Gansler, Nowak Make It Happen When It Counts
If Major League Soccer’s 2004 playoffs have done nothing else, they have made it plain why Bob Gansler and Peter Nowak are a cut above other MLS coaches.
Both have done a superlative job under trying conditions this season, and both have their teams in the conference finals.
If Gansler’s Kansas City Wizards can get past the Galaxy on Friday and Nowak’s D.C. United can quash the New England Revolution on Saturday, they will meet at the Home Depot Center on Nov. 14 for the league championship.
Gansler has gotten this far despite a season in which he lost two-time league MVP Preki for virtually the entire season, as well as veteran goalkeeper Tony Meola and U.S. national team midfielder Chris Klein for much of the year.
On Saturday, Gansler’s team overcame a 2-0 first-game playoff deficit to defeat the defending champion San Jose Earthquakes, 3-0, and clinch the Western Conference semifinal series, 3-2, on aggregate.
Those are coach-of-the-year credentials.
Nowak, in his rookie season as a coach, not only had D.C. United playing some of the most open, attractive soccer of the season but had to learn on the job while also dealing with the immense distraction provided by the circus surrounding high-maintenance teenager Freddy Adu.
That accomplished, all his team did in the Eastern Conference semifinals was to shut out the New York/New Jersey MetroStars twice -- 2-0 on the road and 2-0 again at home on Saturday.
Those, too, are coach-of-the-year credentials.
Either one would be a worthy winner.
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After coaching the Columbus Crew to an MLS-record 18-game unbeaten streak, Greg Andrulis might also have been counted up there with Gansler and Nowak, but the way the Crew came unstuck in the playoffs was embarrassing.
Columbus lost, 1-0, at New England, and then scraped to a 1-1 tie at home and was eliminated, 2-1 on aggregate. In Sunday’s must-win match, the Crew missed two penalty kicks, the first by Ross Paule and the second by Tony Sanneh.
It left the distraught Andrulis without much to say.
“There’s no way I can answer any questions,” he said after a brief statement.
Things were different over in the New England locker room. Sunil Gulati, the director of Kraft Soccer, told the Boston Globe before the match that Steve Nicol would be back as coach, despite the Revolution’s having been tied on points for the league’s worst record in the regular season.
“You should be loyal to good people and good people deliver,” Gulati said of Nicol. “You don’t become a bad coach or a good coach overnight.”
Gansler’s record in six seasons at Kansas City -- including an MLS championship in 2000 and a U.S. Open Cup this year -- is the perfect example of stability paying dividends.
There’s a lot to be said for loyalty, but not all MLS teams have learned that lesson yet.
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No matter how much further Los Angeles goes in the playoffs, at least one former Galaxy player already has rewritten the playoff history books.
Matt Reis was in the nets for the Revolution on Sunday at Columbus, and it was his exceptional play that thwarted Paule and Sanneh on their respective penalty kicks.
“Miraculous is not the word,” Nicol said.
“It’s not supposed to happen,” said Reis, who became only the third goalkeeper in league history after Meola and D.J. Countess to stop two penalty kicks in one game, and the first to do so in the playoffs.
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If Columbus had not scored a goal in injury time Sunday, all eight MLS playoff matches would have ended in shutouts -- not exactly an advertisement for competitive soccer.
Worse yet, for MLS, was the attendance during the conference semifinals.
The first four games attracted only 33,527 fans, an average of 8,382 a game. That was down 46.1% from the league’s regular-season average of 15,559.
Last weekend’s second four games did slightly better, with 61,035 turning out, an average of 15,258.
The fact that an average of only 11,820 care enough to show up for playoff games suggests yet again that MLS needs to rethink its competition format.
The season is too long and will not get any shorter next year with Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake joining the league. Already, there is talk of a 32-game season followed by the playoffs.
In a year that also will include 10 World Cup 2006 qualifying games for each of the six countries that reach the final qualifying round, as well as the ill-timed CONCACAF Gold Cup set for July 6-24, the toll on players will be worse than ever.
The league’s decision-makers would be well advised to bite the bullet for a few seasons and reduce the schedule rather than increase it. If each of the 12 teams played the other once at home and once away in 2005, that would give each team 22 matches.
Once MLS reaches 16 teams, the same format would mean 30 games a season per club, which is just about right.
The argument against this is that fewer games mean less revenue. But if MLS left its clubs free to arrange international friendlies, and if MLS, in return for freeing up players for the national team, got some of the revenue the national team earns ...
It won’t happen, of course, but it is well beyond time to start thinking outside the box. The pitiful playoff crowds prove it.
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MLS Playoff Crowds
Attendance in the conference semifinal round of this year’s MLS playoffs (Note: each team had one home game):
* Galaxy at Colorado ... 8,028
* Columbus at New England ... 5,679
* D.C. United at MetroStars ... 11,161
* Kansas City at San Jose ... 8,659
* Colorado at Galaxy ... 20,026
* New England at Columbus ... 15,224
* MetroStars at D.C. United ... 15,763
* San Jose at Kansas City ... 10,022
