Player power saps might from Sampson

Steve Sampson wasn't the first coach to be fired during this year's World Cup, nor was he, by a long shot, the only one. The United States' coach was, however, the only one of his peers to lose his job in the wake of an unseemly public mutiny.

Officially, Sampson "resigned" on Monday, just a few days after the Americans lost to Yugoslavia. While Sampson's days were clearly numbered, it was the way it all played out that caused this particular change at the helm to seem notably odoriferous.

The reality is that Sampson would have been cashiered anyway. The public perception, alas, is coloured by the fact that his "resignation" came just days after several of his back-biting players, most prominently defender Alexi Lalas and midfielder Tab Ramos, publicly vowed that they would not return to the US team if Sampson remained as manager.

The impression created was two-fold: First, it suggested to the American sporting public that soccer players can also be every bit the selfish, spoiled brats that their even more overpaid brethren in other professional sports are accused of being. It also fostered the illusion that the inmates were running the asylum.

"It didn't look good," said US midfielder Joe-Max Moore, who rejoined his club New England Revolution a few days before Sampson's fall. Even before leaving France, Moore had termed the criticism of the coach by his team-mates as "regrettable".

Frank Stapleton must have felt an overwhelming sense of deja vu as he watched this week's developments which, uncannily, mirrored the circumstances of his own departure from the New England job two years ago.

Armed with a two-year contract, Stapleton had taken on the project of building the Revolution from scratch in the first season of Major League Soccer. When the league allocated Lalas, the most visible, if not most prominent, homegrown American player, to Stapleton's team, everyone assumed it was doing the Revolution a favour. It took less than half a frustrating season for Stapleton to discover otherwise.

Lalas's frequent absences for national team duty had been expected, but Stapleton was not pleased when the player successfully lobbied to be placed on the 1996 Olympic team as one of the country's allotted over-23 players. The fact that there was a clear-cut difference in Lalas's level of effort between his national and club team further incensed the manager.

After watching Lalas lock horns in a spirited 90-minute battle with Niall Quinn in the US-Ireland friendly at Foxboro in 1996, an exasperated Stapleton wondered: "Where has that been all year?"

When Stapleton finally benched Lalas, leaving him to stew on the sidelines for the game against the MetroStars at Giants Stadium that August, the battle of wills started in earnest. A few weeks later Lalas invited the soccer correspondents of Boston's two major newspapers to lunch, at which he announced that if Stapleton was back as coach in 1997, he wouldn't be. In October Stapleton "resigned".

As in Sampson's case, it is difficult for the casual observer to believe that there was no causal relationship.

The nucleus of the team that the Americans sent to France was a veteran group who had played together in two previous World Cups and, when Sampson set about tailoring it to his own specifications, feathers were ruffled. When, citing leadership issues, he announced in April that he was leaving John Harkes, the veteran DC United striker and US team captain, out of the squad for France, the grumbling began. When he redesigned the formation to 3-6-1, thus relegating Lalas, Ramos, and Jeff Agoos to the bench, the revolt began in earnest.

There followed a listless performance against Germany, a humiliating loss to Iran, and a frustrating one to Yugoslavia.

It would appear that Sampson could have saved himself a lot of bother (though not, in all likelihood, his job) by simply leaving the recalcitrants at home in the first place.

Having accomplished their goal, the rebellious players were every bit as ungracious in the wake of Sampson's resignation as they had been in demanding it.

"We need to learn some lessons from the problems we had this time around so it never happens again, so future teams are properly prepared," said Lalas. "We were naive to think an inexperienced coach would see the value of experienced players," groused striker Eric Wynalda.

Thomas Rongen, the Dutch-born Revolution coach who spent June shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic while serving as assistant to Sampson, was mentioned as a possible successor, but he quickly rejected the idea after watching what had happened to Sampson.

Somewhere, Stapleton must have had a good chuckle.