The problem I have with this hire from a non-football angle (more on the football angle in a sec) is not that I don't think a person deserves a chance to learn and grow from their mistakes. The problem is the context. Showing you've corrected a mistake is a continual, ongoing process, even for mistakes that happened more than a decade ag…
The problem I have with this hire from a non-football angle (more on the football angle in a sec) is not that I don't think a person deserves a chance to learn and grow from their mistakes. The problem is the context. Showing you've corrected a mistake is a continual, ongoing process, even for mistakes that happened more than a decade ago. Every place Neville works will serve as a context for his continued demonstration that he's put that sexist crap behind him and grown as a person. But is an organization with a recent and very serious history of sexual harassment, tone-deaf statements about said history, etc. the right context? I'd argue this might be the LAST club where this should be happening. Well...second-to-last, the last being Thorns FC.
Oh, and the footy? The guy has a mediocre record. I'm kind of on the fence about him from a pure coaching perspective.
I guess my thought on his actual soccer c.v. is…why?
Why bother with this guy? What in his past suggests he’s an anything but mediocre, or a good bet to improve on the last two years of Gio? And if he’s not…why bother?
This is the entire root of it for me. I know win percentage isn't everything, but in the last two years, Gio's win percentage was 32% each year. Neville's MLS WP is 38%. If he coaches to that level again, that's a marginal improvement at best - 13 wins on a season, v. 11 at 32%.
Now, would two more wins have been helpful last season? Sure. All else being unchanged that means the Timbers would have finished sixth instead of ninth. But this winter should be about more than marginal improvements; this off season was a unique opportunity to reshape who the Timbers are and how they operate, and instead of taking a chance on someone we may not be as familiar with, the way they took a chance on Gio (and despite how that ended, he did well for the first 3-4 years), they went for Phil Neville, the dictionary definition of "meh".
And that's just his soccering! I'm not even getting into his personality/past statements, which are...problematic for a team theoretically trying to change its image.
All in all, this is just...unambitious. And I want the Timbers to be ambitious.
There has been a lot of talk about how the fan base is "over-reacting" to this hire and it's not just this hire that has people upset. The club has promised they are going to be better and then they hire a guy that said some crappy things. The fanbase is upset (myself included) that they didn't seem to learn from the serious history or sexual misconduct.
The problem I have with this hire from a non-football angle (more on the football angle in a sec) is not that I don't think a person deserves a chance to learn and grow from their mistakes. The problem is the context. Showing you've corrected a mistake is a continual, ongoing process, even for mistakes that happened more than a decade ago. Every place Neville works will serve as a context for his continued demonstration that he's put that sexist crap behind him and grown as a person. But is an organization with a recent and very serious history of sexual harassment, tone-deaf statements about said history, etc. the right context? I'd argue this might be the LAST club where this should be happening. Well...second-to-last, the last being Thorns FC.
Oh, and the footy? The guy has a mediocre record. I'm kind of on the fence about him from a pure coaching perspective.
I guess my thought on his actual soccer c.v. is…why?
Why bother with this guy? What in his past suggests he’s an anything but mediocre, or a good bet to improve on the last two years of Gio? And if he’s not…why bother?
This is the entire root of it for me. I know win percentage isn't everything, but in the last two years, Gio's win percentage was 32% each year. Neville's MLS WP is 38%. If he coaches to that level again, that's a marginal improvement at best - 13 wins on a season, v. 11 at 32%.
Now, would two more wins have been helpful last season? Sure. All else being unchanged that means the Timbers would have finished sixth instead of ninth. But this winter should be about more than marginal improvements; this off season was a unique opportunity to reshape who the Timbers are and how they operate, and instead of taking a chance on someone we may not be as familiar with, the way they took a chance on Gio (and despite how that ended, he did well for the first 3-4 years), they went for Phil Neville, the dictionary definition of "meh".
And that's just his soccering! I'm not even getting into his personality/past statements, which are...problematic for a team theoretically trying to change its image.
All in all, this is just...unambitious. And I want the Timbers to be ambitious.
There has been a lot of talk about how the fan base is "over-reacting" to this hire and it's not just this hire that has people upset. The club has promised they are going to be better and then they hire a guy that said some crappy things. The fanbase is upset (myself included) that they didn't seem to learn from the serious history or sexual misconduct.