Roy Keane is the "MESSIAH"
Just not a football manager "Messiah"![]()
I visit skysports.com regularly, and whenever he makes a comment, there's a video clip up and featured prominently on the main page.
Whether or not he is a good coach is debatable, but there's no question IMO that he IS box office.
Holloway is the weirdo that people like to hear every now and again, but Keane has an army of people who wish they were him.
Roy Keane is the "MESSIAH"
Just not a football manager "Messiah"![]()
Perhaps LA Galaxy are atypical, or things have changed in the last two years, but I remember being shocked by some of the things Ruud Gullitt had to say about his time at LA:
“Two weeks ago we had a game at home [against San Jose] and I had two of my office staff from the commercial department playing, two people whose job is to sit in the office all day doing their work. We needed bodies and we didn’t have bodies, so we asked them to play, they wanted to play and they just played"
"It is also symptomatic of the way in which the Galaxy hierarchy has chosen to build a team around its two high-profile stars, Beckham and Landon Donovan, the United States captain, whose annual salaries are $6.5m and $900,000 respectively. Their “designated player” status means that only a fraction of Galaxy’s $2.18m annual wage bill goes directly into their pockets..."
"... There exists a chasm in class between Beckham, Donovan, injured Guatemalan striker Carlos Ruiz and even Abel Xavier and the likes of 22-year-old midfield player Brandon McDonald, who has broken into the team in recent weeks in his rookie season. His $12,900 salary is at the lowest level of MLS, but Gullit wants to bring through players such as McDonald and another promising midfielder ,Josh Tudela, who earns only $17,700 annually."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/spo...cle3822782.ece
Somehow, I can't see Roy Keane putting up with that sort of thing for more than, oh I dunno, a nanosecond?
Ealing, as I pointed out the minimum salary is now 40,000 bucks a year. Things are getting better.
Ipswich just beat Arsenal, so not missing Roy too much.
The argument could be made that Roy's team won the match. Doubt much has changed in a week.
Richard Sadlier wrote a good article on Keane
http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...s-2489416.html
My Guarantee
Am looking for old Irish matches on VHS, PM me if you have some and I'll upload them here
Nice parsing of the quotes there.
That was a Reserve team game when they were in the middle of an injury crises.
Now, the rosters are 30 not 26 and the minimum salary is $40K not $12.5K. MLS needed to operate this way since they didn't want to make the mistakes that eventually made NASL collapse: overspending. Until Beckham the max salary was $400K but now that the league has become more stable, the Designated Player rule was introduced, squads expanded, salaries increased. Mistakes were made by some teams early on which led to their folding e.g. Tampa Bay and Miami but over the last 5-6 years, the MLS has been growing steadily with the league growing from 10 to 18 teams over the last few years.
Yes, it does appear to be Mickey Mouse from the Euros point of view, but it needs to be that way as that is the model that works over here. Indeed, I think the Euros can learn a thing or two from MLS in terms of Salary Cap and competitiveness being even.
Last edited by Metrostars; 13/01/2011 at 12:12 PM.
"Jacques Santini...will be greeted in every dugout of the country by "one-nil, one-nil" - Clive Tyldsley, 89th minute of France-England June 13, 2004.
"Ooooohhhh Nooooooo" Bobby Robson 91st minute.
If you are implying that I deliberately edited the quotations to distort the meaning etc, you might note that I also linked to the full article i.e. people may decide for themselves whether I was being disingenuous.
Fair point (I hadn't picked up on that).
But I can still only think there was something seriously wrong when a club can pay one player $6m p.a., yet still not be able to field 11 footballers for their Reserves. Did they not eg have a Youth Team/Academy?
As I stated in the first line of my post: "Perhaps LA Galaxy are atypical, or things have changed in the last two years,"
I accept that given the USA's somewhat unique circumstances, they do need to do things differently from the rest of the world, therefore I can have no criticism of them for that.
And in doing things differently, I have no doubt that the ROW could learn something* from them.
But the fact remains, the best young players leave the MSL for Europe when they get the opportunity, whereas the best old players leave Europe for the MSL for lack of a (better) opportunity. We are still doing a hell of a sight more things better than they are. And having been to see the MSL live, I have no expectation that that will change greatly anytime soon - even with Roy Keane's help!
* - Though decidedly NOT a salary cap. A salary cap can really only work in a franchise system. For Europe to overturn their own system (essentially Promotion & Relegation), which has been hugely successful for a century or more, in order to introduce a SC, would be "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". (And in any case, for a SC to work, it would have to be implemented Europe-wide, which would be completely illegal under EU Law).
I am a huge fan of Brian Clough and read anything I can find about him. Those stories of Sadlier's are not at all dissimilar from some of Cloughie's behaviour.
For example, in one game where Forest were a couple of goals down after the first half, against opposition they might have been expected to hammer, the players were all wondering what Clough would say at half time. Yet when they got into the dressing room, there was no sign of him. Eventually, two minutes before they were due to go back out, he appeared.
"Stand Up!", he roared. (They all did!).
Clough went down the line, staring at their face but not saying a word until he came to Nigel Jemson (up-and-coming centre forward). "Young man," he says, "have you ever had a punch in the stomach?" "No, boss", Jemson replied. At which point Clough doubled him up with a punch. He then turned on his heel and strode out towards the pitch.
Forest scored four (I think?) in the second half!
I get the impression that Keane is trying to emulate Clough (or Fergie and his hairdryer?). But what was really telling about the Jemson anecdote is that after the game, Clough went back in and thanked everyone of them personally, inc Jemson, so that they all went home feeling 10 foot tall. Keane wouldn't have needed to be thanked by Clough after turning a game around, but he forgets that the other players might.
I guess it's all a bit like me going to eg a Dara O'Breien gig, then recalling his routine word-for-word to my mates in the pub and wondering why they don't laugh.
Just as I'm no O'Breien, Keane is no Clough.
I think all these enigmatic traits and unorthodox ways of dealing with people are seen as the methods of a genius when results are going well, but make a manager look like a total ****** if results are going badly.
Clough was only good when he was with Peter Taylor who got the right players in.
I'm not sure about LA at the time but the team I follow, NY does have an academy.
So do players from Brazil, Argentina, S Korea, Mexico, Australia etc.But the fact remains, the best young players leave the MSL for Europe when they get the opportunity, whereas the best old players leave Europe for the MSL for lack of a (better) opportunity.
"Jacques Santini...will be greeted in every dugout of the country by "one-nil, one-nil" - Clive Tyldsley, 89th minute of France-England June 13, 2004.
"Ooooohhhh Nooooooo" Bobby Robson 91st minute.
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