The vitriol over this hiring is just a bit too much. I'm gonna give him a chance. There is some nuance to his previous jobs that shows he's not as bad as some paint him to be. Is he who I would hire? Nope. But I'm holding out hope this works.
There is literally nothing in Neville's coaching history to indicate he's any better of a coach than Gio was. And that's my problem; as I've said before, this was a unique chance for the Timbers to completely reinvent who they wanted to be by showing some ambition, and instead, they chose the worst possible candidate from an already underpromising list of candidates. If they wanted to continue to underperform, they should have just held on to Gio.
I'm not hoping for Neville to fail, but his hire doesn't inspire confidence that the Timbers want to get dramatically better any time soon, and that's the most depressing/upsetting thing about this whole hire to me.
I would tend to agree. This looks like a middling hire (at best) as far talent is concerned. The vitriol over the hire has less to do with Neville and more to do with an organization that can't help but slam its junk in the door at every opportunity. Do I think Neville is allowed to be repentent for really stupid stuff he said a decade ago? Yes. Does that mean he is the right hire for a club that still hasn't recovered from being a sexist boy's club? No. But that requires self-awareness that is fairly rare for the Portland Timbers.
However, when looking at the MLS landscape, the Timbers are no longer one of the class organizations in the league. The owner is polarizing, there is always a controversy of some sort, other than Ned the front office has disappeared into the ether--who the hell is piloting this ship?, the front office and supporters lack mutual respect, the team is solidly mediocre by default, and there are more empty seats than ever. I'm wondering if Phil Neville and Jason Kreis coming here is the best the Timbers can do at this point. I mean, that original list was far from inspiring.
"I'm wondering if Phil Neville and Jason Kreis coming here is the best the Timbers can do at this point. "
I mean, Miles Joseph would have been better than either, honestly - and I say that as someone who wasn't convinced he was the man for the job a month ago. But this...ugh.
"the Timbers are no longer one of the class organizations in the league."
Haven't been for years, honestly. A couple Cup runs out of nowhere don't really cement that status. the ability to go deep in the playoffs - not just make them, but actually progress - every season does.
That's not true at all. He did well with the Lionesses (2nd SheBelieves and a 1st) until a bad run of form. One of his Miami teams made the playoffs despite being hamstrung by roster limitations/inability to spend.
He also has A LOT more experience with high level players than Gio did when he came in (and even now.) He may not work out, but I don't think this is the doom and gloom hiring people are wanting it to be.
The Lioness players weren't very happy with Neville's coaching, that is one of the reasons (and results) that he didn't see out his contract. There was a general feeling that the Lionesses were winning despite the coach.
The only club evidence we have is a 39% win percentage at Inter Miami. So I think there's justified concern.
Yeah, Sarina Wiegman came in and the Lionesses were instantly better. I remember thinking that the USWNT had a secret ace up their sleeve when they played England in the 2019 World Cup - Phil Neville. He's never been more than mediocre in his coaching gigs.
True...but I'd call Wiegman one of WoSo's current elite coaches (along with Hayes, Ikeda, Bompastor, and - from a purely coaching perspective* - Vilda). You can count on the fingers of one hand the teams she wouldn't make better straight away. It's more his record at Inter Miami what concerns me about his coaching. How well does he understand what's needed to succeed in MLS?
His subsequent Miami team won 5 of 15 games before he was shown the door in the Messi rebuild.
"I don't think this is the doom and gloom hiring people are wanting it to be."
For me, Neville's hire shows the utter and complete lack of ambition to be a next-tier-up good team that seems to be driving the Timbers now. They had a chance to hire a really good coach who would be able to work with a dramatically reshaped roster and make the Timbers into something pretty great, and instead we get...a guy who did OK in one of his coaching jobs and did nothing of note in his others. Why should anybody be excited about this hire? What is it that I'm missing here?
Let me be clear, I’m not excited about this hire but when you look at the list of candidates we interviewed could/would you get excited about any of those guys? Is the PT job that undesirable that those are the type of guys we are bringing in as potential replacements? I don’t think Portland is a big enough draw to bring in a guy like an Antonio Conte or someone of that ilk but there are surely better candidates than what we got.
The one thing those other guys didn't do is make misogynistic public statements. In jest or in any other way. In the wake of the Riley / Polo scandals you'd think the FO could at least come up with someone who didn't have that kind of baggage.
I am far from an expert on who is available at any given time. But I do know that, apart from that list (which I agree was fairly uninspired), there are a whole bunch of assistant coaches at the Miles Joseph level, all over the world, who would be good coaching candidates, and would be good to build around long term, if that's what the Timbers really want. I mean, Gio was an NASL coach when he was hired, so it's not like plucking someone from the lower leagues/assistant ranks is a bad idea.
I would never expect the Timbers - or any MLS team that doesn't employ Leo Messi, really - to attract a coach like Conte. And that's fine, because MLS isn't that elite of a league. But I would expect them to not just fall back on a checklist whose top two items are "has he coached in MLS before" and "is he English", which seems to be two of the main drivers here.
Nobody wants a doom and gloom hiring. And those of us who have serious doubts about Neville — and hoped for someone with much better credentials — have no choice but see how he pans out.
The article below is somewhat reassuring. But of course it will take time to see if the execution backs up the words. Also, Grabavoy discussing the job with 20 diverse coaches is intriguing given the choice he made.
This is nothing against you or your comment, but forgive me if I don't take reassurance from an article published on the league's own website...hahaha.
I don't want Neville to fail. I want desperately to be wrong about his ability to coach at a high level. I just...don't see a ton of evidence that I am.
Good point. The article was timed to create talking points and blunt criticism leading up to today's news conference. I noticed that Neville didn't address or wasn't asked anything about his lackluster results at Miami. As a friend noted last night, the article is largely a "crisis comms" exercise guided by PR professionals. But it's helpful to hear from Neville and Grabavoy, who face intense scrutiny going forward.
As for the invisible CEO, I know she's not an apparition — I spoke with her after the Timbers preseason fan forum. But she's either muzzled or as another poster suggested hyper-focused on driving revenue.
Now I’m not gonna sit here and say Neville is the best coach we COULD have gotten but I think you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t say he was the best out of the coaches we were interviewing. He’s had pretty decent success when coaching the England women’s national team, took Miami to the playoffs while they were going though MLS sanctions, and he’s worked at top clubs like Man U and Valencia.
Robin Fraser drove Colorado into ground before leaving the club with a sub .500 record, Torrent has proven to be a good assistant but not great on the head coaching front, Hendrickson tanked with Chicago, and while Miles did a pretty good job steadying the ship it still ended up sinking in the end. So for me the Timbers aimed pretty low when it came to hiring a new coach and in the end I think we got the option with the most potential upside out of those rather weak candidates.
he did nothing spectacular with England (55% winning percentage compared with Wiegman's 74% and Vlatko's 78.5% with the USWNT), was in a bad run of form that got bailed out by the pandemic and left as soon as one of his friends in the old boys network offered him a gig.
As for his work at Valencia...well it was very enjoyable for those of us who have cultured a hatred of the Nevilles for years
You might want to look at Colorado's cheap ownership before blaming Fraser for the Rapids' decline. How would you feel if Gio wasn't able to have two DPs?
He has a great coaching resume but he has a track record of not sticking around places for whatever reason. I think the Timbers really want to build something with this hire and I’m not sure Torrent has shown he can do that.
Torrent was extremely unhappy with how MLS roster/salary rules work, which is one of the reasons he left NY, so it may not have been possible to get him, and I get that. But the gulf in coaching talent between what the Timbers could have had and what they got is...stark.
And my standard disclaimer: I desperately hope I'm wrong! I really hope that Ned/MP saw something in Neville that we on the outside don't/can't see, that made them go "this is the guy to build around", and I hope Neville makes me eat every single one of my critical words. I'm just very afraid he won't.
I am wary about him after his stupid Twitter comments (10 years ago) but willing to judge him on his record coaching the England women…we don’t hear anything negative about his interactions with the players. Twitter has a way of luring people into saying dumb shit.
