Review: U23 Coaching- the Caleb Porter thread

Really missing the ironic thread title, but Porter still sucks. The decision to hire him was not obviously crazy, but a risk, and it lost big time. Porter's formations were not built for short turnaround, short format, do or die success; his adjustments were either non-existent or abyssmal; and his player selection was at least questionable, and probably worse.

If anything good came from the Porter experiment it is that Klinsi got a real taste of the reality of qualifying the US out of CONCACAF and will hone the MNT accordingly. I would say there is nothing like this other than bombing out of WCQ itself that would get Klinsi's focus on results.

I have never cared much before, but I will be cheering against Akron until they play Al-Queda. Or maybe Mexico.

When Porter guaranteed us the win was when we all should've know things were going to go horribly wrong. Have any of our couches across any youth levels ever gaurenteed a win for us under any circumstances? or this a first? Ridiculous

That's kinda silly. It was a risk, and it didn't pan out. No reason to actively root against a college team you never cared about.

Okay but for some people who would otherwise be neutral, maybe all the posters with Akron connections who are defending Porter and Acronyism are reason enough?

Just seems silly, that's all. It's not like we just got bounced from WCQ by Antigua. We missed out on what pretty much everyone around the world considers a glorified youth tournament, something that also happened to Mexico very, very recently.

Taking it out on an NCAA team just looks kind of petty.

This is the first time the US has gone out in group play to CONCACAF opponents in 17 years (Adults, U-23s, U-20s, U-17s). Criticism is justified.

While his player selections are a bit questionable I do not think it is all his fault we stunk up Nashville after Cuba. He did not have that much time in charge before being asked to get meaningful results while being "revolutionary" for US style. Both Porter and the players made mistakes and I am sure they are all going to remember this forever. Now maybe the players from this squad that take part in this cycle's WCQ and the next WCQ cycle will not come out against teams perceived as lesser with lackadaisical effort. That is at least my opinion of their play against Canada, I missed the El Salvador game.

Criticism is justified. Actively taking it out on the guy's NCAA team is silly and petty.

The problem with this argument is similar to the problem with this argument when it is made with the full national team. Porter, like Arena/Bradley/Klinsmann, only has so much time to work with players. The vast majority of the technical and tactical development has to occur at the club level, Porter and Klinsmann only work several weeks at a time with these players.

You can't blame Porter for this, but you can blame him for his failure to be realistic and make tactical adjustments when necessary. A beautiful failure is still a failure, an ugly victory is still a victory.

He had a great deal of time, much more than the El Salvador coach. The problem is that he isn't a pro coach and doesn't have a sense of the game at this level of intensity. I hope the lesson Porter learns is that if he wants to be a great U.S. coach he needs to go to the pros fast. If he stays at Akron he shouldn't be let anywhere near the U.S. setup - that would be a decision to be mediocre,

Time for Sunhil Gulati to GO!!!

I want to put this one on the USSF. When you step back and observe how this organization works, it's pretty hit and miss. As much as things look good on paper, you have doubts when you observe them execute on the little things. It gives you glimpse of some parts of the machine are not align and untouchable.

The Caleb hire is a good example. We heard Caleb was approached after Rongen's firing. He declined. That was before Jurgen's hire. Some one in USSF was already high on him. Caleb is a promising coaching prospect but I never understood why USSF bend over backwards for him. He's a a coach with recent success but no professional track record. USSF capitulate to his part-time status to a national team position. I'm sorry but that's the wrong signal to be sending out about a National Team Position. Especially for a college coach. If that was an option, let's go with someone with a professional track record. His hire was driven by someone not Jurgen and Tab initially. Caleb kind of remind me of the AVB situation at Chelsea. He wasn't ready for this stage and why did the USSF gamble this campaign with such an inexperience coach.

He's a U18 NT coach at best but U23? Opportunity loss to give our U23 players the benefit of a pro manager experience.

You lost me here. This is really dumb AND mean.

