Other Major League Soccer coaches and GMs shuffle race around the country looking for the next big thing, but New England coach Steve Nicol and Houston’s Dominic Kinnear prefer a steadier course. Obviously, it’s working, says ESPN’s Steve Davis. Over the past three or four MLS seasons, Nicol and Kinnear’s teams have been a model of consistency, which Davis says is the main reason their teams have appeared in the last two MLS Cup finals.
Houston and New England have a consistent approach to both tactics and personnel. While other MLS teams searched the globe for new talent and big names to fill their Designated Player slots, Houston added few new players. In fact, nine of Kinnear’s starting eleven played in last season’s MLS championship. Even more remarkable, six of them played in the 2003 MLS Cup victory — when the team was still in San Jose. If Houston prevails this weekend, it will become the second back-to-back MLS champ in league history.
It’s really more of the same for New England, which has built its team around a core group that’s been with the club for five or six seasons. “If you’ve got a settled environment, with good people who want to win, that makes it easy for anybody, particularly a younger player, to come in and get some of that,” coach Nicol said. Houston’s Kinnear echoes the assertion that environment is key: “We don’t have a lot of team rules,” he said. “Mostly, show up on time and work hard. Good locker rooms, in any sport, police themselves.”