The reaction of current staff is more of a concern, but I guess we will see.
Read his statements in the MLS article….I am willing to take them at face value and give him a chance. That he speaks some Spanish is somewhat reassuring…I was wondering. That’s a minimum requirement for this club.
You can't blame Twitter for a grown ass adult making extremely stupid and offensive statements to the entire internet, especially when said adult is a public figure.
I'm definitely on board for this trainwreck, come what may, but the Neville hiring is a little bit on the nose. Couldn't they have hired someone with a better record and less baggage?
Neville's career also ended 10 years ago. it shouldn't comprise a majority - or even a significant minority - of the reason he was hired. Also, look at Thierry Henry. Probably a top five player in the last 50 years, and a terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible manager.
I think you're right that the FO got blinded by the "big name", and that's disappointing.
He's a relentless, notorious micromanager. He is one of those guys who was soooooo good as a player, but he couldn't really communicate/teach how to play to his players - his attitude was basically "just go do what I used to do", even if he didn't say it in those exact words, and then he'd get exasperated at his guys when they couldn't play like prime Thierry Henry. Which no one can!
That level of frustration led him to micromanage players both at training and in games, and that's just not a recipe for success. He won four of his 20 games in charge at Monaco, and then went to Montreal and won 9 out of 29. He's currently in charge of the France U21's, for some reason, which I don't know how it's going but I can't imagine it's all that much better.
All of this makes me sad. Henry is my favorite modern player of all time, and I was hoping he'd be a good manager, but it just doesn't seem like he knows how to get players to do what he wants them to do.
There are a lot of coaches who work really hard to make it and invest their time learning the hard way by coaching through the ranks. Then there is the likes of Rooney, Lampard, and Neville, who fall into the top jobs with no experience other than they played at a high level. Then they fail a couple of times and still get another top job.
I could write 10 paragraphs about this. I won't. I became a Timbers fan and MLS fan in the summer of '15 when I moved here. We got our season tickets a couple years later (thanks overpriced new wing of Stadium!) My wife and I have so many hats, scarves, jerseys, t-shirts and other assorted Timbers gear, we could go half a month without doing laundry and still rep the Timbers every day.
Due to front office crap, which we considered serious, we decided to step back from the Timbers.
We dropped our season tickets last year and begrudgingly paid for MLStv or whatever it's called. We watched every Timbers game and more than a few other games during the season.
Now they hired Neville.
See ya. We're out. Last straw, etc.
It was fun. There were 3 or 4 really good years in there. But the Timbers have proven beyond a reasonable doubt they don't care that much if I'm part of the fanbase or not, so we're gonna be Winterhawk fans or something, I guess.
Hope you guys have a lot of happiness in your journeys as people and as sports fans, and I really hope the Timbers don't continue to be an organization you have to apologize being a fan of.
Time for some controversial hot takes. Fans who believe their opinions should control who gets hired as a head coach (any where) are at best delusional and at worst arrogant. I have no idea what was said at the interviews, what vetting was done by the front office, etc. Perhaps this choice was made because of how Neville might get more from certain key players, etc. We simply don’t know.
As for the tweets, they’re over a decade old, he’s apologized, and there haven’t been any such comments since - that I’m aware of. So, I think he’s earned a second chance. I get the past problems with Riley and co. are still painful for many, but Neville wasn’t involved. He shouldn’t be tarred with all that. If you want to be mad at ownership and management, feel free. Just don’t expect that anger to influence these sorts of choices.
I get people question Neville’s ability to coach. I think it’s rare that someone - even former EPL players - walks onto a pitch and instantly becomes a great coach. There’s a learning curve like anything else. Past failures should not be shocking, nor should they be overly influential. Fraser is highly regarded even though the Rapids were a disaster. To a great extent that’s because of crappy ownership and lousy roster. If that’s the case, why isn’t Neville afforded some slack? He went into an expansion team with a mediocre roster at best and facing league sanctions that would make it virtually impossible to improve the team. Additionally, he had lots of injuries to deal with. I think it’s unfair to state he was a failure in Miami without at least giving those issues some consideration.
Finally, I have no idea if this team will be successful or not in the future. But to take the position that Neville is crap and ownership is purposely giving fans an FU might be a bit of an overreaction.
"I get people question Neville’s ability to coach. I think it’s rare that someone - even former EPL players - walks onto a pitch and instantly becomes a great coach."
There are two problems with this stance for me.
1. "even former EPL players" doesn't mean a damn thing. Just because someone played in the Premier League does not automatically confer on them some sort of exalted status. Ex-players can make good coaches, and ex-players can be terrible coaches, no matter where they played.
2. "It's rare that someone walks onto the pitch and immediately becomes a great coach"
You're absolutely right! That is rare. But...Phil Neville has 90 games of MLS coaching experience at this point, and he's won less than half of them. He isn't coming to Portland as a new coach who may surprise people with how good he is. He is what he is at this point, coaching-wise.
"I think it’s unfair to state he was a failure in Miami without at least giving those issues some consideration."
It may be unfair, but it's also how sports works. Injuries are part of the game, and a big part of a manager's job is to, well, manage his/her team through those injuries as successfully as possible. I mean, Gio's Timbers teams were brutalized by injuries in both 2022 and 2023, and a failure to successfully make a functioning team out of the parts he had to deal with cost him his job. Why should Neville be thought of differently?
Let's not forget that the teams Neville has coached got worse over his tenure. This isn't the case where he took them to new heights, but in short periods the teams played worse which led to his leaving those programs. It isn't impressive in any way, shape or form.
The issues with the tweets, which lead me to not like Neville, are more of an indictment of the team (Ownership and Front Office). So now here I sit, unimpressed with the hiring of the coach AND upset with the team. I was really excited to see what the Timbers would look like after this offseason and now I'm feeling like taking a break wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Certainly being a former player is no guarantee of future coaching prowess. However, being coached by Alex Ferguson gives Neville insights and strategies most folks will never get.
As to the fairness of holding Neville accountable for Miami, I agree. Sports and coaching are often unfair. And others have had to deal with tough circumstances, too. I’m simply suggesting that we consider the full circumstances of his stint in Miami, before concluding he can’t coach.
"I’m simply suggesting that we consider the full circumstances of his stint in Miami, before concluding he can’t coach"
I won't speak for others, but I have never said he "can't coach". I maintain he is not a good enough coach for where the Timbers are right now vs. where they (theoretically, from what they've said) want to be. Neville, if looking at his record and history, is not a coach that's going to come in and energize a moribund team to being a regular top five finisher, and that's what I want the Timbers to be.
And more importantly, that's what the Timbers had the chance to be this winter, with the right coaching hire and with the right moves to rebuild a roster that is turning over a significant chunk of its legacy players this winter. They're not off to an amazing start here, and it doesn't fill me with confidence that they will rebuild with players that will put Portland in that elite tier, which is where I feel they should be aiming to be.
Neville is crap. What about his cv tells you otherwise. He took a team, yes expansion team (this isn't 2011 expansion players, this is 2020 expansion) that cheated and had 4 DP'S.......4!!! and still finished second from last in the east. So what exactly says he is good?
Oh that's right, he coached the english women's team to a 2nd place she believes cup. That's it, he is a genius. Out of what 6 teams. The fact is that the women's international game had been a joke for decades. If you coached a country that actually invested in women's soccer you were 100% better than your competition. The women's world cup has less teams (until this last world cup) not because countries didn't have players to field teams but because the drastic quality gap between teams and the lack of competent teams that could play. It is not until now that we are seeing much more investment and stronger development across the world in the women's game.
Point being you didn't need to be a good coach to be a top 6 team in the world. You just needed to have a team of developed players. Like usa, England, France, etc. And that same team got drastically better when he left. So what does that say.
