June 22nd, 2009 . 3:29 pm . By: Jon and Brenda Beard

Prior to the Columbus Crew game on Saturday, FC Dallas General Manager Michael Hitchcock and head coach Schellas Hyndman held a town hall type meeting with season ticket holders.  The meeting was moderated by Justin McCord, Interactive Services Manager.

The questions are asked by the audience and sometimes moderated by Mr McCord.  Questions are in bold with answers in block quotes.  Occasionally a questioner will give a comment of response which you can see following the coach and GM answers.

JM: Justin McCord, Interactive Services Manager
MH: Michael Hitchcock, General Manager
SH: Schellas Hyndman, Coach

FC Dallas STH Town Meeting

JM: The focus of today’s town hall is going to be on team performance so please can our questions about that, that would be very helpful for us. Before we get to your questions, let me reassure you that we heard you. We read online, the blogs, the commentaries, the forums…and so we’ve taken the taken the liberty to prepare a couple of questions to everyone loose, everyone going, everyone thinking…so we’re going to start with those questions and then when we finish, we’ll go to your questions.

Schellas, I’m going to start with a question for you. How do you, as a coach, motivate your players when we are second to last in the table?

SH: I think all we can do is continually try to make our team better, to train, we talk about series. I think the two series teams that we played are Chivas and Houston. Those are two that we won. The two we won are Toronto and Chicago. We continue to talk about series, we continue to talk about getting better. It be much easier, there’d be a lot more people, a lot more excitement in the room if we were second from the top instead of second from the bottom. But you know, it’s a funny game. The guys work awfully hard in training. They come out here and they play off their mark, we seem to give up the softer goals in the league. Which makes it really difficult for motivation but all in all, right now we’re playing hard, training hard, we’re hoping the ball starts bouncing our way.

Do you think you’ve done everything you can, as general manager, to field the best team possible and bring a championship to Dallas?

MH: We entered the off season with a strategic plan, and Schellas, myself, the coaching staff, the ownership group got together and looked at the previous season, the previous six months that Schellas had been on board and we looked at what we thought was working well and things we thought we could improve on. And so we went into the off season knowing what we wanted to improve on and I’m happy to say the plan we set forth, we accomplished. We got the players we wanted, the key positions we felt we need to upgrade. Unfortunately, we’re not getting the results that I think a team of this ability deserves. If you look at the players on the roster, the team and the culture that Schellas has created, we deserve better than what we’ve seen so far as the results. We’re confident that this is going to change as we enter the second/third of the season, but we feel that we’ve done what we needed to do get the players to fill the areas we needed to improve in. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten some results we felt we deserved and the team continues to work hard and focused and trust me, there’s no one that feels that pain of these losses more than Schellas and I. As much as it hurts you guys when we lose those games, we’re not sleeping very often. When we talk the day after a game, we’re both very tired and looking forward to some privacy.

What, in your opinion, specifically has gone wrong with this team on the field to date?

MH: I’ll start with when you look at the games and we’re not going to analyze every game here, but if you look at the first two games where we have *unintelligable* at the start of the season, we deserved better than the two results that we ended up getting. If you look at both games we out shot our opponents by a 2 to 1 ratio. Chicago, I think we hit the post twice. Chivas, we missed some opportunities and they came back, were sitting back most of the game, counter attacked, got a couple of opportunistic goals and won the game. It started off with a couple of games that easily, if Jeff Cunningham puts that header away, the whole season is different that this point. That’s where soccer can be a very cruel game. (MH talks about the CAP vs Palmeiras game tying in the last play of the game) That’s the game of soccer. Unfortunately, sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way. You try to do everything you can to put your team in the position where you will get the benefit of the bounce, but sometimes that’s not the case.

SH: For our side on the field, going back to what Hitch said, we did a really good job of going out and try to identify players, and bringing in players. Now, what we’re doing is looking at 5 players today who won’t be able to dress out. Out of those 5 players, all 5 of them have been starters. You start the season off, in preseason, with the goal keeper getting hurt and he has yet to return. That took a lot out of the team. I think it took a lot of the confidence. Ray got a good job for us. Ray got better every game, but he’s not a Dario Sala. The next thing you look at is we improved our defense. Our best defender was Steve Purdy through all of pre-season, but then he didn’t do a very good job in our first two games. I was looking at his performance yesterday and he’s only played 3 games for us because he’s been injured ever since. George John, one of our top drafts, started very well as far as getting into the game against NE. I thought he’d be a very, very good player for us, but he’s only been able to play 3 games. These are the guys that in the locker room right now…so our defense has really taken a big, big, big beating with the number of injuries we’ve had. Every team has problems. Tonight will be, I think, the second game that we’ve ever played the same back four back to back from one game to another game. You know how important it is for players to not only know their roles, but understand their teammates. We have opportunities to make changes, a lot of players have opportunities, we’re trying people in different positions, but it really comes down to two things in soccer and only two things – score the goals when you have them, and stop them from scoring and I don’t think we’ve done either very well.

