Locker room leadership; how it counts in MLS playoffs

I’ve always suspected that you could take a good coach from another sport – say, Bill Belichick or Mike Krzyzewski, good “program managers” – align them with two or three good assistants who know soccer and they would have a chance to be successful in in our sport.

After all, the best tenets of soccer management are exactly the same as any other sport: It’s about building the right roster, about people management and about getting the best from the talent you bring in.  None of the best practices in those areas are the special province of soccer.

I wrote more about this in an SI.com piece today, this one focused on FC Dallas and manager Schellas Hyndman.  There’s some revealing stuff in there, about a team barbecue thrown last year by soon-to-be captain Daniel Hernandez. For me, Hernandez is an underrated element of turning around a club that had not won a playoff series since Dave Dir shepherded one in 1999.  By the way, Dir’s real strength as a coach was his own ability to build a rock-solid locker room. So, no real coincidence there.

Check out the piece to find out about the two players – the only two – who didn’t bother to show up at Hernandez’s barbecue.  Hint: they were darn good players, but they aren’t around anymore.      

Read on for a little more about why Hernandez’s leadership (along with great seasons from guys like David Ferreira and Kevin Hartman, obviously) has been so critical to Dallas’ turnabout.

Hernandez’s choice as captain ended a lengthy leadership void around FC Dallas. Just look at the captaincy, which has long been a curious bunch of odd-duck choices. Last year it was Pablo Ricchetti, a choice that Hyndman quickly came to regret. Ricchetti asked to be captain, and Hyndman acquiesced in a decision that he can now file under “learning curve.”

A year before that Duilio Davino was the team captain. That wasn’t too bad – until everyone figured out he couldn’t play anymore. Plus, his English was always limited, and that’s hardly ideal.

Davino looked like Paul Scholes compared to the previous captain. Then-manager Steve Morrow looked around at a bunch of decent role players, although few with obvious captain qualities, and made Carlos Ruiz his captain. Clearly, if you look around your practice field, scanning desperately for captain choices, something has gone horribly wrong in the roster construction process.

In Ruiz, FCD had appointed a man who routinely had problems returning in time from international duty, who had once been completely AWOL for a match, when team leaders had no idea where he was. (The idea, in fairness to the coaching staff at the time, was that making Ruiz a captain would encourage him to take more ownership in the overall operation.)

Before that, Simo Valakari wore the captain’s armband. Valakari was a swell guy and a fierce competitor. But he was more leader-by-example, not a guy who would proactively police the locker room. You certainly want a bunch of Valakaris on your team – but you need a Hernandez leading them.

It wasn’t just the captaincy. Dallas made the playoffs in 2005 and 2006 but fell to Colorado, both occasions considered upsets. One of those was in a penalty kick tiebreaker – when one of Dallas’ most talented attackers approached the coach with specific instructions not to pick him. He didn’t want the responsibility.

In the other series loss, one starter was throwing up in the locker room before the return leg, too nervous to perform. His teammates were appalled; the player was scratched, and the story went out that he had a “stomach bug.”

How’s that for leadership and a locker room that works, one that pulls in the same direction?

That’s essentially the team Hyndman found when he arrived mid-season in 2008. There was talent, but the collective attitude, the locker room accord and the overall esprit de corps was fatally flawed. It wasn’t all the past coaches fault. Some was down to a dysfunctional management structure above them.

As I said in the SI.com piece, Hyndman’s master stroke was adding Hernandez to the mix. At the team’s kickoff luncheon this year, Hernandez made sure there was no confusion. He would hold the players accountable on the field. If they messed up, it wasn’t their fault, it was his fault – because he had failed to hold them accountable in practice.

That’s leadership. That’s the kind of leadership I suspect is happening around the other three teams still involved in MLS playoffs. Leadership isn’t everything; talent counts, too. But few teams without good leadership and team accord can even manage to get this far – into the league semifinals.