Top Drawer Soccer Interview with Garrett Smith

Check it out here... nice long audio interview with Garrett. And yes, again, I'm going to make you go to the Portland Pilots Facebook page. And yes, you should become a fan:

http://www.facebook.com/PortlandPilots

Listening to this interview it is obvious that Pilot soccer is a class organization and Garrett is a class individual.
He speaks so highly of his players. He spreads praise to the whole team. He does not complain when getting sent away for NCAA quarter final matches instead of getting a home match. (I complained about this a lot) I am just very impressed with him.

I agree, Garrett does give a very good interview.

However, I'm not so sure about his substitution philosophy; especially if the primary goal is to win "THE CHAMPIONSHIP".

To do that, UP needs to get past the A-Teams (i.e. UNC, UCLA,Stanford) whose coaches substitute freely to get fresh legs on the field.

In soccer, control is good but speed kills.

Clive thought that as soon as you substitute, you are by definition putting less than your best players on the field.

in both National championships UP won, the starting players only came out for injury or, in the case of the second one, when they had beaten free substituting UCLA into submission.

<edit. in the 2005 game, UP made three substitutions in the game.
UCLA, with their reputation of free substitutions, Made ONE!

You are quite right.

And I have to admit, if I had players like Christine Sinclair, Megan Rapino, Natalie Budge, Lindsey Huie, Angie Woznuk, and Stephanie (Lopez) Cox playing on my team -- I probably wouldn't sub them either!

However, consider the case of UNC (winner of 20 of the last 27 National Championships).

Last year in the Championship Tournament, they made the following number of (substitutions): High Point (9), Georgia (9), Maryland (5), Wake Forrest (9), Notre Dame (6), Stanford (4).

I just think it's hard to argue with THAT KIND of success.

Go Pilots!!

In 2005 Garrett made a point of mentioning that he felt when he made a substitution, the level of play never dropped.

I think it's also a question of building match fitness. You want to play your top players most of the game in the playoffs. To be able to do that they need to have played 90 minutes earlier in the season.

The point of rotating players between Friday and Sunday makes sense in this light because then you can get fame time and experience for players but also get them used to playing 90 minutes.

It's also about the true nature of the game. Soccer is 11 v 11. Over aggressive use of subs doesn't feel right to me - not at this level.

In discussions about U of P philosophy, I always like to see what Clive had to say. This doesn't necessarily answer this particular question, but it gets at the question of whether the goal is to win the National Championship or to develop players:

"I’m able to get information over to people in a way that seems to make sense to them and I enjoy that. I am not so much result-oriented as teaching-oriented. If it becomes all about winning, all you get is frustrated when you lose. I can’t say results were secondary, but they were kind of linked up with everything else. I think you always look to the next game – how are we going to make it better, not perfect, but nearer perfect? I get a lot out of getting players to improve their game but also develop as people. I think the two things can be connected.

....

"Winning is not everything, in fact it is just something, but the ambition, the want to do as well as you can is important, and that has to be based on an idea of what real success is. Young fans, young players who turn out for their schools, can take that sort of thing into their everyday lives. Why should anyone be satisfied by second best? Again, there is nothing wrong with coming in second, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to be the first or even a better second."

Clive was a great coach and teacher.

I think the key point he made was that substitutions should be made for tacitcal reasons (i.e. to get more speed on the field or to get more physicality on the field, etc.), not simply to bring in "fresh legs." Or, simply, if a particlar player has a nagging injury or for whatever reason isn't playing to their full potential, you should make a substitution.

At this level of soccer, every player should be capable of playing a full 90 minutes at a high level.

I agree that Garret also gives a good interview but in listening to the interview I heard a couple of comments that did not make sense to me. He talked about how excited he was about the depth of the 2010 team. However, in the same interview he talked about the strategy of UP in regards to subsitututions and how is was very different than that of a UNC because he believed that he needed to get his players ready for the next level of play (i.e. national team play, olympics, etc.) He also made the point of rotating players between Friday and Sunday and the players that he plays on a given day can get used to playing the full 90 minutes.

A couple of comments regarding those statements:
1) How do you develop and use that depth if you are only playing approximately 14 of your 23-24 players?
2) Is he saying that all of his starting 11 are national team players and that is one of his motivations for his lack of subsitutions. I agree that we have a strong team that has national caliber players, but I thought soccer was about team play, not individual play. I have seen teams that did not have a large number of "marquee players" that did extremely well becauase they played as a team. Team unity sometimes comes from a fair number of players getting an opportunity to play even if it's not major minutes.
3) He talked about the rotation of players from Friday to Sunday games. Has anybody really seen this happen?

I agree with purplepetunia, while the Pilots are a very good team and have won two national championships, you cannot argue with a team strategy like North Carolina that has won 20 National Championships!

Just my humble opinion

color me purple wrote:
Is he saying that all of his starting 11 are national team players and that is one of his motivations for his lack of subsitutions. I agree that we have a strong team that has national caliber players, but I thought soccer was about team play, not individual play. I have seen teams that did not have a large number of "marquee players" that did extremely well becauase they played as a team. Team unity sometimes comes from a fair number of players getting an opportunity to play even if it's not major minutes.

Of course they're not all going to make the national team, but most of the Pilot XI is effective for the full 90 without needing a sub. So don't use a sub just to use a sub. There are reasons beyond that when the Pilots bring someone on.

When the players know what role they are going to play, whether it's starting or coming on to add a certain element to the team, then the team comes together as a whole.

I am such a poor listener. Can you tell me at what minute of that interview Garrett even mentioned UNC? are you sure he wasn't talking about those platooning devils, San Francisco?

UP goes with what works for us. it's the smallest school in a small conference and for us, the international style works better than it has for just about anyone else in the NCAA. Saying we need to Platoon to keep up with the other top programs is silly. If it is the wave of the future, ask the other platooning teams how may championships they have won.

Heck, go to Big Soccer and you will get a whole raft of UNC fans who will tell you UNC doesn't platoon at all., charts and everything.(look for recent posts from Soccer Hunter and Enfuego for starters).
They used to do it, especially in the 4 overtime semifinal we played with them, but maybe they don't now. I don't really know, Anson won't schedule us.