Much as been made about you being open as a coach regarding specific players. Do you think there are times when you’ve been too open, with the media, in your comments?

SH: Maybe. Yeah. Probably I have, but I think I don’t ever say anything to hurt a player. I don’t think I’ve say anything to hurt a player without that player and I first discussing it.

When do you see some young players like Kyle Davies getting some playing time on the field?

SH: We picked up Kyle Davies 3 or 4 weeks ago and he started for us the last game and I thought he did a pretty good job and he’ll be starting again tonight.

I was just curious…our front line, it seems cooper has a lot of shots on goal and attempts, he’s doing really good, but you move over to Ferreira and Cunningham and you look and the numbers just aren’t there for those guys. Have you ever thought of moving Ferreira to midfield and bring something in with a little more height? David is just about the shortest guy on the field and I think that hurts being in the center.

SH: I think Ferreira is a very good player. He’s one our key players that we picked up. Talking a little bit about Ferreira…you don’t find too many players in this league, international players that can start off really well. I think a lot of it is the intensity of the league, the speed of the league, the athleticism and the league, and I think it takes them a little bit of time for them to adjust. I think he’s been kicked around quite a bit. The way we’re trying to play is a 4-1-4-1 where he can take it and come back to midfield and get the ball. And we’re trying to keep Kenny in the center of the field so he can use his height. If you look at the last game, both he and Andre were probably five yards away on head balls. Now they’re both big players, tall players, but they both missed the target. I think a person that does help us when he comes out on the field, in particularly to that area is Brek Shea…because of his size. It all depends on how we’re playing and how we’re getting the crosses off. van den Burgh has done a great job for us this year. When you look at VDB, you don’t see a lot of statistics with him, but it’s at his foot for serving 8-10 quality balls that could’ve been scored by somebody else or is it, could that 8-10 assists that we could’ve had from him? I think what we have to do is again, the balls gotta bounce just a little bit right for us.

Is there anything you can work on in practice, maybe with some of the strikers to make sure they have the ball buried into the back of the net? Because we’ve all seen it, it’s a beautiful ball being played in, but yet they go skyrocketing it over the bar or just wide. As a fan, it’s getting very upsetting…What are we doing to work on finishing with the opportunities that you talk about us having?

SH: Coaches, I think, have two choices. They can continue to work on the things that they do well. Basically, if you’re a team that finishes well, you continue to work on it, continue to work on it, continue to work on it. Coaches also have to choice with things you don’t do well. We spent a lot of time with our back four and our defending because I didn’t think our defending was very good. At the same time, for the last three weeks we’ve been working on finishing. And, if you ever been around a football, American football training field, you’ve seen some big, tall red dummies that are around. Well we’ve purchased four of these and we have them in our goal box. We serve the balls over and over again so our players get accustomed into running into something or avoiding something like they would in a match instead of just getting clean headers. It really comes down to our player’s technique. The opportunities are there. We hear your frustrations, but I can tell you without a single doubt in my mind that your frustrations aren’t even close to mine. I think people who coach any sport are competitive people and this has been very frustrating for us as well.

We’re basically, mathematically, eliminated, isn’t it time we go to the youth? *Unintelligble due to clapping* Put something with the guys who are going to show up next year. Let Cunny ride the bench, let the rest of the guys who are going out of contract. Let’s put all these U-20 guys on the field and do something for next year.

SH: We’re continuing to play for this year.

JW: Why?

SH: Because I don’t think we’re mathematically out of it.

JW: You would have to have the 3rd hottest streak ever in MLS to get into the playoffs.

SH: I think we’ve had one of the worst streaks in MLS. I think we have the same opportunity to turn that.

JW: With the same guys?

SH: I think we’re playing good soccer. If we don’t get scored on and we score, I think we’ll be fine.

*The Moderators starts to move on to the next question and Schellas stops him*

SH: Let me finish because I want to address the rest of that. That’s my feelings today. If we get to point where I feel the same way you feel, then yes, I think it would be time to give the young player’s a chance. Now one of the things you know or may not know, we have five our young players leaving for the Youth Cup. We probably have more Generation Adidas players than anywhere else in the league. I think we have 6 Generation Adidas. All the others have the maximum of two. We have a lot of young players, but at the same time, with young players you can expect inconsistency. I think when you look at our defense, I thought Kyle Davies did a pretty good job the other day for the first time he’s played MLS soccer, but on third goal he didn’t shut down a player. Avi was another young player on the field, but he passed a man off instead of staying with a man. And then Anthony Wallace another young player watched a combination play made occur. So when you have too many young players on the field, I think it can be a bit of a problem. Right now, I’m still focusing on this team the way it is.

