3rd Degree

May 23rd, 2008 . By: Buzz Carrick

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice. - James Callaghan

Nice day out as the clouds make it quite comfortable this morning. A bit of sun toward the end made the short session quite enjoyable.

To be honest there isn’t much difference between what I see from Ferruzzi and what we saw from Morrow in training… or really any coach FCD for that matter. One training session is much like another in some ways.

News, Notes, & Observations

- Dax McCarty does some light jogging today and then more rehab. I think he will return to training next week.

- Officially Ray Burse “may” come back this week to be with FCD for some of the games, but it has not been decided. More likely Wednesday’s game against Houston I would think.

- No Brek Shea or Blake Wagner yet of course, they are still playing for the US.

- I poked around a little this week to find out more about Abdus Ibrahim. It’s some kind of family issue he has been released on sabbatical for. I didn’t pry after that, but I hear its bad enough he may not ever come back.

- Adrian Serioux and Chase Wileman did extra hard running on their own after training.

- Dom Oduro did some extra back to goal, turn, and pass/shoot drills with goalkeeper coach Drew Keeshan.

- Strong day from Arturo Alvarez, he looks sharp.

Catching up with Marco Ferruzzi

This will be fun, I’ve never done the translator on Ferruzzi.

Do you have a coaching style or philosophy?

The style that’s become accustomed here is just being out here working hard, that’s what players expect from me. Expect form us. That’s not going to change. There’s not going to be any radical changes. I’m not going to change who I am and who I’ve been here for FC Dallas. So it’s going to be very simple, very connected to the job I’ve been doing here. You know this is my fourth year now. No one is going to see me change my stripes overnight even though we’ve had a significant event that’s effected all of us. We’re going to continue to do the things that come naturally to us.

Buzz’s Coach Speak Translator: Hard work. Wait, is that a style? It is? Then hard work.

Do you have a favorite tactical shape?

I can’t say I do. I think it has to revolve around the players. The game has to revolve around the players, the game has to revolve around the players. So that’s been how we’ve worked here in the past and that’s what I feel comfortable with.

Buzz’s Coach Speak Translator: No.

Do you look more at opponent or your own team?

Well you gotta pay attention to what the opposition is doing to the stand point that you can manage things that could surprise you. At the same time the main focus is our team, always is our team. So from my point of view, it’s what our team is doing. Again it comes back to being an assistant here so long, it comes back to what these boys need. Getting these boys ready for the game, getting them focused for it.

Buzz’s Coach Speak Translator: It’s all about us. Always has been.

Given the circumstances, how’s the attitude been in training?

It’s been good. We had to get certain things out of our system for sure. The boys put in a hard session on Wednesday and then on Thursday we got focused on getting ready for the game organizationally. Today was good, it was lively and upbeat. We’re starting to see the smiles back and the laughter back. Everybody obviously felt something significant, but we’re all focused on the job at hand. We have to take it professionally, we have to go game by game.

Buzz’s Coach Speak Translator: It sucked, what did you expect? But it got better.

You have a busy week of games, does that play into your thinking?

No, it’s a heavy load, but again going back to recent events the entire team has to carry the load right now. We’ve all been asked to be accountable, we all should be accountable. We’re all professionals. Everybody has to step out here and expect to contribute. So we’ll take Real Salt Lake, see what happens there, then we’ll take Houston.

Buzz’s Coach Speak Translator: One game at a time baby, one game at a time.

Training

Some typical running and jogging plus stretching to warm up. After that was some fun short sprint games run by Chris Clarke. Ferruzzi ran a 20 minute shooting gallery drill with more random teams like on Wednesday. The short one hour session ended with crossing and finishing drills. Here’s the team for the shooting gallery, but you’ll see they don’t tell us much.

Green: Moor, Cooper, Wallace, Dello-Russo, Avila, Ricardinho, Daniels, Toja, Wileman
Gray: Thompson, Alvarez, Rocha, Ricchetti, Davino, Oduro, Serioux, Saragosa, Pitchkolan, Rhine

Lineup Prediction

We’ll I’m shooting in the dark here since I’ve never seen Ferruzzi pick a team… I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict after the LA debacle that Toja gets dropped. I have nothing in training to indicate it… I just think he was so lackadaisical… and since I’m guessing anyway… So I’ll go Alvarez on the left since he worked there Wednesday.

That leaves Cooper and Thompson up top, although I think Oduro deserves a start after the LA game. Rocha as the a-mid with Ricchetti and Saragosa behind. Rhine on the right. And I’ll predict the safe pick of Pitchkolan in Serioux’s spot.

Thought of the Day

I’m quite curious how the team will play this week and if Ferruzzi will essentially run out the same sort of teams or if he will change it up. He’s got quite a task ahead with three games in eight days. He’s in the unenviable position of trying to put a team together when his fried and fellow coach has been given the sack.

Team usually get at least a one game bounce after a coach is canned. The real test will come in game 2 against Houston and game 3 at Colorado. Certainly we all hope the team rebounds well even if Ferruzzi doesn’t change much. Surely he has his own opinions about something with this team. I can’t help but wonder how that will be expressed.

Without bringing in any players as the window isn’t open, what would you change in this team?

Categories: Practice Observations .

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