I don't care what Phil said in the past. Men are men and say stupid shit. Any guy who says that kind of talk isn't said all the time in private with there friends is just being a simp or virtue signaling. Men make jokes and I take it as a joke with his comments. The only things men shouldn't joke about are things about philysical abuse towards women. Be it sexual or physical. Men don't joke about that stiff. If a friend did, I would question the kind of man he is behind closed doors and probably question if I wanted to be friends with him. So I don't take most of his comments serious or find offense, but the last one about beating his wife or whatever it was. That is inappropriate and people do have a right to get mad about that. On the field and off the field the guy has shown he is a bad bet. Somehow you can't see it. That's shocking to me.
"Any guy who says that kind of talk isn't said all the time in private with there friends is just being a simp or virtue signaling. Men make jokes and I take it as a joke..."
I guess I'm a virtue signaling wimp then. Absolutely nobody in my group of friends makes 1950's sexist jokes because they're not funny and well, many of my friends group are women.
Just because you're a pig and hang out with pigs doesn't mean the rest of us root in our own shit. There is a whole wide world outside of the confines of your barn, so I guess oink away with the boys and have a good time, but the rest of us stay away because of the smell.
Making jokes isn't sexist bud. Jokes are jokes. Maybe you shouldn't be so soft and fragile. You must believe everything that comedians say don't you? Lmao
Making a joke/comment about the satisfaction of beating your wife is bad enough. But posting the comment on Twitter is another level entirely. That's not a spur of the moment bad decision to make an inappropriate comment, that is actually something you do deliberately. And he did. And as far as I can tell, he says it was a bad decision to do so, but never explained why he did it. That hurts.
The 4 DPs thing was the year before Neville got in charge. The sanctions were applied his first year after an investigation concluded that two of Inter Miami’s players the previous year -- Matuidi and Reyes -- should’ve been DPs. Neville was then left to try to bring together a terribly built roster with no way to fix it because of the sanctions and Miami was overpaying for bad/underperforming players. I don’t like Neville but I don’t put a lot of Miami’s shortcomings on him directly
We all say and think and do "stupid shit" all the time, very true, but this is about public statements by a public figure, who is going to represent PTFC, and, in a way, Portland soccer culture.
From a purely PR perspective, hiring someone who has made sexist / abusive comments right after a sex abuse scandal is a terrible idea - it doesn't make the organization look very good, it doesn't make him look very good, and it is definitely not starting the '24 season off on the right foot.
It would be interesting, however, to see if the team's performance next season determines how much people actually care about Neville's tweets. If we get poor results is he going to be labeled a misogynistic bastard, but if we do well is that all going to be water under the bridge?
I thought the same thing. The best way to mend with the public is on the field. The reality is that you aren't really engaged with fans outside of the club. Not unless phill is walking around town and yelling sexist remarks. Outside of the leaders inside the TA, the general public doesn't get to interact with Ned, phill, or mp. So the only real way to put shit behind the club is to win and make sure nothing else happens going forward, and if it does, you deal with it swiftly without hesitation. But nobody wants something to happen just so they can prove they have changed. He better win or the comments about him being a terrible coach on the field and not qualified will be the first thing thrown at the FO
I agree they should avoid nevill all together but I am talking about even before they hired him. Only time and on field results would have mended relationships eventually. Mostly because they don't do enough social engagements with regular fans
I’ll admit to not being nearly as torqued about the sexism as I should be, but that’s probably from being a GI for twenty years and being immersed in that sort of crude/stupid jock-speak. Dumb jocks say dumb jock things, film at eleven!
Mind you, it does provide an interesting view into this joker’s head. How clever are you (assuming that he was thinking - if that’s the right term - of a managerial career even then) if you don’t see that slagging 50% of your prospective fanbase in public is a bad idea? Hmmm…so not exactly Soccer Einstein, Phil, eh?
No, it’s the Peter Principle upfail from this guy and what it says about the immense reservoir of mediocrity that Peregrine represents.
Even if you lean hard into his England runners-up-match (loss!) and first-round playoff (loss!) in Miami…how are these anything but “meh”?
His respective successors come along and improve both squads. He admits failing badly enough to cause his sacking in England and his rep in Miami is bad enough to worry the staff here. How is this anything but “meh”?
Sorry, but I’m tired of “meh” from this club. Fourth places and playoff losses? Sorry, not good enough, and neither is this dumb jock.
Porter and 2015 are looking increasingly like the exceptions that proof the Peregrine Rule of Mediocrity .
To me this says more about the FOs inability to read the room than anything about Neville himself. At most any other club his tweets wouldn't be mentioned but at a club fresh off of scandal where the owner was at best complacent, this is just a bad look.
The tweets are bad but I think most people would be willing to look past them. I’m sure I said things in 2012 I wouldn’t want to revisit (of course I’m nobody and didn’t commit these things to eternity online).
As others are saying it’s all about context. If you’re the culture/trust re-building FO: avoid any baggage whatsoever.
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.
It sucks as a fan to have to doubt your team. I could forgive Neville in another situation (at least on face value), but how could anyone think this was going to go well against the un-scabbed wounds from the recent past?
This is the hire I expect from a. Merritt Paulson owned team. I used to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s a literal train wreck with no common sense. I keep on wanting a reason to buy the tickets I gave up when it became obvious he was hiding stuff rather than taking ownership of the harassment culture surrounding the franchise. I’m further away today than i was yesterday.
I just hope the new owner of the Thorns comes in soon, so they can do a clean break.
“The fans are the most important part of this football club with their intensity and support, and I think this journey is going to be something special." Well, this is awkward.
This is a dereliction of duty by the entire Timbers FO. I can't believe they actually went through with this. And I don't even say that as a "look at the reaction on social media" thing, which isn't my main concern (but also isn't nothing!). My main concern is that Neville has been bad wherever he's gone, and even something as simple as a Wikipedia search of "Phil Neville" would have revealed that to a front office who gave a damn.
Instead we're going to get to watch a guy who Peter Principle'd his way to what should be one of the premier jobs in MLS. He's in no way deserving of another MLS head coaching job, and yet here we are, proving to the entire league that the Timbers are not a team that is going to matter or be relevant in any significant way for years to come.
I have no earthly idea. The cynic in me says that it's MP wanting to watch the world burn, but the realist in me says that the Timbers overvalued the non-essential skill of "being English" while also falling for the seduction of the Big Available Name.
But given the list of coaches they considered, Neville, by any objective measure, would grade out close to the bottom of any realistic list; why they decided to go that way, we'll never know, but my god I hope Ned knows what he's doing. Even while I fear he doesn't.
I've seen a bunch of FU Merritt sentiment, but I haven't seen nearly as much FU Grabavoy. Obviously, MP has his reputation going against him, but do we also think he was the decider in the hire?
Grabavoy needs to go. His benefit of the doubt has just run out. Last year he could argue that he was stuck with GWs bad contracts so the team couldn't be improved. That reeks of lack of imagination, creativity, ability to identify cheap available talent, and ability to work with the existing roster to renegotiate \restructure in order to bring in support so the whole roster could benefit. That's bad, I thought maybe it was growing pains\transition bad.
He was also unimpressive at best as a scout, but that area is tough to speculate on. I was willing to give him this off -season before making a final judgment, while leaning towards "he's not equipped for this job at this level."
Hiring Neville, after short-listing a group of candidates that were ALL. beneath the needs of this team, should see grabavoy right out the door. Unfortunately I'm in agreement with others--not sure whether this is the FO not caring what fans think, not interested in success, or a deliberate provocation, but it feels like it's somewhere on that spectrum. Totally out of touch is best-case scenario and that's not even disappointing anymore because we've seen no evidence MP and his club culture are anything but.
I honestly don't know who the ultimate decider was, and I suspect we the general public never will. As I've said elsewhere, though, if this was Ned's decision, hiring Neville is a fireable offense, assuming he works out to be as bad a coach as he probably will work out to be. If MP insisted on this hire, though, I actually feel bad for Ned, because that shows who really has the power in an era where MP was reported to have taken a "step back".
I am really starting to think that "step back" means that "okay, I will delete my twitter account and not argue with fans online." When Gio got fired, MP was the first person quoted in the press release and Heather Davis wasn't even mentioned.
