United's formula for success

Sir Alex Ferguson has had tremendous success in European competition throughout his career, winning cups with both Aberdeen in the 1980's and at Manchester United. He now advances to his third European Champions League Final - in 1999, 2008 and now again this season.

In the cases of both 2008 and 2009, a similar approach helped his team advance to the Finals.

A stingy defense in both legs of the semifinals helped United defeat Arsenal, which was also the case last year when they shut down Barcelona's mighty attack. They were able to shut out Barcelona in both legs last year, and Arsenal was only able to manage a late penalty kick by Robin van Persie in the second leg.

Timely scoring chances off the counter attack has been a staple of Manchester United's success throughout the Ferguson era, and in both the away semifinals each of the past two years, he relied on his paciest attacking player as a centre forward. Cristiano Ronaldo, normally deployed as a winger, played as a central striker against Arsenal, flanked by Park Ji-Sun and Wayne Rooney. In both cases, he was able to initiate quick counters, and bring other attacking players into the game. Where last year he had Paul Scholes linking up underneath him, this year it was Anderson offering early balls out of the midfield to spring Ronaldo.

"I thought they couldn't handle Ronaldo. That made a big difference," said Ferguson.

"The midfield was working its socks off, we had good shape and the defensive positions were covered but we needed someone to give them real problems and Ronaldo in that form, he's a fantastic player.

"We weren't overcome by Arsenal's start to the game - they were moving and the crowd were going but we kept playing our football. Once we transferred the ball to Ronaldo, it was a big problem for them."

Park has always been a favorite of Ferguson, and deploying him and Rooney on the flanks allowed for good defensive cover from two of United's hardest workers - as well as provided cover against Arsenal's chief attacking threats in Walcott and van Persie.

Knowing that Arsenal had to come out and score at least one goal to have a chance, an organized defense and patient counter attack spelled a great formula for success for Manchester United.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said "We conceded two in three minutes and that's too much against a side that defends well and which likes to counter attack."

Ronaldo paces United to European Final

Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice and created another goal as Manchester United booked their place in the UEFA Champions League final with a 3-1 victory over Arsenal at Emirates Stadium.

Much of the damage was done inside the opening 11 minutes as United, leading 1-0 from the first leg, scored early goals through Park Ji-sung and Cristiano Ronaldo.

United knew that scoring one goal would leave Arsenal needing three and it took just eight minutes for them to break the deadlock, Park capitalising on a slip from Kieran Gibbs to fire home Ronaldo's cut-back.

Ronaldo then silenced the home crowd and effectively killed off the contest three minutes later with a ferocious free-kick from distance that beat a despairing Manuel Almunia.

The defending European champions remained in complete control and Ronaldo made it 3-0 on the night in the 61st minute following a lightning-quick counter-attack involving Park and Wayne Rooney.

There was some disappointment for United when Darren Fletcher was shown a straight red card on 75 minutes despite appearing to have won the ball from Cesc Fabregas with a fair tackle.

A penalty was awarded and Robin van Persie converted his chance emphatically, but there was never any chance of a fightback and United held on to claim a 4-1 aggregate success.

Search for away goal in United's sights

Manchester United and Arsenal draw their battle lines at Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night with a place in the UEFA Champions League final at stake.

Where United had Arsenal back on their heels for the entire match in their first leg - a 1-0 victory for Manchester United - it is unlikely that either team will sit back in their own half of the field in this one...which should promise to be an end-to-end thriller.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has not been shy in announcing his young side have what it takes to overcome their opponents' slender advantage, but he will also be well aware that one away goal for United could mean curtains.

That away goal is what is likely to drive Sir Alex Ferguson's United towards the jugular in North London, rather than defending their edge which is always such a risky strategy in two-legged European knockout stages, and is also what promises to make for a thrilling, nerve-wracking night.

“We are in a good place going into the game," Ferguson said. "We have a lead and we are only one kick away from Rome. It is a big incentive for us.”

A goal for United will mean Arsenal have to score three.

Ferguson said: “I think we will need to score and we have that goal threat about us which is a big bonus.

