disadvantage, but I think that’s a spurious argument in the end. We’re talking matters of degree here because these days I don’t think there’s many places left that aren’t youth soccer hotbeds. It may take a little more work in some areas, but it’s not the absolute disadvantage some people say it is. And even if it were, if I had to choose between being fair to MLS teams in fly-over country and doing the right thing for a 16 or 17 year old kid I’m going to do the right thing for the kid every single time.
  

Put down the hemlock! Nick Sakiewicz says you don’t have to kill yourself. Yet …

Reports that the Cosmos cronies alumni who are apparently about to take full control of the team formerly known as the MetroStars were “re-evaluating the plan to build a new stadium in Harrison, N.J.” are, Nick Sakiewicz says, “completely 100 percent untrue.”

Part of me is relieved; the level-headed, responsible part. That’s the side of me that cares seriously about Major League Soccer, the part of me that buys absolutely into the Gospel according to Don Garber, the teaching of salary caps and soccer-specific stadiums.

But there’s another part of me, the part of me that loves chaos and disaster, the part of me that secretly hopes Chinaglia and Company take over the New York Red Bulls and run the franchise into the proverbial ground.

I suppose I could rationalize this calamitous longing and say I only want disaster because it would prove that salary caps and soccer specific stadiums really are the gospel truth. I could say that. And maybe there’s something to that. But if I was really pressed, and had to be honest, I’d have to admit a certain appreciation of disaster and calamity in and of itself.

Now I’m still pretty sure that calamity is coming down the pike because I’m willing to bet that Jack Bell didn’t get it all wrong. And some things, like Chinaglia’s involvement, have been reported from multiple, reliable, sources. I have confidence that where Chinaglia goes disaster will follow.

Still, I’m relieved that perhaps the new regime isn’t completely divorced from the realities of professional soccer in the United States, and that they will, it would seem, continue on with the Harrison project as expected.

The only thing, right now, that really bothers me is Michael Lewis’s report that Mo Johnston will be fired, perhaps even before this weekend’s match against DC United. There are some truly horrific coaches in this league, but Johnston isn’t among them. In his short time in charge Johnston seemed to be building a solid MLS side. It’s not there yet, but it was going in the right direction and that’s better than right near any coach that team’s ever had in the past.

To fire Johnston now indicates a certain impatience that I think both inappropriate and obnoxious. I can’t help but recall Chinaglia’s bluster that “I’m the only person who can change things in New York and I mean change everything — the front office, the coach and the team. And I can do it fast.”

The key for MLS has never been doing it fast. It’s always been about doing it right. I can’t say the New York market was ever handled right, but I can’t but be skeptical at this attempt to fix it fast. Just like Chivas, Red Bull may have to learn some hard lessons. And they will – eventually. But in the meantime … well, while they try to fix things fast, they won’t get it right all the time, they might not even get it right half the time. You’ve gotta expect that. (I do wonder, however, how many fans they’ll alienate before they figure things out.)

Still, it is unfortunate that a guy like Johnston is going to end up on the outs. Hopefully he will land another gig in Major League Soccer. I mean, let’s face it, Ellinger and Clavijo aren’t going to last forever. And, now that I think about it, there’s certainly good reason to believe it’s only a matter of time before Alexi Lalas gives the boot to Steve Sampson. I know he says “Any problems that Steve and I had in 1998 were long put to bed,” but I also know not so long ago Lalas denied his intention to resign his position in New York.