Getty Images Union coach Peter Nowak has every right to build a team as he sees fit.
Managers in this game are no different than any other – hired to be fired, as they say. Staying power in the interim depends on wins and losses and not much else. And since his livelihood is at stake, Nowak should certainly cull the roster and replace with talent that best serves the bottom line – as he sees it.
But here’s the thing: it matters how these delicate little dramas play out. And on this one, Nowak and Union management continue to get failing grades.
On this one (yesterday’s trade that sent his popular captain Danny Califf to Chivas USA), Nowak tried to spin the story that getting Califf closer to his California roots was in the players’ best interest. But who’s buying that?
I get that Nowak aimed to “protect” the veteran player, straining to avoid saying what seems obvious: Nowak felt his team was better off without a 32-year-old defender on the books for $250,000 in 2011. That’s decent money in MLS.
It’s a big boy business. Players get traded. It’s part of the professional sports trade-off for making more dough than the most of us while playing a game.
But they so deserve respect, and that means leveling with them.
And it means handling things better all the way around. This one was handled about as clumsily as it could be.
My guess: Nowak is still operating MLS media 1.0, a vestige of the late 1990s when he came into the league, where you get to tell a mostly compliant set of reporters – many of them young in a day where newspapers used MLS beats as training ground for “bigger and better,” never mind if they didn’t know the game – pretty much whatever you wanted.
Today’s soccer media world, metastasized and sharpened considerably by capable bloggers, isn’t so easily fooled. So word to all GMs, coaches, technical directors, etc.: Just tell it like it is, to the best of your ability, while comporting yourself professionally about the whole thing.
We’ll figure out the rest.
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- whordy - May 18, 2012 at 11:28 AM
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Nowak doesnt know what hes doing.
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- footballer4ever - May 18, 2012 at 1:23 PM
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Peter Nowak should be refered as the Union “dictator” than the Union coach. (LOL)
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- kgg6 - May 18, 2012 at 2:12 PM
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What is shocking to me…. how is the multi millionaire owner they have can’t see what Nowak is doing!! I mean come on, only a complete moron can’t see how Nowak has demolished a whole organization within a 6 months period and you are still sitting there watching him do it. Give me a freaking break, Union ownership group. It’s very obvious Nowak lacks a stable personality, that’s very obvious… how they’re trusting him running a club in a very strong sports market is beyond me.
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- kgg6 - May 18, 2012 at 2:07 PM
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Nowak MIGHT be planning to fix this team and make it become better but Philly’s front office need to wake up already and realize that they’re destroying many things they worked hard to accomplish by leaving this clown act as if he is living in his little town in Poland. His mentality does NOT fit in MLS. Fire him already… fans are already making decisions to not attend games or re new season tickets.
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- tackledummy1505 - May 19, 2012 at 12:09 AM
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Nowak messed up at the beginning of the year thinking Philly fans don’t know or care about their sports. He’s learning fast and the hard way that Philly fans don’t care about 5 years from now and that we love our fan favorites. Especially players who we connect with. It’s not about titles or wins when it comes to them, but you better believe if you are going to make them moves you better get wins cause people don’t care about years down the road. I just hope it doesn’t kill a team which had so much promise and had a great fan base. We’re not stupid and we don’t liked to be jerked around and Nowak has accomplished all the above. Nothing is going to become good out of this. If it is years down the road when we get better, than it’ll probably be without Nowak, unless management can take the losses and deal with the negative feedback. I doubt the latter will happen for the owners. Good luck Nowak, but you made this problem and will probably pay for it in the end
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- seanb20124 - May 19, 2012 at 6:00 AM
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Maybe Freddy Adu can become a player coach.
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- footballer4ever - May 19, 2012 at 4:20 PM
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Freddy Adu should concentrate to be a consistent full time player before any suggestions of him becoming a player/coach. He’d just be a 1/4 of a player and probably 1/3 of a coach. LOL
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- metroplexfrog - May 20, 2012 at 5:26 PM
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The Union are just average and Nowak seems determined to make them even more average.
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