To kind of go with what he said over there. Number one, I agree with him. I see what you’re saying, Schellas, that the younger players are going to make mistakes, but they’re going to get better with time. I don’t know that I…I’m not speaking for everyone here, but I’m not sure what we’ve seen on the pitch so far is enough to make us think that we’re going to hit that streak that you’re talking about. If we’re truthful to ourselves that it’s just not there right now, and if we start looking at…maybe we do need to call this season a wash and start playing those young players. Everyone is here because we love FC Dallas.

I’d like to know what you see that makes you think that we’re going to make that run?

SH: We do a lot of feedback with players. In the beginning stage, the feedback with the players was something optional because we didn’t want to put too pressure on the players. We do preparation for training. What we want to get done in training and we do our training a session and all that comes out of our previous game. So we look at our game and we say, we got to work on finishing so we prepare our finishing training session. Now we do a training session. Then we do an evaluation of how they played in the game and I think a very important part is getting the feedback to the players to give them – this is what you’re doing better, this is what we want you to stop doing, this is what we want to encourage you to continue to do. To that end, we hope to motivate and communicate with players. We weren’t getting the feedback the way I’d hope we would’ve cuz some players just didn’t want to hear it so now we’ve the feedback a bit more mandatory. You have to come in each week and we go through video analysis and so forth. We spend a lot of time giving information to players.

One of the things we’ve just saw from the Chicago game to our most recent game that our players were touching the ball 150 more times than they did prior to the Chicago game. The encouragement is that every player on the field is touching the ball 15 more times than they did the previous games. Is that a structure we’re playing? Is that a player’s doing what we’re asking them to do? Maybe playing a little bit better. If you look at our line-up, how many times have we changed line-ups because of injuries or because someone is not playing well? I still think the thing we need to do is jump on an opponent as we did against Houston early, we have to come away with something.

First of all, I’d like to say that I have enjoyed watching the team more this year than the last couple of years as far as style of play goes so thank you for that. I think we’re getting better 10 or 11 players on the field. *Unintelligble* Dario, in my opinion, is a mid-tier goalie in MLS. What we’ve had since then is dropped off a bit. What is your opinion of Lambo? He’s gone a lot, I know. Is he for real? Is he the future? What is his skill level because I saw him in that Costa Rica game and that’s about it? Is he really someone we can count on to be out until Dario can come back full time?

SH: Dario is a very good goal keeper. He’s a different *unintelligible* in the goal. Every goal keeper in the league will make their blunders, but I think you’ll see less of them from him. There’s also an understanding of how to play, how to play quickly out the distribution, and then also how to calm the team down when there’s a lot of pressure. We miss him tremendously.

It’s a completely different environment for us instead of Ray basically playing his first MLS game this year. Yes, he’s gotten better. We talked about motivation. The last thing I ever want to do with Ray is destroy his self-confidence so he will continue to get better.

Lambo is very young. He’s with the U-20 and he’ll have the opportunity to show what he can do at the Youth World Cup, but I don’t think Lambo is a player that we want to get into that same situation that Ray’s in right now.

It seems to me that me that this team has had a good number of turnover of players in the past 5, 6, 10 years that I’ve been watching. I don’t know if this is a common occurrence in the MLS and I don’t really understand how you get players. *Unintelligible* Do you feel now that you’ve do have the nucleus now to compete for the future, is that what I’m hearing you say? That you have the players that you wanted in the nucleus and we’re going to be sticking with them?

MH: Let me talk about the mechanism to acquire players which might be beneficial to you and anyone else here who’s not familiar in how in soccer you go out and acquire players, and Schellas, you can talk about the nucleus of the team and what you see. There’s a few mechanisms to go out and acquire players. We work within a salary cap structure so every team has the same salary cap to work with it, and the same number of players obviously on the roster, give or take a few just depending on the new Generation Adidas rule.

