Dave Kean

Nil-nil in a very tense game. It was interesting to see two sides so determined not to give anything away. The pace was frantic at time and a lot of players looked nervous.

The crowd was awesome, a great atmosphere and today I can hardly speak I’m so hoarse. It was a fantastic night and I’m slowly working my way through the beer list at Elysian Fields pregame.

Ljungberg had a great game and everything that went well ran through him. Unfortunately Montero looked a little out of sorts, the couple of chances that came to him he took very well, the best was in the second half when he made the best of a very good half chance off a precise through ball from Ljungberg. Alonso, Ianni and Jaqua all stepped up and had their best games for a while. Ianni had a great game and was effective at both ends of the pitch.

Once again there will be complaints about the officiating, with some justification. It was a very physical game and the man in the middle seemed to loose some control of the game mid way through the first half. He was inconsistent and that made it hard to have a flowing game. For example: the ref had been playing advantage and allowing the game to flow all night, untill Nate Jaqua was bearing down on goal after a great pass through the defence that was called back.

Having watched the replay it’s difficult to see how Onstad got off with just a yellow. It’s hard to see how that’s not a red, I assume Montero’s yellow was for simulation, but it seems disproportionate.

Houston played a very conservative game, happy to maintain possession and try to hit on the break. This will certainly change in Houston where the home team has a perceived advantage and they need to be more positive in looking for a result.

The Sounders have done well against this style of play (Columbus, DC, Galaxy and Toronto come to mind) and are very capable of taking the tie in Houston.

Now it’s all down to a one game playoff in Houston. The Sounders away form has been nothing short of superb during the second half of the season. After yesterdays game where neither side was able to really control the game shows the predictions of this series being to close to call were correct. It’s just going to take a single mistake to decide who is going through to the semi final.

It started going right shortly after the franchise was awarded, this was a different type of ownership group because they listened to the fans when they announced the name of the team.  This was followed up with the signing of Schmit, Ljungberg and Keller.

The fans responded by buying 22,000 season tickets.

A good foundation, but as the national media kept reminding us we were an expansion team whose stadium will be filled with latte sipping soccer mums.

I think we kinda disproved those theories during the opening game against New York… The atmosphere was incredible and the win convincing.

There were some high points. We won the cup, we saw Barcelona come to town and put on a clinic, we showed we can come from behind to get points when it mattered and ended the year the way we started it, with three wins.

The team matured in front of us and it kept getting better and better. There were a few down moments, the game at San Jose was just atrocious, giving three goals up against DC at home was another. As a fan you suffer through these moments, they give

Tonight is the first playoff game. And it happens at home in a sold out stadium, under the lights on national TV, against a very good team that we’ve beaten twice this year already.

As a sounders supporter these are the nights that are important, win or loose this where our team history is written. This is why we buy season tickets.

A quick read through the ECS forum shows a lot of pumped up people. This is going to be fun, it’s going to be loud and I will be giving my full 90.

Jean Todt is taking over from Max Mosley as head of the FIA, I’m really not sure there will be much of a difference. Todt spent a lot of time separating himself from Mosley, especially after Mosley endorsed him prior to the FIA election.

Todt is a former WRC codriver and has successfully run teams in rally, F1, sports cars and cross country raids. His racing resume is not in question.

I do believe he’s as qualified as anyone for the position. I don’t think too many people will argue that part of it, based on history it’s claiming to be the candidate of consensus that’s a little difficult to understand.

He does not exactly have a history of working together for the best interest of everyone and creating harmony. As Ferrari and Peugeot boss he was known for being the only “Non” in the room when it was not in the best interest of his team, no matter what it meant in the bigger picture.

As a team manager went to the extent of taking the FIA through the courts because they banned group-B rally cars after a number of fatal accidents. Peugeot had invested heavily in the series and wanted the class to carry on; he felt Peugeot were being punished for the indiscretions of others as no one had died in one of his teams cars.

Todt is one of the true masters of talking for hours with out actually saying anything, he will running one of the most political organization in the world. It was once said (Nigel Robuck perhaps?) that when the FIA politics get going it makes the houses of parliament look like a kindergarten.