The guy was just way too invested in things to suddenly just sit back and count his money. I am curious how much Merritt had a say in this as well and really think it was quite a bit.
It's not bad in a vacuum. But it IS bad in the context of the talent available on that England team. Sarina Wiegman, who took over from Neville, showed what could be done with that team by (a) winning the Euros and (b) getting to the World Cup final.
No it is not. It was also a one-off; his MLS coaching career sports a 38% win rate and no accomplishments of note ("Won sixth place one time" isn't an accomplishment, despite the Timbers' recent form). He has not shown an ability, in his two-plus seasons with Miami, to take a middling roster and do anything good with it. And that's what Portland desperately needs.
So I want to connect some threads. On the one hand, after the fans cheered the Thorns on to the bitter end in a rainy night on Sunday:
“The fans are what make this place what it is. There is no other place like it. They were so loud today," says their coach.
Meanwhile, on the Timbers side, the club looks at a hire they know will anger a fan base just recovering from sexism scandals, and they say: yup, FU fans, we're taking this dude here, because although he's not got a great coaching record, he's a real soccer bro.
The chasm between the front office and the fan base they depend on to make Portland what it is just really widened. Also: how's this going to impact the actual jewel of the franchise, the Thorns? Who's coming here after that?
More importantly for the Thorns, what players will no longer want to stay here after the Timbers coaching hire? I am really concerned this decision is going to have massive ripple effects.
This is so very difficult in two ways, as people are noting. Yes he apologized for his tweets, but you don't just say things like that accidentally. And it wasn't just one comment, it was multiple comments, including one about being happy about beating his wife. It makes me think he apologized only to try to push back on the reaction, as he never fully explained why he'd say those things in the first place.
As for his managerial career, I am equally unimpressed. Yes he faced limitations due to Miami having roster penalties due to their roster manipulations in 2020, but he never produced anything at Miami, and he was fined by MLS for calling for an investigation into referees' calls against his team at one point.
I just can't help but feel there were better choices out there, as a coach with multiple anti-woman comments on his record and a below-average MLS coaching record misses the mark in both respects.
And how does Miles Joseph feel about Neville being picked above him?
I do wonder if Joseph will go the Llamosa route, and stay for a bit then move on. He showed at the end of the season that he could be a decent coach somewhere, hopefully he can get a shot.
There’s tons of head coaching spots opening up, I’m sure he’ll get some interviews, and if he gets chosen then I hope he takes his opportunity for his career! But I imagine he’ll stay in Portland if that doesn’t materialize
At the press conference Phil pointed out the obvious elephant in the room: lack of production from the DPs. He said Evander has 10-15 percent more goals and assists in him, and due to the lack of production from the rest of the DPs, Portland was mediocre. To win, you need productive DPs. You can't coach your way out of the lower rungs with average talent over a sustainable period. Gio was successful when he had Valeri and Blanco firing on all cylinders, and for a moment, Brian Fernandez. This offseason and who becomes our new DPs will determine whether Phil will be successful or not.
Also, Phil talked about having an identity as a team, and that we as fans will know right from the start what that will be. I've seen his Miami teams - they definitely attack and like the ball. So, I'm hopeful we will see entertaining soccer.
Also, tied to the DP talk, they want guys who are leaders, and they mentioned that there were guys who had been here a long time but that they were looking to add leadership. I don't know if I am reading into this too much, but it seemed like a shot at (pick one: DC, Dairon or Blanco?) or all of the above? Who of those three will be back?
Also, what about Santi? Does he become a new DP?
While it is important to add attacking DP firepower (Josef Martinez anyone?!), please add a centerback of quality and please look into a right back to upgrade Mosquera (Maybe it's Asprilla - he did a great job against Houston! I'm still salty Asprilla didn't start that game. What disrespect for the way he had been playing.)
Finally, looking forward to the stories of Phil interacting with the TA!
Josef Martinez is in his 30's. He isn't worth a dp anymore. It's a matter of time before his body gives up and he can't produce, like blanco and Valeri started to in their 30s. We need a 25- 28 year old dp 9. Not Josef.
An upgrade over masquera!? The guy was highly admired around the league and said to be highly admired in other leagues. So much that everyone was saying he won't be in Portland for long. The second half of the year he fell off and I think that had to do with tactics and him being taught the correct time to go forward and stay back. Things I was hoping a good coach would teach him.
I'm not sure I'd take Martinez as a DP at this point, but I would love it if he would join the Timbers on a TAM deal or something similar - he's still got a few good years left and he's been highly productive throughout his MLS career (and injured a lot less often than people seem to assume).
Josef Martinez is currently on $4 million and had 7 goals and 1 assist last year on 1700 minutes. Mora last year had 6 goals and 2 assists in 800 minutes. Yes, Martinez was on an awful team, but I see no reason that he would be an upgrade over Mora while also having an enormous salary. I feel like I’m in the minority but I really don’t want Josef to come here, I think he’s a shadow of his former self after his knee surgeries and has a big personality that we don’t need
I think people are overestimating Martinez' decline. He's still an elite player in this league even if his production has dipped slightly (this past season was the first season in MLS that his G/90 was below .5).
I'm not saying the Timbers have to go get Josef Martinez specifically, although I wouldn't mind it. I just think that tier of players (the tier with, like, Almada/Acosta/Driussi) is where the Timbers should be looking to fill their DP spots.
All of which comes down to scouting, since that tier of player doesn't come up on the market often (thus the "I'd see what it would take to land Martinez" thought, for me) and that's a big gap for the Timbers, or it has been in the past. We'll see if Ned is up to the task of finding the next great MLS DP; Evander's good and getting better, but I want the Timbers to aim higher (make Evander the baseline, not the high water mark) and get someone at that super-elite level.
Twitterverse and reddit blowing up about it. One of the most respected companies in its industry to one that's known for high pressure sales. I guess I'll be prepared for bargain DPs this year.
"“It is a dream come true to partner with the Portland Timbers and give back to the community that helped us start this journey,” DaBella CEO Donnie McMillan, Jr. said in the release. “Portland is our home. Our alignment with the Timbers, an organization that shares our core values,"
The Timbers now share "core values" with a high-pressure sales business. Fitting. I wonder if they'll close all the concession stands now, and just send people to our seats every 15 minutes insisting that we buy something until we finally buckle under the pressure and buy a bag of kettle corn or whatever they're pushing at the moment.
The vitriol over this hiring is just a bit too much. I'm gonna give him a chance. There is some nuance to his previous jobs that shows he's not as bad as some paint him to be. Is he who I would hire? Nope. But I'm holding out hope this works.
There is literally nothing in Neville's coaching history to indicate he's any better of a coach than Gio was. And that's my problem; as I've said before, this was a unique chance for the Timbers to completely reinvent who they wanted to be by showing some ambition, and instead, they chose the worst possible candidate from an already underpromising list of candidates. If they wanted to continue to underperform, they should have just held on to Gio.
I'm not hoping for Neville to fail, but his hire doesn't inspire confidence that the Timbers want to get dramatically better any time soon, and that's the most depressing/upsetting thing about this whole hire to me.
I would tend to agree. This looks like a middling hire (at best) as far talent is concerned. The vitriol over the hire has less to do with Neville and more to do with an organization that can't help but slam its junk in the door at every opportunity. Do I think Neville is allowed to be repentent for really stupid stuff he said a decade ago? Yes. Does that mean he is the right hire for a club that still hasn't recovered from being a sexist boy's club? No. But that requires self-awareness that is fairly rare for the Portland Timbers.
However, when looking at the MLS landscape, the Timbers are no longer one of the class organizations in the league. The owner is polarizing, there is always a controversy of some sort, other than Ned the front office has disappeared into the ether--who the hell is piloting this ship?, the front office and supporters lack mutual respect, the team is solidly mediocre by default, and there are more empty seats than ever. I'm wondering if Phil Neville and Jason Kreis coming here is the best the Timbers can do at this point. I mean, that original list was far from inspiring.