“We have the ability to score and if we did it would put us in a very strong position. But I am expecting a very close game. You cannot call it.

Indeed of late, Ferguson has been full of praise for the Frenchman, while he has taken his verbal war to Rafa Benitez at Liverpool instead.

Ferguson said: “I can only admire the fact Arsene has kept his philosophy. He has never changed it.

“His teams always want to play football, he believes in young players. Manchester United have always been that way, too.

“You can only respect that and I do. He has brought fresh players in at the right time of the season and they have the ability to go with it.

“It’s going to be a fantastic game. Two good football teams and there won’t be a lot in it. It could even go to penalty kicks. Who knows?”

Pressure on Arsenal's young Gunners

Soccer America's Paul Kennedy writes about the pressures for Arsene Wenger and his Arsenal side, heading into this all-important Champions League tie, and for the future of his young nucleus.

Arsenal plays its most important match of the season when it hosts Manchester United Tuesday in the second leg of their UEFA Champions League.

Arsenal enters the return leg with a 1-0 deficit, so victory in the series would be a tremendous achievement for the young Gunners, who were given no chance of making it to the final four when the group stage concluded in December.

Defeat would be a crushing blow for Arsene Wenger, who has never a European trophy in 14 years as Arsenal manager, and revive talk of the possible breakup of the Gunners' young team.

Wenger, who has won 11 English trophies, says what he has or has not accomplished is irrelevant.

"Because for me what is important is what's happening tomorrow," Wenger said. "What is done is done."

He is hopeful of beating Manchester United.

"I will feel very proud of this team if they achieve it because they have been through difficult periods and they have shown great mental strength," Wenger said. "If I had said in November that we will reach the semifinals of the Champions League and FA Cup and go 21 games unbeaten in the Premier League, you would have called an ambulance."

He is counting on his young stars -- including Dutchman Robin van Persie, who is back after missing the first leg with a groin strain -- to get the job done.

"They will," Wenger said. "I'm convinced of that. It's an opportunity for them to come out and be strong, and they will.

Keeping the young Gunners together won't be easy.

The contracts of van Persie and Theo Walcott both expire at the end of next season. There is the possibility that Real Madrid or Barcelona will make a move to acquire young Spanish star Cesc Fabregas, whose contract with Arsenal extends to 2014.

Wenger went so far as to call his commitment to keeping his young players together "an obsession.""

When young players get a chance like this somewhere," he said, "there has to be a loyalty to stay together. That is why we created that policy."

Fabregas, for one, says he'll stay."

My future belongs to Arsenal," he said.

MLS coaches managing minutes of older stars

Steve Davis of MLSnet.com had an interesting column that addressed a number of issues from a tactical standpoint from this past weekend, as well as how head coaches are working carefully to manage minutes of their 30+ year old stars.

Key points included:

* The idea of MLS managers, in addition to everything else on their plates, carefully managing minutes of essential players - talented 30-something stars like Jaime Moreno, Brian McBride, Cuauhtemoc Blanco and Guillermo Barros Schelotto. Getting into the playoffs is tougher than ever in MLS in 2009, so the ability to make accurate assessments and plot sustainable solutions is more pressing than ever.

In this case, it looks like Denis Hamlett's ability to manage Blanco's minutes earlier this year, when he was carrying a slight injury and less than 100 percent fit, is paying off. Instead of risking further injury, Hamlett brought Blanco off the bench (or didn't use him at all) in Chicago's opening foursome of matches.

* The tactical chessmatch between New York's Juan Carlos Osorio and Los Angeles' Bruce Arena, which pitted two teams that line up without a true creator between them - and the road side aligns itself in a defensive-minded 4-5-1?

MLS records might be in jeopardy in a match that is sure to be hard on the eyes.

Los Angeles and New York totaled just nine shots between them at The Home Depot Center on Saturday, matching an all-time league low for combined shots in a match.

Jorge Rojas performed ostensibly as the playmaker in the Red Bulls alignment, but couldn't get much going and never truly linked with stranded and lonely forward Juan Pablo Angel. Los Angeles, meanwhile, had Dema Kovalenko and Josh Tudela in the central spots of a 4-4-2.

