Just don’t name him “Coach for Life”

And keep him away from the players’ WAGS

Harkes has only slightly more experience as an assistant than Ben Olsen, and less head coaching experience. I’m not saying we should rule him out, but there’s been a lot of high enthusiasm about this idea that puzzles me. What has Harkes done in recent times that would give us any indication about his ability to coach? He’s more or less an unknown, to be frank.

I was more positive when Goff said United would likely start looking abroad. Looking at what NY did with Backe, I think there’s a lesson to be learned. Scandinavian coaches are used to working with a lower budget, and they’re also used to working with a player pool that is quite similar in general. Plus, most people from Scandinavian countries are fluent in English, which never fails to make me feel like a dunce because I barely know enough Spanish to get the gist of a conversation if it isn’t rapid-fire.

It’s important to note that, before NY had Henry and Marquez, they were still a playoff team a year after being completely useless. Sure, they had Angel and the signing of Lindpere is something we simply won’t be capable of until we make some changes in the front office (it’s significant that NY has Eric Soler in Dave Kasper’s position; maybe we need to find a GM/coach “team”). It’s also not particularly likely that we end up grabbing a Tim Ream-quality rookie out of the draft. The point is that Backe managed to get an awful lot out of guys like Carlos Mendes (who, under Osorio, looked like he wouldn’t start for a decent USL-2 team) and Bouna Coundoul (who is cut a lot of the mistakes out of his game).

I’m not saying the holy grail is just sitting in Sweden or Norway waiting for us to call, but I think our odds are better to find someone good there than they are just going through the “Former Players” section of the DCU phone number/email database.