Soehn had a habit of pulling players for various reasons before halftime, which is understood by most players to be very embarrassing (unless there’s a tactical switch due to a red card). Sometimes he’d cite fitness, but the players he’d take out were often skillful attacking players with the requisite fragile egos (Christian Gomez and especially Luciano Emilio).

Soehn left a lot to be desired in the psychology department once the chips were down. When we were good, he had no problems, but at the first sign of trouble, the mental state of the team started sliding and never really stopped. Even having an offseason to start fresh didn’t help. We had plenty of problems in terms of using bad players, but there were also clear examples of players not having the right mentality, or giving up on the coach early. I heard secondhand, for example, that Gonzalo Martinez – a guy with Serie A experience, and a good-sized haul of caps for Colombia – essentially began ignoring Soehn in the middle of the 2008 season, yet Soehn continued to start him.

I posted on 86 Forever about the formation change I’d expect from Soehn, and it seems like it’s what people wanted. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he showed us nothing that would indicate that he’s a good coach for when the chips are down, and Vancouver’s chips are definitely not up.