And so the way it works is you can acquire players through a draft, which we have, where you’re drafting youth national team players and/or college players who are coming out of college. You can acquire players through the international market and that’s done by discovering players that are either on a free transfer because they’re not currently signed to an international club and you just negotiate with that player, that player’s representative and agent to bring the player the club. Or, you go to a club that you have identified a player that plays for a club. David Ferreira is an example of that, he was playing for our partner club Atletico Paranaense, and you work out a loan agreement with the club and bring the player and work out the agreement with the player for his compensation – salary, terms and then with the club on the loan or purchase of the player. So those are primary mechanisms for acquiring players outside of just your traditional trades within the league. And there’s a new mechanism which just began a year ago, which we haven’t taken advantage of yet, but we will in the near future and we’ll do even more so in the mid- to long-term is to developing your own players so you’re now…MLS is giving each team the opportunity to develop youth players that you can sign to professional contracts without those players having to go into a draft which is what has happened in the past. So we’re developing a number of top-notch players who are juniors in the league system and those players, some of them will become FC Dallas players. Those are the different ways to bring players to the team

SH: Yeah, I think we’re starting to get a nucleus. I don’t think we’re there yet. What of the comments I made to the players the other day at training was probably two days ago. I said I would like to be able to put a starting lineup on the field and then it would be our starting lineup this season where everyone else, the young players, some of the experienced players can always have the feel that they have to beat someone out to get on the field and right now we don’t have that. We don’t have a situation where there’s 11 players on the field that are dominating players so through injuries we continue to make changes. Through the youth where they are inconsistent and it’s something…I think Brek Shea is going to be a very, very good player. I just don’t think he’s a very good player today because of his age and his experience or his lack of experience, but I think in moments of the game, he’s outstanding. Can he extend those moments where they’re longer?

I think when you look at our team…I think you look at a Dario Sala who I think is as good as anybody in the league or close to that. I think you look at Pablo Ricchetti. I think he’s an extraordinary player and I think you would have to agree with me that Dax McCarty has been very good since the Chicago game, but he’s also playing the position that’s bringing out the best in him. I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of Ferreira. I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of Rocha. I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of Kenny. And we’re still trying to find a right sided midfielder and van den Burgh really does really a pretty decent job for about the first 60-65 minutes.

It’s interesting how many goals we’ve given up the second part of the game, second half. It shows we can compete with anybody in the league because we go into the games either winning or tying the majority of our games and then we come out in the second half getting outscored, I think it was 15 to 5 in the second half. That’s just not acceptable. Is that because we’re not good enough? Are our players not good enough? That mean we’re not in good enough shape? Is it that we got too many young players? Too much pressure? Or did we lose our focus so there’s a lot of things we keep looking at.

This question is about Cunningham. He’s probably scored about as many goals as Drew Moor has give or take. That’s ever since we brought him here. I don’t have numbers in front of me. #1 – why is he still starting or even dressing? #2 – what was the reason for bringing a 40+ year old player to this club? At the price we’re paying for him?

MH: Schellas is 40 not Jeff. *audience laughter*

SH: Jeff’s not quite 40, but I get your point. As far as why did we bring in Jeff Cunningham…I don’t think we scored a lot of goals last year and we needed a proven goal scorer. We were able to get him on a pretty good trade from Toronto because they ate quite a bit of his salary. He’s with us now and we’re still not scoring a lot of goals and he’s part of that equation.

As far as Drew Moor scoring goals, you know I’ve got a 13 year old grandson who got a hold of me last week and he said, “Grandpa. Look at this. This is ridiculous. Your second leading scorer is a defender.” So if my 13 year old grandson can see that … I think I recognize it as well. It’s something that we’re going to have to fix. Now, we’re trying to find answers within our team and that’s why we’re playing a 4-1-4-1. I think we’re controlling the game, but guys, honestly if you look at the first 20-25 minutes against Houston how many balls should’ve gone into the goal? And we’re not putting those balls into the goal. We’ve got to deal with that.

I’ve gone to games for years and years. I watch a lot of MLS games on TV. I also watch a lot of Premier League games on tv. It seems to me that MLS rewards size, speed, and aggression. I don’t think our team measures up to other teams in terms of size, speed, and aggression. And then our team is very young which means we also have that immaturity, brashness, rashness, red cards, *untelligible*. I just don’t get it. You were quoted in the paper as saying we got the players we need… Could you respond to that?

SH: I think the league is much more aggressive than it probably needs to be. I think, and this is my personal feeling, in the game against Houston there probably could have been two penalty kicks called for us and not being called. How much does that change the game? You know, I think DC United has had 6 penalties for them. I think we’ve had 1. We continue to evaluate the officials, and I think we do a pretty good job of sending videos. We ask, “why is this going on?”, but I will guarantee that David Ferreira has been kicked probably more than he probably should be kicked and a lot of fouls aren’t being called. If David Beckham took that kind of abuse, he wouldn’t want to be staying in this league. So I think we protect some players and some players we don’t protect other, but I do agree with you. It’s an aggressive league. George John is an aggressive player. Torres is an aggressive player. Purdy is an aggressive player. Drew Moor is an aggressive player. I think we have those types of aggressive players in certain positions, but we need to get more aggressive players on the field. I agree with you.