Neither is a passing and possession specialist, so the game lacked substantially for fancy and flair.

* Personnel changes that looked to have a youth infusion in New England (Mike Videira), Colorado (Nick LaBrocca) and Columbus (Robbie Rogers) were all met with mixed reviews and results.

* The yin and yang of Real Salt Lake's Jamison Olave, who can prove to be a key contributor and liability in a 5-minute span.

http://web.mlsnet.com/news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20090504&content_id=248138&vkey=news_mls&fext=.jsp

Promotion of MLS assistants met with mixed reviews

Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney wrote about the recent hiring of Chris Cummings by Toronto FC, and how assistant-turned-head coach promotions in Major League Soccer have worked in the past.

At some point, the MLS coaching career of John Carver careened off-course, and whether anyone might have foreseen it happening is no longer an issue.

After 15 months in charge, dating back to his hiring in February 2008, Carver left Toronto FC last week. Clashes between him, MLS, and team management had not only become more and more virulent but had begun to seep into the locker room and training sessions.

The final blow fell when Toronto FC manager and technical director Mo Johnston, and not - as Carver claimed and was reported in this column - Major League Soccer ordered him to coach from the bench and not a private box. From that vantage point, Carver relayed instructions to assistant coach Chris Cummins as TFC beat Chivas USA, 1-0, April 22.

He did not address the media after the game, leaving that job to Cummins, although he had spoken to the team before the game, selected the lineup and talked to the team at halftime. After the Chivas USA game, Johnston told Carver he must work games from the team bench, and Carver's angry and stubborn refusal forced TFC officials to meet hurriedly and decide the only way forward was without Carver.

In many parts of the world, the duties and titles are different than in Americans sports: a manager runs the competitive aspects of the first team, including selection of personnel, formation and systems of play, and deploys his top assistant, in England often called the first-team coach, to lead training sessions.

Johnston took the title of manager as well as director of soccer but made it clear Carver was the head coach, with all duties and responsibilities thereof. Carver had been a first-team coach and assistant manager at several English clubs and had two brief stints as caretaker manager at Newcastle and Leeds United. The Leeds appointment ended after a month in late October 2006 with the team and organization in turmoil.

The promoting of assistant coaches to head coaches in MLS has been hit-and-miss. Robert Warzycha worked for three head coaches in Columbus, which hasn't won a game since he took over for Sigi Schmid.

Dominic Kinnear won two titles in San Jose as an assistant to Frank Yallop, and matched that total in his first two seasons as head coach of Houston.

In Chicago, former assistant coach Denis Hamlett is in his second season as head coach following a decade as an assistant. The successful tenure of Bob Bradley in Chicago was followed by another former D.C. assistant, Dave Sarachan, who led the Fire to its last MLS Cup appearance (2003) and was 55-50-31 overall, but took the fall when the 2007 season started out 4-6-2 and team ownership changed. Mike Jeffries, another Fire assistant coach, landed the Dallas job in 2001 but lasted less than three seasons and was dismissed with a 26-36-16 record. Jeffries had a successful stint as head coach of (USISL) New Orleans before being assistant at Chicago.

Not everyone can flourish in the demanding role of deciding what to do in the next game, the next training session, the next competition, the next transfer window, the next draft. There's always a problem, a situation, a dilemma, a challenge to be resolved. On a soccer team, like a train or a plane or a ship or a company, everybody is told what they're supposed to do. Everybody, that is, except the boss. He's the only one working without a net, sometimes drawing up the blueprint on the fly.

At a critical point in his life, John Carver lacked that the right blend of intuition, experience, gumption, confidence, knowledge, toughness, humor and courage to take the heat. His love for the game disintegrated as friction and squabbles with the league overwhelmed everything else. No longer able to frame the big picture, he lost the necessary perspective on his players, and thus, his job.

There's no set personality: Jose Mourinho is a flamboyant, egotistical fop compared to the steely dignity of Fabio Capello, who wouldn't be caught dead chomping gum on the sideline as does Alex Ferguson, a chirpy Scottish lad compared to the cool stoicism of Arsene Wenger.