"I'm wondering if Phil Neville and Jason Kreis coming here is the best the Timbers can do at this point. "
I mean, Miles Joseph would have been better than either, honestly - and I say that as someone who wasn't convinced he was the man for the job a month ago. But this...ugh.
"the Timbers are no longer one of the class organizations in the league."
Haven't been for years, honestly. A couple Cup runs out of nowhere don't really cement that status. the ability to go deep in the playoffs - not just make them, but actually progress - every season does.
I agree, if we were going to have ZERO ambition we could have just stayed with Joseph
That's not true at all. He did well with the Lionesses (2nd SheBelieves and a 1st) until a bad run of form. One of his Miami teams made the playoffs despite being hamstrung by roster limitations/inability to spend.
He also has A LOT more experience with high level players than Gio did when he came in (and even now.) He may not work out, but I don't think this is the doom and gloom hiring people are wanting it to be.
The Lioness players weren't very happy with Neville's coaching, that is one of the reasons (and results) that he didn't see out his contract. There was a general feeling that the Lionesses were winning despite the coach.
The only club evidence we have is a 39% win percentage at Inter Miami. So I think there's justified concern.
Yeah, Sarina Wiegman came in and the Lionesses were instantly better. I remember thinking that the USWNT had a secret ace up their sleeve when they played England in the 2019 World Cup - Phil Neville. He's never been more than mediocre in his coaching gigs.
True...but I'd call Wiegman one of WoSo's current elite coaches (along with Hayes, Ikeda, Bompastor, and - from a purely coaching perspective* - Vilda). You can count on the fingers of one hand the teams she wouldn't make better straight away. It's more his record at Inter Miami what concerns me about his coaching. How well does he understand what's needed to succeed in MLS?
* elite-tier coach...garbage tier human
"How well does he understand what's needed to succeed in MLS?"
Judging by his record and the purported lack of chemistry with his front office staff...not well.
His subsequent Miami team won 5 of 15 games before he was shown the door in the Messi rebuild.
"I don't think this is the doom and gloom hiring people are wanting it to be."
For me, Neville's hire shows the utter and complete lack of ambition to be a next-tier-up good team that seems to be driving the Timbers now. They had a chance to hire a really good coach who would be able to work with a dramatically reshaped roster and make the Timbers into something pretty great, and instead we get...a guy who did OK in one of his coaching jobs and did nothing of note in his others. Why should anybody be excited about this hire? What is it that I'm missing here?
Let me be clear, I’m not excited about this hire but when you look at the list of candidates we interviewed could/would you get excited about any of those guys? Is the PT job that undesirable that those are the type of guys we are bringing in as potential replacements? I don’t think Portland is a big enough draw to bring in a guy like an Antonio Conte or someone of that ilk but there are surely better candidates than what we got.
The one thing those other guys didn't do is make misogynistic public statements. In jest or in any other way. In the wake of the Riley / Polo scandals you'd think the FO could at least come up with someone who didn't have that kind of baggage.
I am far from an expert on who is available at any given time. But I do know that, apart from that list (which I agree was fairly uninspired), there are a whole bunch of assistant coaches at the Miles Joseph level, all over the world, who would be good coaching candidates, and would be good to build around long term, if that's what the Timbers really want. I mean, Gio was an NASL coach when he was hired, so it's not like plucking someone from the lower leagues/assistant ranks is a bad idea.
I would never expect the Timbers - or any MLS team that doesn't employ Leo Messi, really - to attract a coach like Conte. And that's fine, because MLS isn't that elite of a league. But I would expect them to not just fall back on a checklist whose top two items are "has he coached in MLS before" and "is he English", which seems to be two of the main drivers here.
Nobody wants a doom and gloom hiring. And those of us who have serious doubts about Neville — and hoped for someone with much better credentials — have no choice but see how he pans out.
The article below is somewhat reassuring. But of course it will take time to see if the execution backs up the words. Also, Grabavoy discussing the job with 20 diverse coaches is intriguing given the choice he made.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/phil-neville-brings-unfinished-business-into-portland-timbers-opportunity
This is nothing against you or your comment, but forgive me if I don't take reassurance from an article published on the league's own website...hahaha.
I don't want Neville to fail. I want desperately to be wrong about his ability to coach at a high level. I just...don't see a ton of evidence that I am.
Good point. The article was timed to create talking points and blunt criticism leading up to today's news conference. I noticed that Neville didn't address or wasn't asked anything about his lackluster results at Miami. As a friend noted last night, the article is largely a "crisis comms" exercise guided by PR professionals. But it's helpful to hear from Neville and Grabavoy, who face intense scrutiny going forward.
As for the invisible CEO, I know she's not an apparition — I spoke with her after the Timbers preseason fan forum. But she's either muzzled or as another poster suggested hyper-focused on driving revenue.
Now I’m not gonna sit here and say Neville is the best coach we COULD have gotten but I think you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t say he was the best out of the coaches we were interviewing. He’s had pretty decent success when coaching the England women’s national team, took Miami to the playoffs while they were going though MLS sanctions, and he’s worked at top clubs like Man U and Valencia.
Robin Fraser drove Colorado into ground before leaving the club with a sub .500 record, Torrent has proven to be a good assistant but not great on the head coaching front, Hendrickson tanked with Chicago, and while Miles did a pretty good job steadying the ship it still ended up sinking in the end. So for me the Timbers aimed pretty low when it came to hiring a new coach and in the end I think we got the option with the most potential upside out of those rather weak candidates.
he did nothing spectacular with England (55% winning percentage compared with Wiegman's 74% and Vlatko's 78.5% with the USWNT), was in a bad run of form that got bailed out by the pandemic and left as soon as one of his friends in the old boys network offered him a gig.
As for his work at Valencia...well it was very enjoyable for those of us who have cultured a hatred of the Nevilles for years
You might want to look at Colorado's cheap ownership before blaming Fraser for the Rapids' decline. How would you feel if Gio wasn't able to have two DPs?
honestly we were running like 1.5 DP's throughout his tenure
Dome Torrent was interviewed by the Timbers, if reports are to be believed anyway. Dome Torrent is 100x the coach Phil Neville is.
his name is also 100x better than Neville
Right?
I honestly would have thought that was the name of some dark web application
it's the torrent site for people who really, really loved Under The Dome
He has a great coaching resume but he has a track record of not sticking around places for whatever reason. I think the Timbers really want to build something with this hire and I’m not sure Torrent has shown he can do that.
Torrent was extremely unhappy with how MLS roster/salary rules work, which is one of the reasons he left NY, so it may not have been possible to get him, and I get that. But the gulf in coaching talent between what the Timbers could have had and what they got is...stark.
And my standard disclaimer: I desperately hope I'm wrong! I really hope that Ned/MP saw something in Neville that we on the outside don't/can't see, that made them go "this is the guy to build around", and I hope Neville makes me eat every single one of my critical words. I'm just very afraid he won't.
I am wary about him after his stupid Twitter comments (10 years ago) but willing to judge him on his record coaching the England women…we don’t hear anything negative about his interactions with the players. Twitter has a way of luring people into saying dumb shit.
The reaction of current staff is more of a concern, but I guess we will see.
Read his statements in the MLS article….I am willing to take them at face value and give him a chance. That he speaks some Spanish is somewhat reassuring…I was wondering. That’s a minimum requirement for this club.
His record was taking a team ranked #3 in the world to #6 in the world.
But six is twice as much as three! That's great! Right? RIGHT?
yeah I got nothin
You can't blame Twitter for a grown ass adult making extremely stupid and offensive statements to the entire internet, especially when said adult is a public figure.
I mean he was just a mere 38 year old man at the time of his comments!
Kinda the de facto locker room language in the Gio era, I always had the impression...
There's a significant difference between locker room language and statements which are deliberately made to the public.
I'm definitely on board for this trainwreck, come what may, but the Neville hiring is a little bit on the nose. Couldn't they have hired someone with a better record and less baggage?
There’s the brevity I’ve been looking for in this whole situation.
Better record, less baggage: PLEASE.
I think management is starry-eyed. Like DC with Rooney... Heck, I get it. Nevilles career was amazing.