Interestingly Todt talked a lot about having commissioners run the various FIA world championships (WRC, F1, touring cars, endurance racing and so on) and the role of the FIA president would be confined to the strategic direction of the organization. I’m not sure how far he will actually be able to distance himself from F1. Under Max the president and F1 were closely connected, but the appointment of someone both Todt and the teams can work with to run the sport would be a good start to actually putting some space between himself and Max.

Max was the lawyer for the F1 constructors and drafted the first Concorde agreement that ended the so called FISA/FOCA was in the 80’s and stopped a breakaway F1 championship. He really was intimately linked to F1 over every other series. I do like the irony that the threat of another team run independent series was at the heart of his replacement of FIA boss.

As we loose a character in Max, the sport gets another of its grandees back. It could be good, it could go bad, but it won’t be dull.

I am going to start with a little history, it’s relevant to the rest of this post. The Act of Union 1800 merged Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland and created the imaginatively named United Kingdom. The monarchy and government were in London and that’s how it was untill the Anglo-Irish treaty partitioned Ireland in 1921.

Because of political instability, occasional famine and opportunity there was a significant emigration from Ireland to Scotland in the 19^th and early 20^th century and settled in East Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 1876 the Irish in Edinburgh formed Hibernian FC, a few years leter Celtic FC were founded in East Glasgow, both clubs have very strong Irish and catholic identity.

A couple of years earlier Ranger FC started play in Glasgow, originally the club had no particular religious or ethnic identity, they just wanted to play football.

In the late 1800 Rangers and Celtic became the two biggest clubs in Glasgow and the rivalry grew. Around the turn of the century Rangers took on a more and more protestant identity, untill the club and religion were almost inseparable.

Clearly this is more than a regular sporting rivalry, there is a complex history that’s a mix of politics, religion, bigotry and occasional violence that have come together to make it so much more than just a game. The clubs have made moves to keep the worst of the sectarianism out of the grounds, but they also get the importance of the religious divide to the rivalry. A game at either club had a tremendous atmosphere and any football fan should make the trip to Celtic Park or Iborx for a game, it’s quite an experience.

This is all background to where I’m going. In last weeks Sunday Times Graham Spiers wrote an interesting piece about Ranger and Celtic leaving the Scottish Premier League and joining the English league pyramid.

I don’t feels it’s quite as inevitable as Graham Spiers does, but it’s a move that makes sense for what are two of the best supported clubs in the world, and today money is what makes world football go around.

Financially it’s a no brainer, the SPL clubs are getting just under $4million a year from TV, while Premier league teams get closer to $70million. Then there are the so called “big games”, currently they play each other three times a year. In the EPL they will have a full stadium every week.

There is some football precedence for this that sets a precedent. FC Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are Canadian teams play in US football leagues. Cardiff and Swansea both play in the English leagues and Wellington (New Zealand) play in the Australian top tier.

I’m sure the most vocal opponents will be the smaller Premier league clubs, a pair of which will be displaced from the big money top division into the championship to make way.

The Scottish league is in a financially perilous state after the collapse of Sentana last year, and loosing the big pay day clubs get when they play Ranger and Celtic will not make it healthier. However I can’t think of a country that has as many nominally professional clubs as Scotland, and a little thinning of the heard as clubs go part time will be painful, but ultimately may benefit the game in the longer term.

How they would join the Premier League is another question. There has been some talk about the creation of “Premier 2” to make two 18 team divisions. If this were to happen then the inclusion of the Scottish giants becomes fairly straight forward. Of course the formation of Premier 2 depends on TV money, and this year the Scottish teams have seen how quickly that can go away.

As ever some clubs will miss out on the payday that premier league TV money brings, today Coventry City would be one of those teams on the “Premier 2” bubble, add two more clubs and admission to the top tier become more difficult again for the Sky Blues.

I can see significant positives for Rangers, Celtic and the English clubs they would play. There are negatives, but ultimately TV money will decide which way it goes. If “Premier 2” happens then I agree with Graham Spiers that we will see the old firm playing in England, I think it’s more difficult to pull off if the structure does not change.

I’m interested in seeing what happens next.

Formula-1 is hardly a sport known for surprises and this year has thrown them up left right and center. Honda withdrew from the sport after investing untold millions of euros and sold the remains of the team to Ross Brawn, who promptly went out and won both the drivers and constructors championships less than a year later.

