Want to coach soccer someday? Put your fouling shoes on!
by Steve Davis on Sep 10, 2010 12:49 PM EDT
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PrintOK, maybe there’s a little more to it. But as I was looking at some numbers for Friday SI.com piece, I came across Major League Soccer’s all-time leaders in fouls committed. Sure enough, there are some guys on the list who would pull over and get out of their car just to hack away at someone on a roadside construction crew.
Here’s the list (with player, last team, games, fouls)
- Jesse Marsch Chivas
- Chris Henderson
- Carey
- Richie Williams
- Diego Gutierrez
- Ben
- Chris Armas
- Pablo Mastroeni
- Jason Kreis RSL 305 425
- Jay Heaps
Click forward to see at where these hackey cats are today.
Marsch is an assistant on Bob Bradley’s staff. Henderson – a fleet winger in his day and a surprise on the naughty list – is
Richie Williams is an assistant at
Ben Olsen is trying to pull D.C. United out of the ditch as interim manager at RFK. Chris Armas is a teacher and coach at St. Anthony’s High School on
Mastroeni is enjoying a great season at
Jason Kreis, the youngest MLS coach to win a league crown, is in the business of accumulating Ws at
And Jay Heaps is working as an analyst as a member of the fourth estate. Good move, Jay. The pay ain’t as good … but the job security is a little bit better.
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Some would drop
The name that I thought was missing was Dema Kovalenko, who has 384 fouls in 235 games. His fouls/game is 1.63, while Marsch’s is 1.48. Some of the others, like Richie Williams, would move to the top at over 2 fouls per game. A lot of defensive midfielders on the list, which is no surprise.
Right
I was just wondering if some of the players made the list just because they played so many MLS games.
by the12thman11 on Sep 11, 2010 12:32 PM EDT up reply actions
What Gutierrez has done recently
According to his Wiki page:
“On January 6, 2009, the White House issued a Press Release from President George W. Bush appointing Diego to the Presidential Council for Physical Fitness and Sports, an appointment that he will continue to serve under President Obama until May 2010.”
what is this "wiki" thingy?
kidding. Yeah, i saw that too. but it says the president’s appointment ended in May 2010, and besides I don’t think that’s a paid position (but I could be wrong). So, he may be out there with a coaching whistle somewhere …
Agent Gutierrez
Actually last I heard Diego Gutierrez was an agent representing a few of the Fire’s players. He got the presidential thingy because of his work with Nothing but Nets fighting Malaria.
by patrickhattrick on Sep 11, 2010 2:53 PM EDT up reply actions
This really isn't that surprising, though.
You have 2 kinds of players that foul a lot:
- wreckless, mean players
- smart, competitive types who know when a professional foul is tactically the right thing to do.
The first catagory isn’t very likely to have a long career, because they’re wreckless. The second are demonstrating their understanding of the game through their fouls.
A Little Interesting
It’s an interesting stat to look at (career fouls committed) but it actually tells us little (especially in terms of many of them being coaches).
Kreis wasn’t an especially dirty player or real “digger” who was always fighting for the ball. I’d argue he’s on that list b/c he played a lot in MLS and didn’t miss a lot of games due to injury.
Many of those players who are now coaches of some sort (especially Richie Williams, Ben Olsen, Chris Henderson, Jason Kreis, Chris Armas, Jessie Marsch) have tremendous league experience, didn’t succeed out of lots of natural physical talent (but did a lot of work, smart play and study to be successful) and combined with their longevity, it meant that they got opportunities to then coach.
I bet if Carlos Ruiz had played enough to get more fouls committed he’d be on that list but no-one would be talking of him to be a coach.
I think it would be more interesting to see anything jumps out by looking at cards received or average fouls per game or biggest differential between fouls given and fouls received.
Kreis
Jason was not a dirty player, (and he played a lot of games) but he was more than willing to give a professional foul to put the other team on notice that this would be a tough game and that they shouldn’t take liberties. His fouls were rarely nasty. I think he definitely falls into the category of a smart, competitive player who knew when to foul.
i would never label Jason a "dirty" player...
but I did see him put a fierce tackle on someone every now and then … one where he got a straight red. remember he played in the midfield the first couple of years as a pro, so he was more apt to tackle hard there as opposed to later as a striker
How about his LinkedIn profile?
“The Business Man’s Facebook”
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/diego-gutierrez/11/7a6/618
He appears to be a player agent now. Or something like that.
Maybe the correlation between fouls and coaches
is because that they are intelligent and realize how comically meaningless the penalty for fouls is when you aren’t within 15 yards of your own penalty area?
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
Looks like, for the most part, these guys all played centrally (you are more involved in the game) and all played for a long time. Thus, many on the list were able to parlay this experience into coaching gigs.
I think if one were to list the leaders in fouls/games played, the list would look different, and the number of players on that list that retired and went on to coach would be a lot lower.
As for Kreis, while playing midfield, he never finished in the top 15 in fouls committed (1996-1998), but while playing forward, he finished in the top ten once (2002).
by worldcupexpert on Sep 13, 2010 11:41 AM EDT reply actions
