You Be The GM!

By: Dave Martinez | October 29th, 2009

You get a phone call from Red Bull.

It’s Erik Stover.

Is this another automated call to buy season tickets? Not this time.

You are offered the position of teams Sporting Director. And you jump at the chance.

But now what? Well, I turn it over to you -

What would you do to turn around this franchise ahead of the 2010 season?

Here is an example from yours truly:

1 – Aggressively pursue Thierry Henry till the bitter end. The way he is heralded in New York as compared to the way he is riding the bench at Barcelona may make the move that much more enticing NOW (and take advantage of the man’s midlife crisis if he is having one. Worked with Beckham!)

2 – If Henry is unavailable by the start of the season, look towards a name player to fill in the gaps until he is here. Figo would be a nice one year fix for the team, and would ingratiate Red Bull to the Harrison community.

3 – Make signing a CAM the teams top priority.

4 – Draft focus: defense.

5 – Embrace your heritage. There is no reason for the team to diminish Metrostars when the battle has already been won. By putting up classic pics like Clint Mathis in his I Love NY moment on the Arena walls, you will finally highlight the richness of the clubs history, and would extend a much needed olive branch to the teams hardcore supporters.

6 – Along the same lines, continue using past players for outreach purposes. Tony Meola, Claudio Reyna, Gio Savarese, Tab Ramos and the like, whether in management or marketing positions, would be able to command local respect.

7 – Marketing should be aggressively pursued in the Harrison market through grass roots efforts. Local soccer clinics, signings, taking part in community events, hell even open tryouts and the like will enable Harrison to embrace the team as its own. Similarly, RB will have the opportunity to attract the New York audience as well, with a PATH train just a hop, skip and jump away.

8 – Cut down the CDM’s on this team. What are there, like 6 of them now? Time to chop the dead weight.

9 – Emphasis an attacking minded approach to the teams overall philosophy. Let’s face it; 25,000+ fans won’t happen everyday. So it is up to the team to show a quality and exciting team that people will want to revisit time and again (think NHL post “trap” era).

10 – Hire a coach who won’t have to start their MLS education on year one (in other words, Richie Williams).

11 – Create the proper grounds for the teams supporters groups to flourish, as has been done in Seattle. It adds greatly to the in game experience.

See? Easy huh? Well, take a stab at it. What would you do? Am I way off base? Let me know in the comments section. See ya there . . . (and don’t worry about being as long winded as me!)