On reflection Hondas decision to quit looks like one of the worst calls in a business that has a rich history of poor decisions by the money people.

The engine decision came late and caused a huge compromise as the chassis and gearbox design were already complete and designed for a Honda engine. Weight distribution was not perfect and the deal for Mercedes engines was not done untill December, but after a couple of mediocre efforts the aero was better than anyone else, and by quite a margin.

The car ran for the first time three weeks before the opening race, then it won six out of the first seven grand prix.

Clearly having the very good Mercedes engine over the uncompetitive (but I understand lighter) Honda made a significant difference in how fast the car was, but there was also a huge step forward in how good the chassis and aero was.
Ross Brawn as chief engineer has won nine constructors championships with three teams (Benetton, Ferrari and now Brawn), but this is the first without Michael Schumacher.

He arrived at Honda too late to do much about the 2008 car, but in 2009 it was his show. I get the impression from friends that he lets the engineers and mechanics get on with what they are employed to do. He leads and directs the team, removes the roadblocks and does not micro manage. It was put to me that “(Ross Brawn) created an atmosphere where we could do our job, be creative and be judged on results, not adherence to the plan”.

This is similar style to Ron Dennis, he knows what’s going on and allows people to show what they can do. He’s clear what does not work, but incredibly supportive, loyal and allows his people to succeed.

Next year is going to be challenging, Alonso and Ferrari are expected to be very competitive after an off year. McLaren came a long way during the second half of the year and with the F1 silly season in full swing have been rumoured to be talking to Jenson Button about joining Lewis Hamilton in what could be a phenomenal package on a number of levels.

Brawn on the other hand have a lot going for them, a big name sponsor is close to being announced and Mercedes have indicated they want to buy into the team. I’m told that McLaren is not exactly delighted by that prospect, but have been told their position with Mercedes is secure.

Under new rules next year a supplier may supply up to three customer and one works team. This year McLaren were the works team, Brawn and Force India had the customer deals. If Mercedes were to buy into Brawn it would seem to make the proposed engine deal with Red Bull (Brawn’s main contender this year) rather unlikely.

I’ve put down my thoughts about how experimentation is one of the central tenants that separate TPS from it’s imitators. This Plan-Do-Check-Act structured approach requires well thought out specifications and a high degree of structure.

Conventionally this structured approach with a reliance on clear concise documentation would indicate a very ridged command/control approach with little flexibility given to the various organizations. At Toyota the opposite is true, organizations are challenged and left to get on with it with little management oversight while the project is unfolding.

To translate this to a production system is straightforward. There may be a number of good ways of doing something, experimentation will find the best. Once this best way is found, it will always be used unless something drives a change.

The operator putting wheel nuts on will put them on in a certain order, over a certain time, using specified tool.

The work is highly specified. The content, timing, sequence and expected outcome are clearly known to the operator, who happens to be responsible for his own quality. In this case the outcome is four wheels installed with twenty wheel nuts to a set torque value.

It sounds really simple, the difference is in the details. In a vast majority of production shops the sequencing of a job is not documented to this level of detail. Typically new operators are shown by experienced employees how they do a particular operation (like fitting the wheels). There is no clear, unambiguous specification to follow. No experimentation has been done to refine the best way and variability still exists, and where you have variability you allow room for errors to happen.

Toyota clearly does things differently. First a new employee is taught the right way to do the job they have been assigned by their immediate supervisor, not the person doing it last. No bad habits are handed down, only the correct sequence. The next part is possibly the biggest difference, each employee is required to be able to answer the following for each of the jobs they are required to do.

• How do you do this work? (Plan)
• How do you know you are doing this work correctly? (Do)
• How do you tell the output is free of defects? (Check)
• What happens if there is a defect? (Act)

This continual questioning of the process and how the operator is doing it brings us back in a full circle to the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” mantra that runs deep through the development cycle. We can see is also at the center of the production processes.

This is also where the moving line becomes so important, at any time anyone familiar with the system can look at the location of the car being put together and know exactly what state of build it should be in. It works just as well for 737 jet liners as it does for a Toyota Yaris.