I’ve got a question, but just speaking of the youth real quick. You know DC is first in the East and they start two rookies every game. So your stated preference for formation, we’re playing the 4-1-4-1 now, but your stated preference is for the diamond 4-4-2 with a true #10 sitting at the top of it. In the beginning of MLS, every team in MLS tried to play a 4-4-2, every team in the league tried to go and acquire a #10, but it was deemed to expensive, it didn’t fit within the salary cap. The few that brought in a #10 in – your Echeverry, Valderrama, they were forced to play with a 5 man midfield to protect that type of player. With those lessons have been learnt in the passed, do you really think it’s feasible for a 4-4-2 to succeed in MLS?

SH: I think the diamond 4-4-2 can succeed. I think what we’re missing is that defending midfielder. I think when you watch the beginning, Pablo Ricchetti is a extremely good player, but as he continues to age, he is unable to mark up the way that he needs to mark up. If you look at Houston, they’re in a diamond midfield in a 4-4-2. They have Ricardo Clark who basically does a lot of the defending in the midfield. What we saw in the 4-1-4-1, I think we need four defenders on our field. I don’t think we can do the three in the back. I don’t think we’re athletic enough so we have four in the back and we’re trying to give more midfield control. More balls in the midfield where we can possess.

I’m sure you hate to see the soccer where our defenders just kick the ball forward. I hate to see it. I think you’re seeing a lot less of that. I think you’re starting to see a little more possession, but possession in the center circle and the back third is really a fool’s paradise. We’re trying to do possession and progression where we’re getting more people getting forward…You’ll see Columbus today in a 4-1-4-1 with Schelotto being a player that goes forward and comes back in the midfield, and he’s extremely dangerous and gets a lot of touches on the ball. The difference with them and us is that they have two flank players that are extremely quick, that can beat you on the quick which is one of the principles of attack and we don’t have that right now.

We’ve been hearing a lot of talk about injuries, balls not bouncing our way, lack of calls, even calling a few players – Dax, Burse, Ricchetti getting older. Do you as a coach, your tactics, you’re responsible for some of these? I’m hearing a lot of excuses. Do you think maybe you should take some responsibility for lack of results?

SH: Absolutely. This is my position. I think what ends up happening, and I can’t share information with you. I don’t think I want to share that type of information that I share with the team. When you have a setup on the field and you have…let’s say defending a corner kick and you have a player that’s supposed to be in a position and the player is not in that position and Mulrooney hits a shot into the goal. That’s puts us down. That player basically chooses to not be in that position. As a coach, how do you handle that? You take him out of the game. You don’t start him, but you have that confrontation with the player. Now is that a coaching mistake for asking that player to be in that position or is it a player’s mistake for not being in that position? As a coach, with the mistakes that are being made, we all make mistakes. For us, it’s a situation every time we make mistakes, whether it’s coaching, player, officiating, whenever we make a mistake it seems like it’s the back of the net on us.

First off, I want to correct a couple of things. Ray Burse has played league MLS league games before and a playoff game as well under Steve Morrow. Also, last year, we were the third high scoring team behind Los Angeles and Columbus so goal scoring was not a problem last year. It was defending. We were conceding too many goals.

The thing that I actually want to ask about is going back to the player criticisms. We’ve heard you talk a lot about the young players, Dax McCarty especially seems to come in for a lot of criticism. And yet someone like Marcelo Saragosa who let’s face it, has played badly this year, he’s got torched a lot, he’s had a red cards he shouldn’t have had, stupid yellow card for a handball last week, we haven’t heard a peep out of you about Saragosa. Why does he continue to get playing time and why doesn’t he get criticized for the mistakes he makes?

SH: If you’re going to…if you feel that I’m too hard on players, it’s a situation where I think that sometimes one of the things we miss in sports in our society is accountability. If I’m too hard on players and you hear about it, then I apologize. That’s not my intent. My intent is to get the players to do things that sometimes they don’t want to do.

As far as Marcelo, I think Marcelo is a player that shows up everyday. He’s that aggressive player. He’s that warrior. He competes extremely hard and I’m trying to get that to be a little bit more contagious. Is he the best player on our field? Is he having the best season? I don’t think so, but he does what I ask him to do.

But we didn’t hear any kind of criticism about his mistakes especially the red card and the handball….and that handball was a real problem because it meant he was on a yellow card and he had to be more cautious about his tackling. That’s a stupid handball to give away while on an attacking opportunity.

It seems like, you’ve mentioned this too. First half we play pretty strong. Second half, we always come out really, really flat. The first 5-10 minutes of the half, it always seems like you get no effort out of there out of the players. I know that’s probably not true, but that’s the way it seems in the stands. There’s just not a lot going on. Is there something that we can do to make them come out stronger in the second half?