"Nevilles career was amazing."
Neville's career also ended 10 years ago. it shouldn't comprise a majority - or even a significant minority - of the reason he was hired. Also, look at Thierry Henry. Probably a top five player in the last 50 years, and a terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible manager.
I think you're right that the FO got blinded by the "big name", and that's disappointing.
Say more about Henry being a terrible manager?
He's a relentless, notorious micromanager. He is one of those guys who was soooooo good as a player, but he couldn't really communicate/teach how to play to his players - his attitude was basically "just go do what I used to do", even if he didn't say it in those exact words, and then he'd get exasperated at his guys when they couldn't play like prime Thierry Henry. Which no one can!
That level of frustration led him to micromanage players both at training and in games, and that's just not a recipe for success. He won four of his 20 games in charge at Monaco, and then went to Montreal and won 9 out of 29. He's currently in charge of the France U21's, for some reason, which I don't know how it's going but I can't imagine it's all that much better.
Then there was the chair incicdent:
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37505196/thierry-henry-gives-monaco-player-killer-stare-not-tucking-chair-in
All of this makes me sad. Henry is my favorite modern player of all time, and I was hoping he'd be a good manager, but it just doesn't seem like he knows how to get players to do what he wants them to do.
Thanks.
Ya, I feel the same way about him. Too bad.
Neville's *PLAYING* career was amazing. Coaching, not so much. In fact, not at all.
There are a lot of coaches who work really hard to make it and invest their time learning the hard way by coaching through the ranks. Then there is the likes of Rooney, Lampard, and Neville, who fall into the top jobs with no experience other than they played at a high level. Then they fail a couple of times and still get another top job.
You nailed it on the head. Those big names are seductive.
I could write 10 paragraphs about this. I won't. I became a Timbers fan and MLS fan in the summer of '15 when I moved here. We got our season tickets a couple years later (thanks overpriced new wing of Stadium!) My wife and I have so many hats, scarves, jerseys, t-shirts and other assorted Timbers gear, we could go half a month without doing laundry and still rep the Timbers every day.
Due to front office crap, which we considered serious, we decided to step back from the Timbers.
We dropped our season tickets last year and begrudgingly paid for MLStv or whatever it's called. We watched every Timbers game and more than a few other games during the season.
Now they hired Neville.
See ya. We're out. Last straw, etc.
It was fun. There were 3 or 4 really good years in there. But the Timbers have proven beyond a reasonable doubt they don't care that much if I'm part of the fanbase or not, so we're gonna be Winterhawk fans or something, I guess.
Hope you guys have a lot of happiness in your journeys as people and as sports fans, and I really hope the Timbers don't continue to be an organization you have to apologize being a fan of.
Time for some controversial hot takes. Fans who believe their opinions should control who gets hired as a head coach (any where) are at best delusional and at worst arrogant. I have no idea what was said at the interviews, what vetting was done by the front office, etc. Perhaps this choice was made because of how Neville might get more from certain key players, etc. We simply don’t know.
As for the tweets, they’re over a decade old, he’s apologized, and there haven’t been any such comments since - that I’m aware of. So, I think he’s earned a second chance. I get the past problems with Riley and co. are still painful for many, but Neville wasn’t involved. He shouldn’t be tarred with all that. If you want to be mad at ownership and management, feel free. Just don’t expect that anger to influence these sorts of choices.
I get people question Neville’s ability to coach. I think it’s rare that someone - even former EPL players - walks onto a pitch and instantly becomes a great coach. There’s a learning curve like anything else. Past failures should not be shocking, nor should they be overly influential. Fraser is highly regarded even though the Rapids were a disaster. To a great extent that’s because of crappy ownership and lousy roster. If that’s the case, why isn’t Neville afforded some slack? He went into an expansion team with a mediocre roster at best and facing league sanctions that would make it virtually impossible to improve the team. Additionally, he had lots of injuries to deal with. I think it’s unfair to state he was a failure in Miami without at least giving those issues some consideration.
Finally, I have no idea if this team will be successful or not in the future. But to take the position that Neville is crap and ownership is purposely giving fans an FU might be a bit of an overreaction.
"I get people question Neville’s ability to coach. I think it’s rare that someone - even former EPL players - walks onto a pitch and instantly becomes a great coach."
There are two problems with this stance for me.
1. "even former EPL players" doesn't mean a damn thing. Just because someone played in the Premier League does not automatically confer on them some sort of exalted status. Ex-players can make good coaches, and ex-players can be terrible coaches, no matter where they played.
2. "It's rare that someone walks onto the pitch and immediately becomes a great coach"
You're absolutely right! That is rare. But...Phil Neville has 90 games of MLS coaching experience at this point, and he's won less than half of them. He isn't coming to Portland as a new coach who may surprise people with how good he is. He is what he is at this point, coaching-wise.
"I think it’s unfair to state he was a failure in Miami without at least giving those issues some consideration."
It may be unfair, but it's also how sports works. Injuries are part of the game, and a big part of a manager's job is to, well, manage his/her team through those injuries as successfully as possible. I mean, Gio's Timbers teams were brutalized by injuries in both 2022 and 2023, and a failure to successfully make a functioning team out of the parts he had to deal with cost him his job. Why should Neville be thought of differently?
Let's not forget that the teams Neville has coached got worse over his tenure. This isn't the case where he took them to new heights, but in short periods the teams played worse which led to his leaving those programs. It isn't impressive in any way, shape or form.
The issues with the tweets, which lead me to not like Neville, are more of an indictment of the team (Ownership and Front Office). So now here I sit, unimpressed with the hiring of the coach AND upset with the team. I was really excited to see what the Timbers would look like after this offseason and now I'm feeling like taking a break wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Certainly being a former player is no guarantee of future coaching prowess. However, being coached by Alex Ferguson gives Neville insights and strategies most folks will never get.
As to the fairness of holding Neville accountable for Miami, I agree. Sports and coaching are often unfair. And others have had to deal with tough circumstances, too. I’m simply suggesting that we consider the full circumstances of his stint in Miami, before concluding he can’t coach.
"I’m simply suggesting that we consider the full circumstances of his stint in Miami, before concluding he can’t coach"
I won't speak for others, but I have never said he "can't coach". I maintain he is not a good enough coach for where the Timbers are right now vs. where they (theoretically, from what they've said) want to be. Neville, if looking at his record and history, is not a coach that's going to come in and energize a moribund team to being a regular top five finisher, and that's what I want the Timbers to be.
And more importantly, that's what the Timbers had the chance to be this winter, with the right coaching hire and with the right moves to rebuild a roster that is turning over a significant chunk of its legacy players this winter. They're not off to an amazing start here, and it doesn't fill me with confidence that they will rebuild with players that will put Portland in that elite tier, which is where I feel they should be aiming to be.
Neville is crap. What about his cv tells you otherwise. He took a team, yes expansion team (this isn't 2011 expansion players, this is 2020 expansion) that cheated and had 4 DP'S.......4!!! and still finished second from last in the east. So what exactly says he is good?
Oh that's right, he coached the english women's team to a 2nd place she believes cup. That's it, he is a genius. Out of what 6 teams. The fact is that the women's international game had been a joke for decades. If you coached a country that actually invested in women's soccer you were 100% better than your competition. The women's world cup has less teams (until this last world cup) not because countries didn't have players to field teams but because the drastic quality gap between teams and the lack of competent teams that could play. It is not until now that we are seeing much more investment and stronger development across the world in the women's game.
Point being you didn't need to be a good coach to be a top 6 team in the world. You just needed to have a team of developed players. Like usa, England, France, etc. And that same team got drastically better when he left. So what does that say.
I don't care what Phil said in the past. Men are men and say stupid shit. Any guy who says that kind of talk isn't said all the time in private with there friends is just being a simp or virtue signaling. Men make jokes and I take it as a joke with his comments. The only things men shouldn't joke about are things about philysical abuse towards women. Be it sexual or physical. Men don't joke about that stiff. If a friend did, I would question the kind of man he is behind closed doors and probably question if I wanted to be friends with him. So I don't take most of his comments serious or find offense, but the last one about beating his wife or whatever it was. That is inappropriate and people do have a right to get mad about that. On the field and off the field the guy has shown he is a bad bet. Somehow you can't see it. That's shocking to me.
