Wizards Enjoying Their New Look
Is it the players or is it the coach?
The Kansas City Wizards, who finished the 1999 Major League Soccer season with an 8-24 record, have turned it around in dramatic fashion.
Coming into tonight’s 7:30 game against the Galaxy at the Rose Bowl, the Wizards have an MLS-best 6-0-1 mark and--statistically at least--the league’s top offense and defense.
“Obviously, we’re happy about what has transpired so far,” said Coach Bob Gansler, who took over for Ron Newman in the middle of last season. “We feel we’re a little past the pinching stage; we think we are for real. We’ve worked hard and gotten some rewards. How real we are, only time will tell.”
The Wizards were extensively reshaped in the off-season with half the roster either being traded or cut. One of the most telling changes was the acquisition of Danish striker Miklos Molnar, who scored four goals in his first five games after being signed from Sevilla in Spain.
Kansas City also traded for defenders Peter Vermes and Matt McKeon from the Colorado Rapids and midfielder Jeff Baicher from the New England Revolution and made defender Nick Garcia of Indiana University the second pick overall in the MLS draft.
That, combined with the playmaking of Preki, the goalkeeping of Tony Meola and the rejuvenated performances of such veterans as Mo Johnston and Chris Henderson, has helped the Wizards to their best start ever. Tonight, however, comes the real test: a game against the league’s only other unbeaten team.
The Galaxy is 5-0-2 and hasn’t lost a game to a Western Division rival at the Rose Bowl in two seasons.
“L.A. is exactly where they’re supposed to be,” Gansler said. “They were the preseason favorites.”
Kansas City’s success can be partly attributed to its new players, but credit also has to go to Gansler, best known as the coach who qualified the United States for its first World Cup in 40 years when he took the U.S. team to Italy in 1990.
On the American squad that year were current Wizard players Meola, Vermes and Henderson, along with Brian Bliss, now a Kansas City assistant coach. Meola says Gansler, 58, has changed from the days when he was a strict disciplinarian who bemused World Cup reporters with quotes from Thomas Mann.
“He’s very different,” Meola said. “He allows you to be your own person here. He doesn’t try to mold everybody into being the same as the guy next to you.
“In all fairness, back in 1990 our team, I think, had an average age of 23. We basically had an under-23 team at the World Cup and we needed a little more discipline. On this team, we have some older players, guys who have been around, and he lets you be who you want to be. I think that translates into the way we play.”
Gansler, however, doesn’t believe he’s mellowed that much from a decade ago.
“I’m probably the worst judge of that,” he said. “I would like to think that all of us grow as we get older. If mellowing is part of that growth, so be it. . . . Like most coaches, we always try to see what we have, use it to the ultimate and get the heck out of the way.”
So far in 2000, it has been opposing teams that have gotten out of the Wizards’ way. Tonight, the Galaxy could be the latest to be flattened or, if all goes well, to be the speed bump that slows Kansas City down.
