Following a loss on the road to Seattle 0-3 and settling for a draw with Chivas USA despite a 2-0 halftime lead VASoccerNews asked via Twitter if Ben Olsen's job as Head Coach might be in jeopardy should United not manage to make the playoffs for the 2011 MLS Season.
For the sake of a fair debate VASocerNews enlisted the help of a guest blogger,Ryan Keefer, to argue 'for' Olsen remaining as Head Coach for the Black and Red.
Part I: Ben Olsen stays
at DCU, for a myriad of reasons
Sure, the DC United loss, er, tie,
with Chivas USA on Wednesday night stings on a couple of different levels, but
in seeing the question posed about Coach Ben Olsen’s job being on the line if
the team miss the MLS playoffs, allow me to start my retort with two words:
Child, please.
In fact, let’s look at things a
little bit further here and take Olsen’s importance and value to the franchise
for a second. We are, after all, talking about a guy with no previous coaching
experience (unless you want to count his bench attendance during an
injury-riddled 2008 campaign) who took over the reins of the club during a
dysfunctional 2010 season. His role was on an interim basis, with no
expectation of him being made permanent, an expectation that surprisingly
changed in the off season when he was made manager for the team in the 2011
campaign. And so far, with eight wins, eight losses, eleven ties at 35 points,
DCU is flirting with its first postseason appearance. Good, but apparently not
good enough? Well, let’s play a game at this point, you’ve got two coaches that
have coached 39 games, one has an 11-16-12 career record, the other has a 10-18-11 record, which would do you pick? If
you picked the former, that would be Ben Olsen’s coaching record (the latter
belongs to similar former player turned coach Jason Kreis).
The assertion would appear to be
that Olsen’s squad should make it, because of who is on the roster. Care to
remember the 2010 DC United roster and all of the scoring glory Danny Allsopp
and Pablo Hernandez brought to it? Well since that point, some moves Olsen’s
engineered have been good (Charlie Davies) and others, not so much (Dax
McCarty). Regardless of the moves made, this is still a team that has yet
to fully ripen on the vine in more aspects than one. The team’s current
goal scoring leader (Davies) and assist leader (Pontius) both were coming off
of previous seasons of respective injuries. While Pontius came back with a
vengeance this year before unfortunately being shelved with another knock,
Davies has been struggling to both regain his health and playing first team
competition consistently. He’s played 21 games this year, not bad, though
consider he’s played in 25 first team matches TOTAL since the end of his 2008
year with Hammersby.
Then there’s the youth factor. While
Rookie of the Year Andy Najar has been quietly playing well for most of the
year, fellow Academy graduate Bill Hamid has been groomed under Tim Howard as a
presumed National Team goalkeeper in waiting. However, Hamid missed the first 3
games of the year due to injury, and has recently been battling recurring
hamstring issues. The first half of the year saw fellow Academy product Ethan
White get a large number of starts this year, with the rookie defender handling
himself well in stretches, with other stretches showing that he’s…still a
rookie. And speaking of rookies, now that Pontius is gone for the year, the
team leader in minutes played will likely be Perry Kitchen, who juggled two
positions before settling in for his first year at right back where he managed
to keep current USMNT darling Brek Shea quiet during a road game in Dallas earlier this year. Kitchen, it should be
noted, settled into the role after replacing fellow rookie (and Akron teammate) Chris Korb. Kitchen and White
have seen larger roles largely due to recurring injuries of center back Dejan
Jakovic. While mid season acquisition Brandon McDonald has helped shore up the
back, with Jakovic going down again, this very young group of defenders has
been called into action once more in trial by fire circumstances.
Speaking of McDonald and fellow
acquisition Dwayne DeRosario, let’s not forget that they have been here for all
of two and a half months and while they are professionals, they do require time
to gel with their teammates like other players in similar circumstance do, with
DeRosario in particular seeing Pontius, Santino Quaranta, fellow NYRB escapee
refugee Austin da Luz and even Marc Burch spend various minutes to DeRo’s
left in the 11 games he’s dressed in the Black and Red (putting things in
perspective, DeRo and BMac’s 22 combined DCU starts is the same number of
starts that Kitchen has).
Ultimately, Olsen needs a fresh
reign because after several years of starting and restarting, the team appears
to finally be on the same page when it comes to acquisitions and direction, and
Olsen is the last real decision that Dave Kasper and Kevin Payne could have
made without screwing things up. If Olsen is impatiently jettisoned, the front
office better have Pep Guardiola on speed dial, because anything less than a
man with a proven record of success not only potentially alienates the
supporters this team has, but a regression could signal a possible death knell
for MLS in DC.