SH: I think we do a pretty good job in the first half. The second half, I stopped counting the number of games that we were ahead or even tied and then in the second half we give up the goals to lose the games. What we try to do is we try to review that things that they’re doing to us that we need to keep an eye on and then if we’re doing things well, continue to exploit that. And something happens and I think it comes back down to pressure. The opposition are coming at us a little more direct and then we’re not there to pick up the second ball. It can be again, focus. It can be again, a level of fitness. It can just be just a determination, but it seems like the opposition gets a lot more chances than we are in the second half.

My question is for Hitch. When Morrow was fired last year, our record was good. *unintelligible*  (The question was about justifying firing Morrow over one game, but not doing anything about the this season’s three months of failure with SH.)

JM: So can you speak towards the actions with Coach Morrow last season and bringing in Schellas and that whole transition from last 10-12 months.

MH: Absolutely. Firing Steve Morrow wasn’t because of that one game. It was not. It was a number of things that were leading into that direction. Things were not going well and sort of manifested itself in that loss so it was not just that game. To answer the second part of your question. We have a strategic plan. We believe Schellas and the coaching staff are going to be able to take that plan and execute that plan. So we’re obviously sticking with that plan and we feel confident that we’re going to reach the goals that we’ve set. Firing Steve Morrow wasn’t because of just that one game.

*Question was asked from the back that I couldn’t make out except for the name, Pat Noonan.*

JM: Where does the acquisition mode of our plan come into place?

MH: We considered Pat Noonan and decided he wasn’t the right player for us for a number of reasons of which we aren’t going to share here. Every player that’s out that’s there on the market, we do evaluate them and not just the ones in major league soccer. Right now we’re looking at a list of 40 players internationally that we’ve got a system in place and when players are referred to us, or that we’ve identified the player and reached out to the club or the player’s representative that we go through the system, that we do our research on the player, the background of the player, look at their recent form, the history of the player both on and off the field, injury reports, so we have a system in place, but felt that Pat Noonan wasn’t the right fit for this team.

*Follow-up comment from the back and again, I couldn’t make it out*

I have enjoyed and do like the youth players, and I do like our style of play, but how involved are you in the youth teams as far as scouting and forming their strategy as far as coaches? *unintelligible*

JM: Schellas I think you can jump on this as well. When you look at our youth system, what role does that play in your strategic plan?

SH: I’m very involved with that with Oscar Pareja and Chris Hayden. We’re very involved with the academies. When they’re out there training and when I’m done with training, I’ll go out and watch them. We’re going to be doing something, I think July 1st, where all our players will go to go out and spend time with the youth. I’ve had a few, maybe four or five come in and join us in training…you know the better players. I think it’s important for them to see the environment, and also to kind of train with the people they want to be…you know to be that professional player.

Schellas has mentioned a couple of times, feedback to the players and accountability. My question is…at my work, we’re getting ready to do our evaluations, I want to know who are you accountable to? Who is doing your evaluation?

I think I’m accountable to Hitch, to John Wagner, to the Hunts family and sports group.

And how do you think you’re doing so far? If you had to evaluate yourself, what would you say?

I think if you look at the record, I don’t think we’re doing very well. I mean it doesn’t take a genius to understand that we’re second to last, but I think we look where we were and where we’re trying to go, I think we’re on that path.

I asked this question before and maybe I didn’t ask the right person. In terms of your strategic plan building a team, Mr. Hitchcock, are size and speed at the top of your list? Or, is there some attribute like skill with the ball, vision on the field. I’m concerned about size and speed in MLS because I see that’s what works every time.

JM: Hitch, you’ve talked about the strategic plan. The question is in regards to size, speed, skill, and aggression. How do you rank those and what do you look for in this list of 40 players that we’re currently evaluating?

MH: Obviously, it depends on the position first and foremost. I mean it’s a very athletic league and if you look there are a number of very good international players that did well in their respective leagues and didn’t adapt immediately to soccer for reasons that you’ve mentioned. So we’re very cognizant when we’re trying to evaluate a player, but first and foremost is about position and what that player’s role is going to be on the team. If you look at some of the player’s that we’ve added to the team this year…you’ve got two guys that could be playing a power forward on a tournament basketball team that’s Steve Purdy and George John. Those are two athletic, strong, aggressive players, but unfortunately, have been hurt for the better part of the season so like you’ve seen them like this, but haven’t seen them really start to become a part of the team and bring to the team what we expected from them when we brought them here.

But neither one of them is very fast.

MH: Yeah, but for that position for center backs, they can play that role. In different positions, you know Ferreira obviously you’re not going to get a playmaker that’s going to be 6’4” chances are and so he’s probably going to be from *unintelligible*

But the guys he’s playing against are a foot taller than he is.