The world of first-team coach, or assistant coach is structured, contained, predetermined. He doesn't deal with insulting judgments or snide comments from the press, report to team management, agonize over a jammed schedule of five games in 14 days, and decide which players will play, those who will sit, and which ones must move on.

In his third season in charge of D.C. United, Tom Soehn must prove he has the right stuff, otherwise there won't be a fourth. A former Bruce Arena assistant, Curt Onalfo, needs a strong run in year three to solidify his credentials. Last year, in his first full season as a head coach, Hamlett and the Fire fell to Columbus in the Eastern Conference final. He'll be expected to do better this year, while the Crew has started so badly Warzycha, with just seven games in charge, is in a bit of bother.

Rather than take over himself and return to his role as head coach when Carver departed, the role Johnston filled in its inaugural 2007 season, he kept the staff intact while choosing Cummins to lead.

For the past few years, Revs assistant Paul Mariner has been tabbed as the next in line for an MLS job; instead, an extraordinary turn of events shoves Cummins, who on the evidence of two games in charge - both victories - isn't nearly so inclined to engage the match officials, to the forefront. He has the job until the end of the season, a good interval in which to prove he has the knowledge and experience, and the psyche, to run the show.

Screaming, sarcasm don't help make a better player

From the Evansville Courier Press, SoccerSunday, May 3, 2009

I was on the sideline at a field during a recruiting event last weekend and I was taken aback by the way some coaches chose to communicate with their players.

The need to be sarcastic and obnoxious about mistakes happened quite a bit, and I was trying to think what would possess a coach to belittle and distract their players — surely they couldn't have thought that the players would respond to that. I came to the assumption that the coaches were justifying that it was the players who were making mistakes — not them.

It all reminded me of a blog I read a couple of months ago by Emily Cohen, a freelance writer (and soccer mom).

While driving her daughter and some friends home from a game, she was able to eavesdrop on what was really happening in their kid's soccer experiences.

All but two of the 15 kids — ages 7 to 17 — said that coach's instructions yelled at them during the game didn't help at all. In fact, it made it difficult to focus on what they were doing — playing soccer. For the two who said that shouted instructions helped them perform better, they qualified their answers — saying that they initially thought the coaches were trying to help, but when they thought about it, they felt that what the coach was trying to explain to them would have been better communicated off the field, during a substitution or at halftime or, better yet, at a practice.

Cohen wondered if the coaches actually realized that their yelling was completely counterproductive. In fact, she wondered if most coaches really think about how their bellows and screeches from the sideline are perceived by players.

These were some of the comments from that group of kids themselves:

— One girl said to the others about a past coach, "One minute, she yelled, 'Go to the right!' The next minute, she yelled, 'Go to the left!' I was so confused, I didn't do anything. I stopped to figure out what she was telling me to do, and the girl dribbled right by me."

— "Getting yelled at by my coach isn't helpful at all because it makes it harder to concentrate. It's more difficult to control the ball when someone's yelling at me."

— "When the coach yells at me to mark someone or run somewhere else, I can't focus on the game. I think I make more mistakes because I was listening and not playing."

— "Both the coaches were screaming instructions. I tried to do what one of the coaches said, but it was hard to figure out, because the coaches were saying different things."

— "I hate it when the coach screams at me to 'play better' or 'run harder.' I mean, really, I'm trying my best already and that just makes me feel worse."

— "Most of the time, when the coach yells something to me, I saw it already and I'm trying to get there. But I can't yell that to them because I'm too busy running!"

I wonder how many of those screaming coaches the kids described could play an hour of soccer themselves with someone yelling at them to "run harder" or "play better." Most would likely lose their patience and yell back at the offender.

This is a big reason why I have always prescribed to the '2-second rule', which stresses that any interaction between player and coach during a game never lasts more than 2 seconds; usually the player is able to acknowledge with a nod of the head or a thumbs up.

My hope is that before one of the coaches I watched last weekend coaches again, they will think twice about yelling at the players and decide to just let them play.