Sophmore Slump

I sorta lucked out and managed to go on vacation within hours of the Fire failing to make the playoffs for the first time ever, so I haven't been wallowing in despair and second-guessing the entire season. Yet.

Everybody's got a favorite scapegoat or whipping boy at this point. A lot of ire is being thrown at Head Coach Dave Sarachan, but a lot of that is based on the assumption that the great team last year wasn't his doing, while the bad team this year was. That's particularly revisionist, and pretty unfair.

Which isn't to say Sarachan is without fault here, but it ends up being a somewhat more specific problem than just some blanket statement of bad coaching. What seems more likely is that Sarachan maybe placed too much faith and too much confidence in some guys on the roster who weren't quite ready for such a weight on their shoulders.

I'm talking mostly about last year's rookie class here, including Damani Ralph. Ralph, along with Logan Pause and Nate Jaqua, had exceptionally good rookie years, and late addition Dipsy Selolwane showed promise. What I'm starting to believe, though, is not so much that these guys overperformed last year, but more that they were put in much "safer" situations, purely from a lineup standpoint. Ralph got to play alongside Ante Razov during one of the best seasons of his career, missed penalty notwithstanding, and Jaqua got to contribute quality minutes behind those two. Logan Pause had the great benefit of playing in the protective cocoon of Jesse Marsch, Carlos Bocanegra and Damarcus Beasley for pretty much the entire season. Take those players out of the equation, and the burden was just too much for the youngsters to shoulder by themselves.

The same goes for veteran defender Orlando Perez, in perhaps the clearest case. Perez, contrary to his detractors, looked solid last season sandwiched between Bocanegra and Beasley, able to put early pressure on the ball and deliver dangerous crosses. When called upon to be the main line of defense of the left side, however, he just couldn't get it done. Early in the season, this caused Beasley to play a lot more defense than offense, weakening the Fire's attack considerably.

From a coaching and player management standpoint, the second-year letdown posed two problems. First, I firmly believe that explicitly benching a young player early in his career can seriously hamper that player's development. I think Sarachan knows this, and with the long MLS season and eight out of ten teams making the playoffs, decided to let guys try to play through their slumps. Some of this, however, may have been necessity, as the first-years are still very much in the "potential for the future" phase of their careers, even more so than the seasoned vets with a single year of pro soccer under their belts.

Second, when you shuffle the lineup too much, you suffer. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the U.S. Open Cup final, when the Fire routinely took three and four touches with the ball before passing, simply because the players didn't seem to have a good intuitive feel for where their teammates would be, and had to look around for them.

The good news is that all of these things are fixable. While there are certainly some player moves to be made, I do truly believe that the same roster that ended 2003 on such a down note can do much better next season without a major shakeup. Some players will need to step up, though, and be willing and able to shoulder more responsibility. Now that they've seen both the up and the down, here's hoping that they can pull it off.