MH: Yeah, but we think he can play his role which is why we brought him here so it all depends on the position and the role. But we understand it’s a very athletic and aggressive league. There’s no question about it.

Schellas, do you think you have the purse strings from Hunt that you can actually find a player that can actually make a difference on this team?

SH: Yeah, I think if you look at Columbus which is also…

Does Columbus have a DP yet?

SH: Schelotto. They just got him as a DP. They won the MLS Cup last year without a DP and to keep Schelotto they had to give him a DP position. You know what…and ma’am, you’ve asked a couple of times about speed and aggression and athleticism. Hitch mentioned something about having 40 players on our list that we’re looking at the international level. Out of those 40 players, realistically, there’s probably only 5 because we don’t have the money first of all to get the 40. So let’s just say 5 that we’re realistically looking at. Well we found a very good defender that is extremely athletic, probably one of the most athletic defenders that’s playing. He’s from Liberia and he’s playing in Holland. But as we look more and more into it, he give up a PK about every 3 games. So he’s a very athletic, very aggressive, but on one hand he gets a little bit out of control so we have to be very careful how we get those other picks.

I would have never taken this position, I would never have left SMU, if I didn’t think I had the support from the Hunt family.

First question goes along with what you were saying…with those players, are they willing to come here and actually play? You can look at Duilio Davino from last year and look at him from year prior when he was an outstanding defender, comes here and you could put a traffic cone and it could do the same job. Now this year, he’s doing just as good.

My second question is how do you get heart out of the players? Last weekend, Andre Rocha is maybe 5-6 inches taller than Stuart Holden and Stuart Holden wins the ball in the air. That is absolutely pathetic.

JM: Can you talk about the player’s heart and what you’re doing to reinvigorate passion on the playing field?

SH: It is really interesting how Andre Rocha can be such a good player as he today if he’s missing that little bit on ingredient of heart. You know what, I think it says a lot about our American players that one of the things that they have, every time they show up for any sport is that they bring their character and heart with them. I think Andre adds a lot to the team, but there are times that it’s disappointing. And this is not something that I’m talking bad about a player…okay, so give me a break there. *crowd laughter*

But you know, to answer your question it’s something we as coaches, we wish it’s something we can get out of him. He’s a Brazilian boy and yet, you have Marcelo Saragosa who has the biggest heart. Marcelo will go through a wall for you and it’s just kind of give and take. I think what we need is to find more and more of that character and going back to Davino. When I came here last year, the team was playing with a 3 back system with very, very good center back in Davino, but it was hard for him to match up with the athleticism and speed he was encountering. He’s now playing in Mexico and he’s doing extremely well. His team is doing extremely, but it’s a different game back there.

We have to do a little bit better job. We’ve had numerous and numerous from Mexico that wanted to come play for FC Dallas and we’re hesitant because they’re a little bit older and past their prime and we just don’t think they can handle the intensity of this league.

I have a question for each of y’all. College basketball players will say it’s my team after 3 years, when they’ve first started. Will you consider this of your team? You’re responsible for all the players. Hitch, when are we going to get…we always get…and I’m not knocking Central/South America, but when are we going to get some English or German team? DC United seems like every week is playing a European team. When are we going to get those type of exhibition games?

SH: The way I feel is the first day I took the job, this is my team. I’m trying to get them to do the type of things that I believe in. So I take full responsibility for the first day of training to where we are today. The other side is I also feel like a big ship in the ocean and I’m trying to turn the ship, trying to build character, and build courage, and build a great foundation and that just takes time. How time that takes? I don’t know.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve also made mistakes bringing in the wrong players. I’ve seen a player and thought I really like that player and think he’ll add to us, but there’s something missing once the player gets here. It could a little bit of determination, a little bit of courage, the skill is always there, but there just seems to be something missing and I don’t know how we can do better except spend a bit more time evaluating players.

MH: In answer to the second part of that question, we currently partnerships with CAP in Brazil, one with Tigres in Mexican First Division, and then we’re about to finalize a deal, it’s agreed to in terms, with River Plate of Argentina. Although our focus has been Mexico and South America just because of number of players are affordable by our salary cap terms for Central America and South America, it makes sense to spend our time and energy there. We’re now looking to add those partnerships in Europe.

I didn’t mean bringing in players. I mean playing friendlies.

MH: Right. I’m going to get to that in a second…We’re talking with European clubs about developing a strategic partnership and as part of that would be international friendly games here like we have with Tigres, like we have with Athletico Paranaense, and like we’ll have in future with River Plate. That’s just one step we’re taking towards trying to create some meaningful competition as far as having a bigger and better partnership instead of just playing a one-off game.