"Any guy who says that kind of talk isn't said all the time in private with there friends is just being a simp or virtue signaling. Men make jokes and I take it as a joke..."
I guess I'm a virtue signaling wimp then. Absolutely nobody in my group of friends makes 1950's sexist jokes because they're not funny and well, many of my friends group are women.
Just because you're a pig and hang out with pigs doesn't mean the rest of us root in our own shit. There is a whole wide world outside of the confines of your barn, so I guess oink away with the boys and have a good time, but the rest of us stay away because of the smell.
"I'm only sexist when women aren't around," may not be the eloquent defense you intend it to be.
Making jokes isn't sexist bud. Jokes are jokes. Maybe you shouldn't be so soft and fragile. You must believe everything that comedians say don't you? Lmao
Your projection of your own sexism onto others is quite telling. That's not 'how it is' at all. You should seriously consider getting help.
Making a joke/comment about the satisfaction of beating your wife is bad enough. But posting the comment on Twitter is another level entirely. That's not a spur of the moment bad decision to make an inappropriate comment, that is actually something you do deliberately. And he did. And as far as I can tell, he says it was a bad decision to do so, but never explained why he did it. That hurts.
The 4 DPs thing was the year before Neville got in charge. The sanctions were applied his first year after an investigation concluded that two of Inter Miami’s players the previous year -- Matuidi and Reyes -- should’ve been DPs. Neville was then left to try to bring together a terribly built roster with no way to fix it because of the sanctions and Miami was overpaying for bad/underperforming players. I don’t like Neville but I don’t put a lot of Miami’s shortcomings on him directly
Yeah I misread an article. It said first inaugural season with Miami. I thought it was saying Miami inaugural season not his as the Miami coach.
We all say and think and do "stupid shit" all the time, very true, but this is about public statements by a public figure, who is going to represent PTFC, and, in a way, Portland soccer culture.
From a purely PR perspective, hiring someone who has made sexist / abusive comments right after a sex abuse scandal is a terrible idea - it doesn't make the organization look very good, it doesn't make him look very good, and it is definitely not starting the '24 season off on the right foot.
It would be interesting, however, to see if the team's performance next season determines how much people actually care about Neville's tweets. If we get poor results is he going to be labeled a misogynistic bastard, but if we do well is that all going to be water under the bridge?
tbd.
I thought the same thing. The best way to mend with the public is on the field. The reality is that you aren't really engaged with fans outside of the club. Not unless phill is walking around town and yelling sexist remarks. Outside of the leaders inside the TA, the general public doesn't get to interact with Ned, phill, or mp. So the only real way to put shit behind the club is to win and make sure nothing else happens going forward, and if it does, you deal with it swiftly without hesitation. But nobody wants something to happen just so they can prove they have changed. He better win or the comments about him being a terrible coach on the field and not qualified will be the first thing thrown at the FO
I don't quite see it that way. I think the best way to mend with the public would have been to not hire someone like Neville in the first place.
I agree they should avoid nevill all together but I am talking about even before they hired him. Only time and on field results would have mended relationships eventually. Mostly because they don't do enough social engagements with regular fans
I’ll admit to not being nearly as torqued about the sexism as I should be, but that’s probably from being a GI for twenty years and being immersed in that sort of crude/stupid jock-speak. Dumb jocks say dumb jock things, film at eleven!
Mind you, it does provide an interesting view into this joker’s head. How clever are you (assuming that he was thinking - if that’s the right term - of a managerial career even then) if you don’t see that slagging 50% of your prospective fanbase in public is a bad idea? Hmmm…so not exactly Soccer Einstein, Phil, eh?
No, it’s the Peter Principle upfail from this guy and what it says about the immense reservoir of mediocrity that Peregrine represents.
Even if you lean hard into his England runners-up-match (loss!) and first-round playoff (loss!) in Miami…how are these anything but “meh”?
His respective successors come along and improve both squads. He admits failing badly enough to cause his sacking in England and his rep in Miami is bad enough to worry the staff here. How is this anything but “meh”?
Sorry, but I’m tired of “meh” from this club. Fourth places and playoff losses? Sorry, not good enough, and neither is this dumb jock.
Porter and 2015 are looking increasingly like the exceptions that proof the Peregrine Rule of Mediocrity .
To me this says more about the FOs inability to read the room than anything about Neville himself. At most any other club his tweets wouldn't be mentioned but at a club fresh off of scandal where the owner was at best complacent, this is just a bad look.
Article by Bill Oram reflecting this pretty well: https://www.oregonlive.com/timbers/2023/11/bill-oram-merritt-paulson-shows-contempt-for-portland-timbers-fans-by-hiring-coach-with-history-of-sexist-tweets.html
The tweets are bad but I think most people would be willing to look past them. I’m sure I said things in 2012 I wouldn’t want to revisit (of course I’m nobody and didn’t commit these things to eternity online).
As others are saying it’s all about context. If you’re the culture/trust re-building FO: avoid any baggage whatsoever.
Such a stupid hire on every level.
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.
It sucks as a fan to have to doubt your team. I could forgive Neville in another situation (at least on face value), but how could anyone think this was going to go well against the un-scabbed wounds from the recent past?
This is the hire I expect from a. Merritt Paulson owned team. I used to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s a literal train wreck with no common sense. I keep on wanting a reason to buy the tickets I gave up when it became obvious he was hiding stuff rather than taking ownership of the harassment culture surrounding the franchise. I’m further away today than i was yesterday.
I just hope the new owner of the Thorns comes in soon, so they can do a clean break.
“The fans are the most important part of this football club with their intensity and support, and I think this journey is going to be something special." Well, this is awkward.
This is a dereliction of duty by the entire Timbers FO. I can't believe they actually went through with this. And I don't even say that as a "look at the reaction on social media" thing, which isn't my main concern (but also isn't nothing!). My main concern is that Neville has been bad wherever he's gone, and even something as simple as a Wikipedia search of "Phil Neville" would have revealed that to a front office who gave a damn.
Instead we're going to get to watch a guy who Peter Principle'd his way to what should be one of the premier jobs in MLS. He's in no way deserving of another MLS head coaching job, and yet here we are, proving to the entire league that the Timbers are not a team that is going to matter or be relevant in any significant way for years to come.
Fuck you, Merritt.
There’s a middle finger in this for Merritt, Ned, and Heather.
You don’t make this kind of dubious hire if you’re truly committed to culture change and to the fans.
So, Why Neville? Why choose, of all people, Neville?
I have no earthly idea. The cynic in me says that it's MP wanting to watch the world burn, but the realist in me says that the Timbers overvalued the non-essential skill of "being English" while also falling for the seduction of the Big Available Name.
But given the list of coaches they considered, Neville, by any objective measure, would grade out close to the bottom of any realistic list; why they decided to go that way, we'll never know, but my god I hope Ned knows what he's doing. Even while I fear he doesn't.
I've seen a bunch of FU Merritt sentiment, but I haven't seen nearly as much FU Grabavoy. Obviously, MP has his reputation going against him, but do we also think he was the decider in the hire?
Grabavoy needs to go. His benefit of the doubt has just run out. Last year he could argue that he was stuck with GWs bad contracts so the team couldn't be improved. That reeks of lack of imagination, creativity, ability to identify cheap available talent, and ability to work with the existing roster to renegotiate \restructure in order to bring in support so the whole roster could benefit. That's bad, I thought maybe it was growing pains\transition bad.
He was also unimpressive at best as a scout, but that area is tough to speculate on. I was willing to give him this off -season before making a final judgment, while leaning towards "he's not equipped for this job at this level."
