Apparently New York Red Bulls coach Hans Backe thinks this will be his best coaching job yet if his team wins ... this ... one ... game. That's just dumb. Really, really dumb.
Well, let me back track. I really don't know much about Backe's coaching career prior to coming to MLS, so my opinion is based off what I've seen of him over the past two years. But even based on last year and this year, that just seems like an amazingly laughable assertion.
Maybe Backe has forgotten, but at the start of the year a lot of people picked his team to win the Supporters Shield. Heck, Backe picked his team to win the Supporters' Shield. In case the fact that his team was playing in the wild card round wasn't enough of a clue, his team did not win the Supporters' Shield.
Apparently, he thinks it was an amazing hardship to have a bunch of his players called up to national team duty. And I'm sure that's part of it, but ... no, that much of a difference. This team was easily the biggest underachiever in the league and Backe's management was a huge part of that. Sorry, Hans, you don't get a pass on that one.