Now that the Chicago Fire are in the off-season, the coaching staff has turned their attentions towards building a championship roster for next season. With the departures of captain Chris Armas, Ivan Guerrero, and Senior International Paulo Wanchope, the Fire coaching staff and the Fire's Director of Soccer and Team Development, Roland Hahn, will have their work cut out for them. Fire Insider had a chance to catch up with assistant coach Denis Hamlett about the coaching staff's scouting activity.
F.I. How do you decide which games to attend?
DH: We ended so late with our season, so the week after we ended there were a few tournaments we went to see. We try to go by collegiate conferences that are important, that have a lot of college seniors. I went to the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), Juan [Osorio] went to the Big East, and Daryl [Shore] went down to the Conference USA. We split it up so that each of us are going to regions where we know coaches and we've already been to so that we can see guys over a two and three year period of time. It's easier to go and see a player this year if I already saw him play last year, that way I can see how much he has progressed. You want to see players as many times as you can, especially a player you think you might want to draft. You want as much information as possible on the player. We spend time talking to their college coaches, their high school and club coaches to get as much information on a specific player as possible.
F.I. How many games will the coaching staff be watching?
D.H. Right now is the March Madness of college soccer with the NCAA tournament. We're going to try to see as many games as possible. Obviously we'll focus on games of importance, meaning games with players that are going to be available, or games with seniors going into the Draft. Right now we are looking at the NCAA tournament games and see which games make the most sense for us to watch. I just watched the UIC (University of Illinois-Chicago) versus Northwestern game on Wed.
F.I. Do you scout players based on position?
D.H.I think that the starting point is just trying to get out and see as many college kids as you can see that are going to be available for the Draft (Major League Soccer SuperDraft). We can get more specific as far as positions are concerned when we get to the Combine.
F.I. How do you gauge if a player has potential?
D.H. If you can watch a kid over an extended period it gives you a better gauge. Foremost, you have to see if physically and mentally the kid can make the next step. Once you establish that, you start to doing the background check to find out about the character of the player. You have to do a lot of talking to coaches and watch him against better players at the Combine. In the college game the kid might stand out, but get him around better college players he either looks better or doesn't look that good. So it's a better gauge.
F.I. Will you be focusing your efforts on the SuperDraft and college players for next year, or will you be looking overseas?
D.H. It's a combination because you still have a salary cap to keep in mind and you still want to continue to develop the roster and get younger players that can come in. I think we've done well here at the Fire. In a perfect SuperDraft you get three players that stick on the roster for the following year, and in that respect we've done pretty well. I think we've been fortunate the last couple seasons that we've accomplished that. We have a number of international positions to work with, but it still comes down to the salary cap as far as if it's possible to get them all involved in there.
F.I. Thanks for your time, Dennis, and good luck scouting a winning Fire team!
