Free Thinker

By DAVID WHARTON

May 30, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

There is a quiet elegance to the way Octavio Zambrano works the sidelines.

No shaking of fists, which might wrinkle the smoothly tailored look of his suit. No stomping around, lest the Galaxy coach tousle his perfect hair.

“I’m not sure laid back is the best way to describe him,” veteran defender Dan Calichman said. “But he’s not a screamer, he’s not yelling during the game ‘Do this!’ or ‘Do that!’ ”

Therein lies the substance of Zambrano’s style. The 40-year-old Ecuadorean native coaches by process of elimination.

Take away the rules. Loosen the shackles.

Let Mauricio Cienfuegos create bold opportunities from midfield. Let Cobi Jones scramble to all corners of the field.

The results speak for themselves.

Since Zambrano took charge of a losing team last year, he has led the Galaxy to a 21-10 record, including a 10-1 start that has put Los Angeles atop the Major League Soccer standings this season.

Moreover, he has unleashed an offense unlike anything MLS has seen in its three-year history. The Galaxy, which plays the Chicago Fire tonight at the Rose Bowl, is scoring at a record pace of 3.18 goals a game.

“From the very beginning, I knew that our players were yearning for freedom,” the coach said. “They wanted the liberty to be creative, to do the unexpected, to take risks.”

Picking Up the Pace

After 10 p.m. on a weeknight, Zambrano is still in his office beneath the Rose Bowl bleachers, a bunker-like room where it seems every chair is broken.

This is where he truly works, sweating over details. For all of his apparent ease on the sidelines, he is fanatical about preparation.

“Cover everything,” he said. “Don’t leave anything to chance.”

Practices are run hard each morning. Rookies who shine are given the chance to play. Veterans who do not give their full effort risk being benched.

Problems are dealt with quickly, calmly, usually face-to-face.

“As a rookie, you tend to make mistakes,” midfielder Clint Mathis said. “Sometimes I get a little anxious, but then I have a meeting with Octavio. He explains things to me.”

Zambrano came to the Galaxy as an assistant in 1996, when then-coach Lothar Osiander favored a more cautious, defensive style. Zambrano speaks of Osiander only in warm terms, but it is evident he always saw explosive potential in the team, a thoroughbred champing at the bit.

When the Galaxy struggled to a 3-9 start in 1997, Osiander was fired and Zambrano got a chance to explore the possibilities.

The new coach had spent his youth as an attacking midfielder for Union Deportivo Valdez of Ecuador’s first division. Memories of those days can turn his restrained manner almost boastful.

“I was always playing with flair,” he said. “That certainly had an impact on the way I see the game.”

Zambrano urged his players to push forward, to compete with emotion and instinct. He relied on his central defenders--Calichman and Robin Fraser--to back up this all-out attack.

The change was not so much tactical as psychological.

“At this level, we have a lot of experience, so what’s important is the chemistry that gets created by the coach,” Calichman said. “With Octavio, he was very confident in the team and that trickled down to the players. We could start to relax.”

The results were tangible. Starting with a 4-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Mutiny, Los Angeles soon tripled its offensive output. Given license to press forward, the team won 11 of its 18 games with its new coach and made the playoffs.

But just when the experiment seemed a success, the wheels fell off Zambrano’s scoring machine.

An injured and leg-weary Galaxy lost two straight playoff games to the Dallas Burn, a team it had handled deftly during the regular season. Dallas won the traditional way, with defense and counterattacking. Both victories were shutouts.

Zambrano was left to pick up the pieces.

“He looked at us after last year,” Calichman said. “He asked, ‘What do we need to do?’ ”

MLS Prototype

Earlier this month, the Galaxy traveled to Ohio to face the Columbus Crew. With temperatures nearing 90 degrees, the Galaxy found itself losing to yet another team that played conservatively, packing the defensive end of the field.

It was enough to make Zambrano remove his coat on the bench. Yet, up in the press box, MLS Commissioner Douglas Logan was referring to him as a prototype coach for the fledgling league.

“American fans don’t want to watch a 0-0 tie,” Logan said. “They much prefer a wide-open game. That means you’re going to give up a few more goals, but you’ve got to have an offensive mentality.”

Sure enough, Martin Machon scored three second-half goals and the Galaxy stormed back for a 4-2 victory. It was further supporting evidence for a coach who is unshaken in his approach to the game.

No matter that all-star goalkeeper Jorge Campos departed in a January trade to Chicago. No matter that Calichman is lost for the season because of a broken leg, leaving the back line younger and vulnerable.

Los Angeles pushes onward.

Just this week, the team used its fifth and final roster opening for a foreign player to acquire Carlos Hermosillo, a lethal center forward, a target for forward Welton and the frenetic Jones, who will return from World Cup ’98 by midseason.

Let the cautious and defensive be damned.

“There is an old adage that the best defense is a good offense,” Zambrano said. “You keep the other team on its heels.”

This is where the normally methodical cadence of his words begins to quicken.

“It has always been clear to me that this team wants to attack, wants to score goals,” he said. “This is why I give them so much freedom on the field.”

This is his coaching style.

“I let the players play.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Under Zambrano

The Galaxy changed dramatically when Coach Octavio Zambrano took over after 12 games in 1997:

1997

Before

Record: 3-9

Goals for: 1.1

Goals vs.: 1.4

Place: Last

After