Hiring Neville, after short-listing a group of candidates that were ALL. beneath the needs of this team, should see grabavoy right out the door. Unfortunately I'm in agreement with others--not sure whether this is the FO not caring what fans think, not interested in success, or a deliberate provocation, but it feels like it's somewhere on that spectrum. Totally out of touch is best-case scenario and that's not even disappointing anymore because we've seen no evidence MP and his club culture are anything but.
I honestly don't know who the ultimate decider was, and I suspect we the general public never will. As I've said elsewhere, though, if this was Ned's decision, hiring Neville is a fireable offense, assuming he works out to be as bad a coach as he probably will work out to be. If MP insisted on this hire, though, I actually feel bad for Ned, because that shows who really has the power in an era where MP was reported to have taken a "step back".
I am really starting to think that "step back" means that "okay, I will delete my twitter account and not argue with fans online." When Gio got fired, MP was the first person quoted in the press release and Heather Davis wasn't even mentioned.
The guy was just way too invested in things to suddenly just sit back and count his money. I am curious how much Merritt had a say in this as well and really think it was quite a bit.
A 4th place finish at the women’s World Cup isnt “bad” is it?
It's not bad in a vacuum. But it IS bad in the context of the talent available on that England team. Sarina Wiegman, who took over from Neville, showed what could be done with that team by (a) winning the Euros and (b) getting to the World Cup final.
No it is not. It was also a one-off; his MLS coaching career sports a 38% win rate and no accomplishments of note ("Won sixth place one time" isn't an accomplishment, despite the Timbers' recent form). He has not shown an ability, in his two-plus seasons with Miami, to take a middling roster and do anything good with it. And that's what Portland desperately needs.
So I want to connect some threads. On the one hand, after the fans cheered the Thorns on to the bitter end in a rainy night on Sunday:
“The fans are what make this place what it is. There is no other place like it. They were so loud today," says their coach.
Meanwhile, on the Timbers side, the club looks at a hire they know will anger a fan base just recovering from sexism scandals, and they say: yup, FU fans, we're taking this dude here, because although he's not got a great coaching record, he's a real soccer bro.
The chasm between the front office and the fan base they depend on to make Portland what it is just really widened. Also: how's this going to impact the actual jewel of the franchise, the Thorns? Who's coming here after that?
More importantly for the Thorns, what players will no longer want to stay here after the Timbers coaching hire? I am really concerned this decision is going to have massive ripple effects.
This is so very difficult in two ways, as people are noting. Yes he apologized for his tweets, but you don't just say things like that accidentally. And it wasn't just one comment, it was multiple comments, including one about being happy about beating his wife. It makes me think he apologized only to try to push back on the reaction, as he never fully explained why he'd say those things in the first place.
As for his managerial career, I am equally unimpressed. Yes he faced limitations due to Miami having roster penalties due to their roster manipulations in 2020, but he never produced anything at Miami, and he was fined by MLS for calling for an investigation into referees' calls against his team at one point.
I just can't help but feel there were better choices out there, as a coach with multiple anti-woman comments on his record and a below-average MLS coaching record misses the mark in both respects.
And how does Miles Joseph feel about Neville being picked above him?
I do wonder if Joseph will go the Llamosa route, and stay for a bit then move on. He showed at the end of the season that he could be a decent coach somewhere, hopefully he can get a shot.
There’s tons of head coaching spots opening up, I’m sure he’ll get some interviews, and if he gets chosen then I hope he takes his opportunity for his career! But I imagine he’ll stay in Portland if that doesn’t materialize
When I root, I root for the Timbers.
I did not root this past year, and won't again until Paulson sells.
I have been pretty disengaged the last couple years and this hire was a chance to re-engage us as fans, and it failed.
Spot on.
At the press conference Phil pointed out the obvious elephant in the room: lack of production from the DPs. He said Evander has 10-15 percent more goals and assists in him, and due to the lack of production from the rest of the DPs, Portland was mediocre. To win, you need productive DPs. You can't coach your way out of the lower rungs with average talent over a sustainable period. Gio was successful when he had Valeri and Blanco firing on all cylinders, and for a moment, Brian Fernandez. This offseason and who becomes our new DPs will determine whether Phil will be successful or not.
Also, Phil talked about having an identity as a team, and that we as fans will know right from the start what that will be. I've seen his Miami teams - they definitely attack and like the ball. So, I'm hopeful we will see entertaining soccer.
Also, tied to the DP talk, they want guys who are leaders, and they mentioned that there were guys who had been here a long time but that they were looking to add leadership. I don't know if I am reading into this too much, but it seemed like a shot at (pick one: DC, Dairon or Blanco?) or all of the above? Who of those three will be back?
Also, what about Santi? Does he become a new DP?
While it is important to add attacking DP firepower (Josef Martinez anyone?!), please add a centerback of quality and please look into a right back to upgrade Mosquera (Maybe it's Asprilla - he did a great job against Houston! I'm still salty Asprilla didn't start that game. What disrespect for the way he had been playing.)
Finally, looking forward to the stories of Phil interacting with the TA!
Santi won't be a dp.
Josef Martinez is in his 30's. He isn't worth a dp anymore. It's a matter of time before his body gives up and he can't produce, like blanco and Valeri started to in their 30s. We need a 25- 28 year old dp 9. Not Josef.
An upgrade over masquera!? The guy was highly admired around the league and said to be highly admired in other leagues. So much that everyone was saying he won't be in Portland for long. The second half of the year he fell off and I think that had to do with tactics and him being taught the correct time to go forward and stay back. Things I was hoping a good coach would teach him.
Martinez is 30. In his 30s? Why not go with '30 something' there. LOL.
Mosquera showed no heart, and frankly, his defense sucks. I hope someone admires him enough to take him, but I sure wouldn't.
I'm not sure I'd take Martinez as a DP at this point, but I would love it if he would join the Timbers on a TAM deal or something similar - he's still got a few good years left and he's been highly productive throughout his MLS career (and injured a lot less often than people seem to assume).
Josef Martinez is currently on $4 million and had 7 goals and 1 assist last year on 1700 minutes. Mora last year had 6 goals and 2 assists in 800 minutes. Yes, Martinez was on an awful team, but I see no reason that he would be an upgrade over Mora while also having an enormous salary. I feel like I’m in the minority but I really don’t want Josef to come here, I think he’s a shadow of his former self after his knee surgeries and has a big personality that we don’t need
I think people are overestimating Martinez' decline. He's still an elite player in this league even if his production has dipped slightly (this past season was the first season in MLS that his G/90 was below .5).
I'm not saying the Timbers have to go get Josef Martinez specifically, although I wouldn't mind it. I just think that tier of players (the tier with, like, Almada/Acosta/Driussi) is where the Timbers should be looking to fill their DP spots.
All of which comes down to scouting, since that tier of player doesn't come up on the market often (thus the "I'd see what it would take to land Martinez" thought, for me) and that's a big gap for the Timbers, or it has been in the past. We'll see if Ned is up to the task of finding the next great MLS DP; Evander's good and getting better, but I want the Timbers to aim higher (make Evander the baseline, not the high water mark) and get someone at that super-elite level.
That super elite level is 15 to 20 million in todays market. I'm not sure mp would ever spend that.
This hiring has “we’re a 8-14 team for the foreseeable future” written all over it.
Wanna know how much MP has devalued the Timbers brand over the last few years? Get a load of the new shirt sponsor.
https://twitter.com/RyanTClarke/status/1724607622492700858
That’s really sad. 40 under 40 to textbook terrible owner in just a few years
Twitterverse and reddit blowing up about it. One of the most respected companies in its industry to one that's known for high pressure sales. I guess I'll be prepared for bargain DPs this year.
"“It is a dream come true to partner with the Portland Timbers and give back to the community that helped us start this journey,” DaBella CEO Donnie McMillan, Jr. said in the release. “Portland is our home. Our alignment with the Timbers, an organization that shares our core values,"
The Timbers now share "core values" with a high-pressure sales business. Fitting. I wonder if they'll close all the concession stands now, and just send people to our seats every 15 minutes insisting that we buy something until we finally buckle under the pressure and buy a bag of kettle corn or whatever they're pushing at the moment.