Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Do you stick or twist
This post follows up on a couple of comments by visitors talking about SAFFC and their struggles this season.
Obviously I'm no coach, I don't even play fantasy football or computer games though I will, reluctantly, point out that I was The All Clositers Subbuteo Champion in 1975, so these are, as ever, just the garbled impressions of someone with way too much free time.
I see parallels, of a fashion, between SAFFC and Pelita Jaya a few years back.
I think it was 2007 and nobody really expected anything from Pelita Jaya. The team was most definitely cobbled together last minute with players like Ivan Jerkovic, Michel Alfonso and Cristiano Lopes brought in alongside young waifs like Agus Dian Prasetyo and Jajang Maulyana.
Surprising everyone, Pelita Jaya, in Fandi Ahmad's first season, exceeded expectations, reached the semi finals of the Copa Indonesia and somehow making the cut for the inaugural Indonesia Super League. They did it by playing some pretty good football and padding out the team with lots of youngsters.
So come the ISL what do you in Fandi's position. The kids had done well, do you keep with them or do you opt for experience? Do you bring in lads who know the score to toughen up key areas of the field and allow the kids to carry on learning?
Fandi chose the experience route. After a poor start to the season out came all the Monday Morning Moaners, thems what pass judgement on the weekend games, saying Fandi had got it wrong.
Well yes, with hindsight he had. But when Fandi made them decisions he didn't have the luxury of hindsight. If he had stuck with the kids and they lost every game then both kids and coach would have been slaughtered and he may have been looking for a new job. And the Monday Morning Moaners would have been huffing self righteously saying he should have signed experience.
A similar dilemma may have faced Richard Bok at the end of last year. He may have looked at the aging legs of Arai, Duric and Therdsak and asked himself whether there was another season in them.
One injury, one poor spell, one goal drought would have spelt the end of his title dreams. Maybe he decided that the risk was too great. Especially when all three would have been on high salaries.
So he decided to ring the changes. It hasn't worked out as he would have liked and he is getting caned for it. Had he kept the aging trio and they didn't perform then he would have been caned.
That's the nature of coaching and it is I suppose what attracts people to it.
# posted by Me @ 7:12 PM 