That said, we brought Everton to Pizza Hut Park a few years ago. They didn’t play us because of the schedule, but the team conducted the preseason here, played an exhibition against the Crew up in Columbus and Club America here as part of a double header before an FC Dallas game. And so we’re always looking at those European opponents that can play an exhibition here in the stadium.

This year *unintelligible* because of the marketplace, you’ve got Chelsea obviously playing Club America at Cowboys Stadium which is going to be a big game, will take a lot of dollars out of the marketplace, and we didn’t want to be in a position where we were going to compete playing an Everton or a club along those lines because we weren’t going to realistically be able to bring in Barcelona or Real Madrid this year to compete against Chelsea and Club America. But in the future, that’s all part of the strategic plan is we want to bring in as many different types of international clubs so that our fans and the marketplace can see different types of soccer at a high level. So for me, rather than playing a one-off exhibition, I’d rather create a meaningful partnership with a top club in Europe.

There seems to be a very natural person to go to – Tom Hicks is right down the street, he could bring Liverpool over here. You’d think he’d want to bring his team to our team in order to generate interest in Liverpool themselves if it’s not already existing here

MH: Yeah, we’ve talked to Hicks. It will happen in the future, but we haven’t yet got to the point that they’ve agreed to bring the club in.

As far as player acquisition is concerned and setting up the roster, in the last year some of the players we’ve brought in, Cunningham obviously was a great deal to pull him in to begin with, he was a cheap acquisition for FC Dallas, but we extended his contract. In the past, he’s been with RSL, one of the worst teams in the league, one of the worst scoring teams in the league and wasn’t able to get playing time. After that he was with Toronto and wasn’t able to get playing time there, and again they were one of the worst scoring teams in the league. With Daniel Torres, we brought him, when he was with Columbus and RSL he wasn’t able to get consistent playing time with either of those teams, and again they were one of the worst defensive teams in the league during that time. And then with Steve Purdy, yeah he looked good on our backline over the course of the exhibition season, but at the same time you look back at the history of MLS, pulling in second division German players, not even that right because he was a reserve player there, there’s not a lot of history of success there. What was the conclusion that they were going to be able to come in and have a significant impact on FC Dallas when those types of players haven’t had a positive impact on MLS in the past?

SH: I think what we needed was someone that could score goals for us last year, I think Kenny was getting to the point where it was difficult for him to be free, and I think Jeff scored 5 goals for us when he came in last year for half the season, and he’s an experienced player. Torres was another experienced player, we felt that our defense wasn’t as strong as it needed to be, we gave up so many goals last year, and we wanted to bring someone in who with some experience in the league but wasn’t going to cost us a lot. And Purdy was a player who was drafted by LA and played two years in Germany and we were able to put in a discovery on him to get him into the league. For me, I think Purdy is… what we saw in pre-season and what he was doing, we thought he would be our best defender. He was our best defender all pre-season for eight weeks, so we were really surprised where that is.

This is for Schellas, you’ve talked about second half performance, you’ve talked about injuries. A lot of times that can be directly attributable to fitness. Can you talk to me about what you’re doing with the team to make sure they’re in top shape? Are they in top shape, what are we doing to address that, because that can lead to a lot of injury and late game breakdowns?

SH: The players are in fitness training every week. Some days are harder than other days, but if you can imagine with the games back to back it’s very hard to pick a date. We also like to… it’s a long season so we like to give the players a recovery day, and we also give players days off so that they can get time to get their bodies together. The players who aren’t playing a lot of time, they don’t get the day off because they’ll be training with me. This past week our younger players on the recovery day trained with me and then also on a day off they trained with me. The day off was more voluntary, but you know young players want to play, so we had quite a few of them out here.

As far as the injuries, it’s really strange because if it’s a fitness thing you can *unintelligible* it, or if it’s a lack of warm-up, you can say we’re not getting enough warm-up. Our injuries right now are all our center backs. All our center backs have hamstring pulls. And you go, why doesn’t everyone else on the team have a hamstring pull? And so we keep looking at it, and quite a few of our players lift weights and we’re trying to back them out of lifting weights because it may take away from their mobility and flexibility. But if you watch our team play, especially before the Chicago game, the players probably under the most pressure have been our defense, so they probably have been playing harder.

Either one of you, can you please speak to if you do and how often you do have a sports psychologist work with the team and work with individuals on the team?

SH: We’re very fortunate to have a sports psychologist on our staff so that person is also a professor at one of the universities and he comes in for games and he’ll normally stay for the day after the game. So he’ll only stay twice a week. I think his strengths, I’ve been around a lot of sports psychologists, I think his strength is more on the individual basis, with a player one-on-one. I don’t think his strength is more team oriented focus or setting some type of goal setting, it’s more toward individuals.

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