If the car/jet has hit a certain location in the factory then the seats should be in the process of being installed. If the seats are still sitting on the side of the line waiting for another process to be completed then we have a problem and the line is stopped. The line is not restarted untill the issue is resolved. In the case of the 737 manufacturing, design and industrial engineers are collocated with in yards of the line and their sole job is to solve the issue and restart production.

In the mid 80s, English football was in deep crisis. For years those in charge of the game and the clubs themselves had invested very little into the game. At the center of all of this were the fans, and being a football fan in 1985 was similar to admitting that you spent Saturday afternoons fighting dogs, it was something to be slightly ashamed of.

Football supporters themselves had an appalling reputation. Some saw fights between home and away supporters as part of the game. Looking back this fight sub-culture had been around for at least a couple of decades, the difference was the media took notice of it and splashed it across the front pages. I recall the Daily Mirror newspaper published a tongue in cheek “English-Spanish phrase book for hooligans” prior to the World Cup in 1982.

It all changed in 1985. On May 11 a wooden stand at Bradford City caught fire and 56 died as a result because of inadequate training of stewards, crown control fencing and locked exit doors. While this tragedy had nothing to do with hooligans, it fitted into the emerging media picture of football grounds as a place of danger. I went to a game at Aldershot the following Saturday and I’ve never experienced an atmosphere quite like it.

Just a couple of weeks later Liverpool and Juventus fans clashed inside the Heisel stadium before the European Cup Final. 39 people were killed and 454 injured, most of them Juventus fans. The subsequent report put the blame primarily on the Liverpool fans, but went on to say the terrible state of the stadium and the inaction of the police had been serious contributing factors to the disaster.

These events along with the media coverage of the hooligan problem gave the government all the moral authority to act to rid the game of what the newspapers named “the English disease”

The government proposed a scheme that required anyone attending a football game would first have to acquire an identity card. This was unprecedented in a country that even today people do not routinely carry any form of picture ID. The Thatcher government assumed there would barely any opposition to their idea from a football fans themselves, a group it regarded as uneducated, apolitical and unorganized.

The game itself was in no to position to argue. Spectator numbers as well as television viewing figures had fallen dramatically during the past few years. The BBC and ITV, had reduced their football coverage and very few investors were willing to put any money at all into the sport.

The renaissance of the sport came from two rather unlikely sources. First the supporters, for possibly the first time there was something that required them to come together to defend the sport. This change was huge and millions of supporters spoke with a single voice.

This single voice was aided by the growing number of football fanzines, Fan produced magazines that could be irreverent, critical about underperforming players, gave real interviews and told it how it is. Realistically maybe a couple of thousand people who spent their Saturdays in the shed end really cared how defender Glen Burvil was still being picked week-in-week out for Aldershot Town (speculation at the time was that he had pictures of manager Len Walker with a couple of sheep), but there was photocopied fanzine for us to disagree with.

Today fanzines have largely gone from the game with one notable exception, When Saturday Comes. WSC still has some of the edgy, irreverent coverage of the game, but it also has consistently good writing and a great understanding of the world game at all levels. For fans of the game it’s well worth the money for a subscription (www.wsc.co.uk).

The second (and even more unlikely place) was Rupert Murdoch and his fledgling satellite broadcasting company, Sky. Rupert Murdoch was one of the three or four media tycoons that controlled the newspapers in the UK and one of his papers, The Sun, were probably the most vocal critic of the fan and supported the introduction of ID cards.

Murdoch satellite channels needed something that would get people to buy dishes and subscribe to premium channels. Sky successfully went after football and signed lucrative deals to show live games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Sky put money into the game, a lot of money. The premier league was formed and 15 years later it was by far the richest league in the world.

I sat down for coffee with a couple of friends who facilitators workshops internally (AIW and 3P for those who speak LEAN+) and discussed project close out. A lot of projects seem the just trail off after the item or process is delivered and eventually vanish into the ether when the SharePoint site is closed and archived.

Closeout is the final phase of the project and is the first time we can really judge the success of all the work put into chartering, change management, the begging for resources and execution of the plan. I think it’s an important part of the project and determine the completeness of the project against the objectives we agreed upon up front.

One issue that seems to happen again and again is people leaving the project after their deliverable is completed, often prior to the closure of the project. While the customer primarily cares about the deliverable, the PM organization and project team members miss out on a post-project review and sharing the understanding of what worked and what did not.

