A New Game Plan Is in Order for Chivas USA
There is no truth to the rumor that Chivas USA will ask Major League Soccer to put a bell inside the ball so that Chivas goalkeepers can at least hear it as it flies past them.
A cruel joke?
Yes, but these days Chivas USA is finding itself the butt of many a jibe -- and deservedly so.
But those taking potshots at the floundering players, at beleaguered Coach Thomas Rongen and at Whit Haskel, the expansion team’s embattled general manager, are shooting just as wide of the mark as Chivas USA forwards do with appalling regularity.
They, alone, are not the ones to blame for a season that is going south in a hurry. At 1-7-1 heading into Saturday’s match against the Galaxy at the Home Depot Center, Chivas USA is on pace to set an MLS record for futility.
In 1999, the then-and-still-hapless MetroStars finished 7-25. Unless something is done soon, Chivas USA will be lucky to get seven victories this year.
Attendance, meanwhile, continues to plummet faster than water down a storm drain. In four home games in Carson, Chivas USA has announced crowds of:
18,493.
12,697.
10,893.
8,977.
Using those figures, almost 10,000 fans have deserted the club in only two months.
The men at fault for this sad state of affairs are Mexican businessmen Jorge Vergara and Antonio Cue, co-owners of a team they once promised would set MLS alight with the style of its play and the passion of its fans.
Vergara, who made his millions in the health supplements field, so far has been unable or unwilling to cure what ails Chivas USA.
He and Cue badly miscalculated the strength and quality of MLS, believing that they could hold their own in the league by employing, with a few notable exceptions, unproven players and over-the-hill veterans.
They were wrong, and Cue was honest enough to admit that after the most recent loss, saying “we may have underestimated” the league.
As a result, the players made available to Rongen by Chivas USA’s parent club, Chivas de Guadalajara, were not necessarily those he would have chosen if he had been given free rein to pick and choose the Mexican players he wanted.
Nor were those made available in the MLS expansion draft particularly noteworthy, being, as FC Dallas Coach Colin Clarke put it, “players other clubs were willing to discard.”
The bottom line is that Chivas USA has no more than four or five players on its roster who could start for any other MLS team: defenders Ezra Hendrickson, Douglas Sequeira and Ryan Suarez, midfielder Hector Cuadros and, at a push, lively winger Francisco Mendoza.
The rest, including once-noteworthy veterans Ramon Ramirez and Martin Zuniga, are so far out of their depth that they can’t even see the shoreline let alone the beach.
Rongen is rumored to be on his way out the door, with a victory over the Galaxy his only hope of salvation.
But the Dutch-born coach is a fighter and he is unlikely to quit. He has not won 83 games in seven seasons in MLS because he is a bad coach. He did not win the MLS championship with D.C. United in 1999 because he is a bad coach.
Unless he is pushed, he will stick around, and his three-year guaranteed contract means that Vergara and Cue will delay as long as possible before showing him the exit.
In any case, replacing Rongen with one of his assistants, Javier “Zully” Ledesma or Martin Vasquez, is not going to change anything as long as the roster stays the same. But even though players who could provide immediate help have become available in the last week or two, Chivas USA has stood pat.
While goalkeepers Brad Guzan and Zuniga have flapped and flailed, free agent Tony Meola has waited in vain on the MLS sidelines for a team to call him.
Chivas USA’s defense -- one made more porous by a midfield that does not provide much help -- could have benefited from the arrival of Mike Petke. Instead, Petke went to the Colorado Rapids.
Chivas USA’s feeble offense could have been boosted by Mark Chung or Chris Henderson, but Chung went to the San Jose Earthquakes and Henderson went to the Columbus Crew.
Meola, Petke, Chung and Henderson are proven MLS veterans, but they are not Latino, and Chivas unfortunately has painted itself into that corner even though fans have made it clear by staying away that a competitive team is more important to them than a Latino surname.
Chivas USA needs to rethink its game plan.
A marketing strategy based on scantily clad ChivaGirls and ticket giveaways will not work. Los Angeles area fans are sophisticated enough to know that the presence of cleavage does not make up for the absence of players.
