This Is The End

By: Clint | June 29th, 2007

It just has to be. The Rapids had the benefit of playing a DC team that was missing Jaime Moreno, Bobby Boswell and Ben Olsen; they had a 1-0 lead; and they weren’t hamstrung with Beckerman on the field. And the result? A 4-1 loss – their fifth straight beating. If anything good can come from this game, maybe it will be the realization that Clavijo isn’t exactly the greatest coach available for this team. A nice guy? Sure. But, with an illustrious career consisting of being assistant for the worst team in MLS history (the ‘99 MetroSexualStars), guiding the Haitian National Team to a .500 record during a 14-month stint, and a 22-30-1 record with New England, was Clavijo the best choice to take over the Rapids in 2004?

Not according to Ives Galarcep… in 2004!! Check out this excerpt to get an idea of what might have been going on when Clavijo was hired. The full article is here.

With the holidays here there isn’t a much better gift you can give a friend than a job. No one understood that better this week than Marcelo Balboa. The Colorado Rapids “ambassador” and de facto general manager was given the task of helping hire the team’s new coach and managed to do his best to make the search look thorough. The only problem was that few people ever doubted that anyone but Balboa’s close friend, Fernando Clavijo, would land the position.

The well-publicized coaching search was chock full of names but the make-up seemed tailor-made for a Clavijo conclusion. The group of eight finalists consisted of just two men with head coaching experience, Clavijo and former Los Angeles Galaxy skipper Sigi Schmid.

Currently coach of a U.S. Under-20 national team preparing for World Championship qualifying, Schmid was never going to agree to take the Rapids position considering the salary being offered (among the lowest for MLS coaches) and the dearth of talent on the Colorado roster. With Schmid out of the picture, that left Clavijo and a handful of assistant coaches with no previous coaching experience.

The only problem with hiring Clavijo is that he wasn’t exactly a success during those head coaching stints. With no titles, or even winning records, his experience alone wasn’t enough to make him an obvious choice over some of the very qualified assistants he beat out. His time with the Revolution can hardly be called a success, unless you ignore the numbers.

The Revs were 22-30-13 under Clavijo, posting a .500 season in 2000 (13-13-6, eighth among 12 teams) and finishing with horrid 7-13-6 mark in 2001 (third fewest wins in the league). After receiving the mother of all care packages in the pre-2002 Dispersal Draft (The Revs landed Steve Ralston, Carlos Llamosa, Mamado Diallo and Alex Pineda-Chacon), Clavijo still failed to make the most of the infusion of talent. The Revs stumbled to a 2-4-1 mark before management fired Clavijo.

Perhaps more damning than his won-loss record is the perception around MLS that Clavijo had lost control of the Revolution, that his laid-back approach and lack of team structure were to blame for the Revs struggles more than any talent concerns. That theory gained considerable steam when Steve Nicol took over the 2002 Revs and proceeded to lead them to the MLS Cup final.