Conducting a post-project review and capturing best practices to share with the PM community should be an essential part of the closeout phase. By not having a formal lesson learned or project review archive a significant amount of experience is not available for and important material is lost.

The PM community at work has an informal lesson learnt database and monthly lunch time “brown bag” meetings to share as a group, but there is not a formal process to manage the close out process and archiving.

I’m interested in seeing how other organizations handle this close out, recording and sharing lessons learned with their PM community.

In ’95 the European Court of Justice ruled that Standard Liege, the Belgium FA and UEFA had broken all sorts of EU employment rules when they refused to allow jouneyman player Jean-Marc Bosman to move to French club Dunkerque after his contract has expired.

However Liege did not like the transfer fee Dunkerque offered and said no to the move. At this time (1990) players out of contract that took a transferred to another federation the clubs involved had to agree a fee.

Bosman was forced to rejoin Liege, however he was no longer a first team player and took a significant salary cut. Bozman filed his case, and the rest is history.

The Bosman ruling created a single marker place for European footballers. It meant that any player that was a citizen of a European Union country could move to any other club in the EU with no compensation owed to the club that lost the player.

In some countries (notably England, Scotland Germany, Portugal and Holland) transfers of out of contract players was restricted. In the UK there was an independent transfer tribunal that would decide how much compensation a club should receive for loosing out of contract player.

The doomsayers said that this was the end of he smaller clubs that rely on transfer fees generated by their selling promising players to the bigger clubs to stay in business.

A second effect was ending quotas set by leagues for a certain number of home players to start games. In European competition for example only three foreign players were allowed to play. After Bosman the rule was changed to three non-EU players and the big clubs took full advantage of this.

In the 2003-2004 season Chelsea fielded a team with not a single British born player in it.

The economics of the game has shifted, a few clubs have gone under and many more have altered their structure to live with in their means, but the wholesale carnage never happened.

Today the FIFA and UEFA are trying to get a quota of a sort set up, requiring six players eligible to play for the national side of the home country. They want this (known as 6+5) to apply to all clubs worldwide, not just within UEFA.

Fairness, reducing cost, developing youth players and national identity are all given as reasons this needs to happen. The EU has said it’s illegal and violates the Bosman ruling, other NGOs have said maybe it can be implemented.

Chelsea and Real Madrid have both made it clear they are willing to take it to the European Courts if needed to keep any type of quota system from happening.

1) Seattle wins at Kansas City – they are in, does not matter what anyone else does (and guess whose been playing with logic circuits this morning).

Seattle in playoffs= TRUE if SEA>KC

2) Sounders get a point Saturday then they are still in if Columbus beats DC, and Colorado wins or draws against DC, and Salt lake or Toronto drop points (and they play each other Saturday at 12:30 so someone is dropping points).

Seattle in playoffs=TRUE if Columbus>DC AND Rapids => Dallas AND (NY=>RSL AND RSL =>TOR)

3) Seattle loose they will still be in if DC and Dallas loose and Salt Lake or Toronto draw.

Seattle in playoffs=TRUE if Columbus=>DC AND Rapids => Dallas AND ((NY=>RSL AND RSL=>TOR) OR (NY=RSL AND RSL=TOR)

NY host RSL Wednesday, RSL are eliminated of they loose. RSL host Toronto Saturday afternoon (assuming RSL beat NY Wednesday) the looser is eliminated (or potentially both if they draw). Even ignoring the playoff implications this is a decent looking game played by two of the more entertaining teams in the league.

Colorado host Dallas Saturday – Dallas are eliminated of they loose and RSL or Toronto win. A draw in the RSL/TOR along with Dallas dropping points means everything to play for in the final week.

At this point it gets complex (and I do not have that much time), bottom line is Seattle controls their own destiny and only needs two points in the last two games to make everything else immaterial.

Win at Kansas City Saturday, get it over with and look forward to celebrating when Dallas come into RBP for the loudest game since the opener.

At the beginning of the year I was not a fan of play offs, however after thinking about it a little more I’ve come to like it. It makes the end of season games mean something for more sides and gives the MLS a particularly American flavour at the end of the season. I’m not saying it’s going to work for every league, but any team that hits form can win the championship, having that hope heading into the play offs is rather fun.