He sucked. no doubt. ... but to root against him? why? I assume that you are perfect. Wouldn't you rather have him learn from his mistakes rather than bury him?

i gotta be fair, for caleb porter's faults, i do have to admit i really was bought into what he was selling. And I felt like he had the right ideas and philosophy. What doomed him was the inexperience. The one thing he has going for him is that he is only 37. He's got 20-30 years of coaching ahead of him, plenty of time to repair his image and learn from his mistakes

In the "great deal of time" he has had how many quality opponents have they played? Not much. And yes some of that can be blamed on Porter for not getting better opponents. It is similar to Klinsmann's situation because he has been asked/decided to commit to a different style of play. Arena and Bradley did not do that. Same with the El Salvador coach he was not asked to take the same players and play a different style, just get better results than before.
Porter does deserve criticism for not qualifying but he did not do completely horrible. He did okay just not great. Unfortunately for him and all of us US soccer fans it was was all about getting the results to get to London and that did not happen.

May I make a suggestion - with full admission that I watched none of the games.

Fans of our national team now have a hard-on for the 4-3-3 formation both at the senior level and in the U-23s. There's a good reason few teams either at the club or national team level play the 4-3-3: it's goddamn hard to play. It requires great positional skill by all 10 field players and unless the outside forwards know when to slide back - or the outside defenders know when to advance forward - the 3-man midfield is easily overrun.

Just a thought.

yeah but the problem wasn't just the formation, if we played a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 or anything like that the fact of the matter is our defense wasn't in sync, we had poor offsides traps, our goalie was clearly injured before those first goals occurred and should've been taken out, we waited until the 91st minute to put in subs and took out the one guy even attempting to hold possession in adu.

If it was just the formation i'd agree with you, but the problems with this team went deeper

Sorry Kickinghead but I have to ask.
Did you see the Canadians versus the Cubans.
They weren't that impressive.
Granted it wasn't the same lineup they played against us but it merely shows that Porter miscalculated how to manage the game against Canada.
Hell a 0-0 tie would have got us in to the next round.
The writing was already on the wall with the Salvies.
Because of his insistence on not supporting Mix with support in the middle it cost us dearly.
Jeffrey didn't offer much in the middle so a formation where he could have stacked the midfield against Canada may have provided the necessary pressure
to have the Canucks give up an early goal.
Unfortunately we don't have another game to make any more adjustments.

Sorry again kickingdead.
No pun intended on the mispelling of your name.

I'm not a Caleb Porter fan by any means...in fact I think he's naive, a pure recruiter at a school with very low admission standards that is soccer centric, and not ready for prime time (and probably never will be at the USMNT level), but I don't wish him any ill will...I hope he continues to do a great job in the college ranks, but that's where he should stay. He has definitely contributed to the soccer landscape at that level. But against seasoned coaches who have real know how, he was made to look like a mere schoolboy and frankly I think he bears the lion's share of the responsibility for the Olympic failure...his team, his tactics, his substitutions, more than enough time to prepare versus other teams, and he was playing in the United States...add to that his press conferences which were amateurish at best (had to love the way he guaranteed a team hitting on all cylinders against ES and stated that ES was not dangerous on their restarts....then they proceed to hit on about half their cylinders while ES buries a goal off of a corner kick).

I watched all three matches and don't see any reason to blame the failure on coaching. Coaches don't play matches. The defense on the second El Salvador goal was unbelieveably inept. Sure people make bad plays, but to allow a blind side run like that is a mistake I don't expect to see recreational players make. Ball watching inside your own penalty area!

I think it is a sign of the times. Most young players are not hungry. They lack mental toughness.

I thought Kitchen, Hamid, Adu, Shea and Boyd showed the mentality you want in a professional. Overall the team's problem was failing to play the full match. As so clearly demonstrated playing 94 minutes is not enough if the match lasts 95.

The TV coverage really didn't show the midfield play. So I couldn't really see what was going on, but the three CMs did not appear to be effective--judging by how we avoided moving the ball through them. It did not appear we were dominating the middle like a 433 should.

while i agree in the 3rd game, porter does deserve to have some of the blame. Once again for the Hamid part, you have to know he's not going to just volunteer himself up, especially in an important game and it feels like he is one of the leaders. As the coach, Porter needed to take the initiative to get him out of there. There is absolutely no excuse that we waited until 2 goals were scored on us in a row where both times it was clear the leg was bothering him to decide to make the switch

how could you not see how completely gassed our players were? 3 games in 6 days absolutely requires some squad rotation, and timely and effective use of subs. porter failed miserably in both those regards. if we're assigning blame, porter shares a huge amount of it.