Comings and GoingsWith the season exactly half-complete and the scorching heat of summer driving fans indoors to take a one-month break from the heat of league competition, it is no surprise that attention is starting to turn towards that regular feature of the summer months - the roster reshuffle. This year, with the season being played in a single stage, it seems likely that the sheer volume of personnel moves will not be as great as in past years. However, there have already been some high-profile changes that deserve mention.
The biggest news of all, no doubt, will be the announcement on Wednesday morning that Ossie Ardilles has been fired as head coach of Tokyo Verdy. Coming on the heels of an unprecedented collapse by Verdy, during the month of July, this announcement may have come as a surprise to anyone who recently awoke from a month-long coma, or who just returned from a six-week vacation on a deserted island in the South Pacific, but for most everyone else the decision to fire Ardilles was a foregone conclusion after Saturday's 6-0 loss to Jubilo Iwata. This brought Verdy's record in July to 0 wins, two draws and three losses, with 23 goals conceded over the five matches and a truly phenomenal AVERAGE goal differential of -3.8 goals per match!!!! Of course, anyone can have a bad day, but this is taking things to quite an extreme. After watching the ball hit the back of his team's net 23 times in less than a month, one suspects that Ossie will greet this news with a sense of releif, if anything. As coaching records go, it just doesnt get much worse than this.
But even though the Verdy management had little choice but to replace Ardilles, the fact is that very little of the blame for Verdy's horrendous performance can be laid at the coach's door. It isnt as if he has made ill-considered personnel decisions, or adopted suiciodal tactics. It is true that, after his team fell three or four goals behind, he might have adopted a preventive defence and tried to keep the score respectab. . . . errrrhhhhh . . . well, lets just say "less embarassing". But in our view, the decision to push for goals even when trailing by a wide margin is actually a wise one. If your team can turn a 4-0 deficit into a 4-3 loss, at least the next week they can approach the match with a bit more confidence.
Unfortunately, this tactic merely turned 4-0 drubbings into 6-0 or 7-1 routs. To put things mildly, Verdy's defence has not been demonstrating a great deal of intensity or determination, of late. This is odd, if you consider that just five months ago a fired-up Verdy team overcame the Yokohama Marinos in the Xerox Super Cup, or that last season they won the Emperor's Cup. The collapse of Verdy this season has not only been severe -- it also promises to leave the League and the JFA in redfaced embarassment next season, when a recently-relegated (and probably restructured) Verdy will be the only second-division team on the entire continent to take part in the Asian Champions League. Wont THAT leave a great impression on football fans from other countries.
In some ways, Verdy's poor results are hard to understand. The team has several very talented veterans, and a lot of promising youngsters who could very well be regular components of the national team, five or six years down the road. But watching them in action for the past month, it is clear that the team is far weaker tjhan the sum of its parts. Every player seems to be following a different playbook, more interested in achieving personal goals than in contributing to the team's success. The soft-spoken, even-tempered Ardilles is exactly the wrong person to address problems of this sort. You get the sense that Verdy needs a stern taskmaster, who can kick the assembled backsides around the pitch until they are lined up in the proper formation. That was never going to happen with Ossie at the helm.
Assistant coach Nobuhiro Ishizaki has been appointed interim coach, and will supervise the team for its match this Saturday, as well as exhibition matches against Real Madrid and Fiorentina, scheduled for late July. It seems likely that another coach will be selected to tame over the helm once the season resumes, in late August.
source: The Rising Sun News
