Tomorrow at the Wizards Swope Park Training Complex, the team will announce their new head coach in a press conference at 2:30 pm. There's been speculation on who the new head coach would be since the end of the season. With many of the other favorites only recently finishing their season (Preki), or still being in the playoffs (Spencer, Hamlett, Sarachan), I think the announcement is not going to be very surprising. I suspect that the team will be announcing that Peter Vermes will be taking over as the full time head coach.
Under Vermes, the Wizards finished the season 3-6-3. And while the record didn't show it, the play on the field did improve under Vermes.
The Star has now confirmed my assumption, as they're reporting that it will in fact be Vermes that will be named head coach tomorrow.
Overall I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this move. I like that the team is making the move before the expansion draft, but would have liked to have seen KC go in a different direction. Vermes has been part of the organization that has been a borderline playoff team for 3 years now. There's been really no movement from the team and bringing in some new blood I thought might help to start that process.
I have mixed feelings on it. I feel like overall play improved more than results indicated and there was a much better overall understanding of what was trying to be done going forward (attacking). As Mike said, would be nice to get something new in here but it definitely could be worse.
ReplyDeleteHes up for US Soccer Hall of Fame.
My hope is this is for something stable to bring us into a new stadium... Vermes has at least show he is capable of running the team, question is if (like Mike mentioned) he can get us over barely making playoffs/not bump and make us consistant contenders.