When I was there, it always seemed like we were hyped preseason and then I wouldn’t really hear about the soccer team the rest of the quarter. This sheds a little light on that phenomenon.

I’ll state it again. If improvement isn’t made DG needs to approach Cobi and see what his interest is in the position. He has a wealth of knowledge from playing professionally and is already well respect by his players his first year as an assistant with the Galaxy.

What were your expectations for this team heading into this season (also would love to hear your perspective on the talent level of this team).

This post and subsequent comments have been extremely helpful and will help me contextualize things even more as I keep track of this team, rest of this season.

First, let me preface my comments by saying I am not making an excuses for the Bruins performance to date…But having said that, remember that this team lost three very good players in Beltran, Zizzo and Meyers. Would the results be any different to date with these three, no one will ever know.

I think the program made a big step in the hiring of Kenny Arena…Here is a coach that compliments Soto, as KA bring to UCLA, a coach with relationships outside of Southern California. Not to mention his relationship to Sarachan who most recently was the scouting director for the US Development Academy. A program of UCLA’s stature need to maintain a national recruiting presence as there are a bunch of hungry emerging programs out there ….some traditional….(St. Louis) some not so traditional (Evansville-Louisville – Cal Poly – UNM). Grimes in Cal is on a recruiting roll and getting a fair amount of so cal blue chippers (Fitzpatrick and Birnbaum) and Santa Barbara is churning through players as if they were a commodity (Rueckner – Minton?) with their international recruiting efforts (Boxall and Hedevag).

I believe UCLA will need to address the trend towards identifying international talent but more importantly identify and win the local recruiting wars by signing the best talent in So Cal. If the recruiting success in So Cal begins to wane, UCLA may very well be in trouble as UCSB/Cal Poly/Santa Clara/Cal are all very aggressive and some of these campus locations and large fan bases are very attractive to a potential recruit.

Surely though…the clock is ticking.

Before I give my thoughts, I have to add two items in the interest of completeness.

First, we’re unranked right now but we actually beat Santa Clara this weekend, 2-0.

Second, Tom Fitzgerald is kind of dead. Motorcycle accident in December, 2004.

Now, my thoughts: I have to think that Salcedo’s the problem. Maybe he just doesn’t understand the college game, but it’s obvious that he’s not getting enough out of the talent. I think that recruits can kind of smell that he’s underachieving and that his job is in danger. Unfortunately, in college this situation can kind of create a death spiral for a formerly high-achieving program, as recruits will avoid the school until the coach is let go. (See: Dorrell, K; Lavin, S.)

But the real difficulty lies in finding his successor. To me, this person will absolutely have to have some experience in college soccer, for a number of reasons. First, college soccer is different from almost any other iteration of the game; the clock counts up, and there are free substitutions. Whomever takes over will have to understand this.

He will also face a changing recruiting situation. As noted by a previous commenter, recruiting basically consisted of selecting from the national residency programs and ODP. So Cal is a soccer hotbed, and we have few local competitors for players. However, soccer players nowadays have more options than just going into college soccer; some turn pro at 18 or younger and play for youth development teams in MLS or abroad. It’s getting to be like college baseball, in that it’s expected that some of your recruits will never show up on campus. The new coach will have to accept that.

I was thumbing thru this year’s soccer media guide and last year’s as well.

I detected a familar theme. Injury.

Per the media guide, in 2006, the season was compromised by key injuries.
Per the media guide, in 2007, the season was compromised by key injuries
Is the performance of the 2008 squad to be explained away by the same?

If so, perhaps an assessment as to the approach or preparation of the players leading up to competition be examined.

Is the intensity or frequency of training so much so that legs are fatigued or stressed to the extent they are suseptible to injury? Are out of season preventative training and strength regimes in place to ensure the both the frequency and severity of injury mitigated?

It just seems weird to me that each year, the team’s performance has been hampered by the injury bug. While no one can deny that the injuries don’t exist, one might argue that the yearly rhythym as to training loads might be examined to see if there doesn’t exist a systemic cause for the occurance of all that seem to be occuring, year in and year out. Or better yet, a concentration and emphasis on the preventative training methodologies available in and out of season.

Thoughts?