December 6th, 2008 . 9:30 am . By: Richard Farrer

Ed note: Richard Farrer played for the Dallas Burn from the inaugural year of 1996 through 2002.  He played 175 games including playoffs, mostly as a defender, and notched six goals.  A fan favorite with the Burn faithful, Richard had a reputation for work ethic and intelligent play.  This is the first piece in a series of what we hope will be a long relationship.  Please welcome Richard to 3rd Degree.

The offseason is miserable.  There’s hardly ever any news (at least in the MLS).  Sure, some players come and others go, but things happen so slowly that it feels like weeks between interesting developments.  And, of course, there are no games.  Not even stupid Open Cup games against crappy teams.  No friendly games against college teams.  Nothing.  And the offseason is just too long.

Now think about what an offseason is like from a player’s perspective.  Especially a player coming off a year like the one we just had in Dallas.

In honor of our new coach, who likes “stages,” here are the not-so-official stages of the offseason, from the players’ perspective.

Stage 1:  Misery. 

The first stage of the offseason for a player on a not-so-successful team is the misery stage.  You watch the other teams play in the playoffs.  You listen to the TV commentators effuse about players who, let’s face it, are really overrated.  But these TV guys go on, and on, and on, and on.  Of course, they should be droning on about someone on your team, except you and your teammates didn’t get it done.  You let points slip during the year when a tie here and a loss there didn’t seem like a big deal.  And now at the end of the year, those couple of points would’ve made all the difference.  And remember that one game where the lost points were your fault and Welpton gave you a 2?  Miserable.

Good news:  The misery stage doesn’t necessarily last all that long.  Strangely, this stage lasts longer the better your season was.  In 2000, for instance, I was miserable for a long time.  But that was because we had an incredibly good shot at winning the league in 1999, at least until injuries (and LA) got us in the end.

Stage 2:  Healing. 

Next comes healing.  This involves healing physically, as you might expect, and healing emotionally.  The physical healing is very, very important.  An MLS season is very grueling.  The travel is brutal.  The knocks and aches and tendonitis all add up.  And if you saw any kind of consistent playing time and have been in the league for more than a year or two, by the time December rolls around you need 3 or 4 weeks in bed just to feel like a human being again.  This stage involves lots of sleep and an understanding significant other.

The emotional healing is trickier.  Getting over team shortcomings is one thing.  Because you play on a team, you win as a team and you lose as a team.  And that means it doesn’t take as long as one might think to get over a disappointing season, at least from a team perspective.  There were 25 or so other guys there during the course of the year.  Some of the blame is surely theirs.  And, most important, all of the blame cannot possibly be yours.  So you heal.  But getting over personal disappointments can be tougher.  You set a personal (maybe private) goal to score a bunch of goals, or to make the all-star team, or whatever.  After a year like FCD just had, there are not a lot of guys on the roster thinking about how great it is to have accomplished their personal goals in ’08 (except maybe Cooper).  Most guys, I would imagine, are in fact thinking an awful lot about whether they are going to have the opportunity in ’09 to play professional soccer in Dallas for a living.  And the bottom line, from where I sit, is that for many players currently on the roster, things are not going to go well between now and opening day.  But the good news is that there’s always a chance to impress the new coach in the upcoming preseason, provided, of course, you get invited to preseason camp.

Stage 3:  Rocky Balboa. 

So we rapidly move into the Rocky Balboa stage.  Early January is usually the start of this phase, if not sooner.  And this is where the men (and the career professionals) are separated from the boys (a.k.a., the one-year wonders, the wanna-bes, and the mentally soft).  How hard can you push yourself to be the fittest person on day 1 of preseason?  How much can you work on things that gave you trouble during the year?  The answers to those questions will determine whether a number of folks currently on the roster are still there come opening kickoff.  During my playing days, I trained harder in late December and early January than any other time of the year.  To keep your job as a pro player, I believe, you must be fit at the START of preseason.  Players who think preseason is when you get fit are just asking to get cut or benched.

Stage 4: It’s Preseason Already? 

Yep, here comes preseason, right around the corner.  And any self-respecting player on FCD’s roster is thinking about it right now.  They’re maybe still healing or they’re doing some light running and weight lifting in preparation for the Rocky stage, but what they’re also doing is starting in on the mental preparation for preseason.  They’re thinking about things; maybe wondering who will be drafted, traded for, or brought in at their spot.  A player who isn’t apprehensive in preseason is either a superstar, and there are very few of them (a grand total of one on our team) or he is in big trouble.

In my experience, a team MUST have an excellent preseason, if it is going to do anything in the regular season.  So players, get ready.  Schellas, get your roster set early.  Make your moves as soon as possible.  Identify the new ’09 talent in a hurry, if you haven’t already found it.  The more you’re still finding people to add to the roster while preseason is underway, the less time your group is going to have to work together.  And tactics are sorted out in preseason.  Systems can’t be learned and changed during a season.  We’ve all seen what trying to do that leads to.  If we’re still putting key pieces into place on opening day, it’ll be another disappointing year in Frisco.

Categories: That's Rich.

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