I don’t know how I feel about this hire. He certainly has the credentials. He doesn’t have a player pool that compete in the WC. I’m pretty sure he’s going to have to scout extensively the remaining time he’s got.
He doesn't have time to scout. The U17 CONCACAF Championships start May 1st. That means the roster will probably have to be set a month from now. Just by definition he's going to have to use the players already in the pool, and have an assistant that understands these players. And of course that assistant will have to be the one making the tough calls. Or maybe Tab Ramos will help with this player selection. Who knows...…………………..? For Wicky this CONCACAF Championships will sorta be "flying by the seat of his pants." Once he gets thru that then he can really get to work on scouting, analyzing the talent pool, developing the players etc...…………...for the World Cup (hopefully) and beyond. People have bashed Stewart, Ramos, etc. for their handling of he USYNT staff over the last year or so. This hire is a guy with a resume that blows away people like Dave van den Bergh and Shaun Tsakiris. So this particular U17 tournament might be a struggle as he doesn't know the players, but this is a great longer-term hire. Maybe Wicky will be incorporated into more than just the U17 team over time. I know people are loathe to give the USSF credit for anything, but I'm a big fan of this hire. They seem to have taken their time, worked thru some candidates that didn't quite work out, and now in the end they've made a really nice decision. Love it.
The idea that the new coach will have to start scouting the entire pool of players from scratch is hopefully not the case. Tab, for starters, should be able to provide a good amount of insight into the players, and there should be a lot of resources that can streamline this.
Wicky's obvious starting point for research would be this thread, though in terms of streamlining I might suggest that as his first official act he place me on his ignore list.
If he's been watching videos like he says he has, he probably already knows more than us. That's at least a good start. I think the main problem he's going to find is KHF and Judge just aren't good enough defenders to go into a world cup right now. They are athletic and usually good on the ball, but they just don't have the defenive ability yet to hold up against better teams. If they have another CB and plan to move KHF to left back (assuming Bello isn't already there), we will be in a lot better position. He's also going to have some pretty big decisions in the midfield. Whether Gio is a 10 or wing, whether Busio and Fuentes fit in with the starters, and who the DM is are all going to be very important. Some of that will rely on his formation and tactics, but talent and chemistry go a long way to winning games at the U17 level. Getting such a young team to play a style in such a short time is definitely a difficult task. But hopefully a few qualifiers against minnows will help the process along
The decision to move Gray to CDM made no sense. He's better as a CB. He's not that good of a passer. Adequate, but he's not going to be the type of CDM that you build possession through. He's also our best CB. Atencio is our best CDM, Gray is our best CB. Pair Walls with Gray, Atencio as the #6. Problem solved. If Bello won't be released, and I suspect thats the case, I'd much rather see Gomez at LB than Hernandez-Foster. He's a lot more dynamic and athletic, and I think he already defends as well. KHF would be a good back up who has versatility to play a couple of positions. . I think he'd get exposed as a starter against good competition.
I'll just put this out there and let it roll around I've heard that new U.S. U-17 head coach Raphael Wicky interviewed for a head coaching gig with at least one MLS club in recent months prior to taking the job with US Soccer.— Brian Sciaretta (@BrianSciaretta) March 11, 2019
Does anyone know if the new U17 coach will be allowed to rely on the expertise of others at U.S. Soccer who are familiar with the pool, and/or to hire assistant coaches who are, as a starting point for his work? Or does he literally just have to re-scout every age-eligible player in the country from scratch between now and qualifying?
If any such employees can be found in the bare-bones YNT department, I'm sure they could help... If Wicky is good at his job, he'll get to know the core group on his own. The big challenge is that he doesn't have an informal network around the US club scene, so it seems particularly easy for a late-breaking U17 to get ignored.
Oh, I get it. There's a month and a half until qualifying; it would be a challenge for anyone, and it seems far from ideal. But it seems a bit far-fetched to assume that Stewart and Ramos or whoever just said "Here's a VCR and some Twitter accounts and some airline tickets, go see some matches, provisional rosters are due in two weeks, good luck!" (That's a guess about two weeks, but it's probably not far off, based on the 2017 rules.) I guess I can't rule that out, though.
I would think this started at the beginning of the interview process. We all know this is not something that moves quickly, so he has probably been researching the player pool for a few months. He talked to GB, so he might just try 20-30 guys and see who fits in the system GB is running with the senior team. If U17 qualifying is anything like U20, we should have at least 4 "games" to iron out the wrinkles.
Thinking through the U17 World Cup qualifying depth chart. Who am I missing? What do I have wrong? pic.twitter.com/v8OITq8aZP— scuffed (@scuffedpod) March 11, 2019
Most of the team, IMO, but all of this is subjective. Its hard to get a good grasp on the U-17 player pool.
Lopez hasn't been called in since like August. Highly doubt he is ahead of Ocampo-Chavez, unless for injury reasons.
I have not heard anything from Diego López a long time ago. At first I was ahead of Pepi and almost on par with AOC. It's a bit strange to see that none of the best midfielders '03 (Nyeman and Chifamba) are not part of this team.
Does this mean we can start arguing whether or not Scally fits the Lima roll and who would fit it better? Kind of interesting that he has Perez on here over Fuentes. In the one GA Cup qualifier i saw, Perez came on for Dunbar as a right wing late and didn’t make much of an impact. I’m going to try to make it down to Carson Saturday to get a better look. The game I saw was the third in 5 or 6 days so I don’t know if he wasn’t starting for tactical reasons or if he was worn out. I’m not sure what the deal is with Fuentes, whether they have soured on him or they just don’t think he is going to get the playing time any time soon that he needs to improve. Tbh, I don’t really know what San Jose’s plans are for him but it seems like they still view him as a good prospect. I also think the current USSF belief is Judge>Atencio as a CB. Judge definitely has his weaknesses but he’s mostly been a mainstay with this group the last few years. Although, IIRC, he saw a little pine in the Nike Friendlies, but it was Gray and Alejandre who played over him. If Atencio is on this team, I’m betting it’s as a mid.
VCR? That's pretty old school, Dave! I'd upgrade your requirements to a sufficiently modern computer (e.g. no floppy drive or 56k modem), unless of course you want them to convert the digital files back to analog tape for you. USSF clearly owes you a debt of gratitude for your years of service here, and I strongly believe you've earned the right to review them however you'd like!
I suspect it's to turn old VHS tapes into digital files. Getting working VCRs is getting harder and harder.
I don't want to get into too much detail about my negotiating strategies here, but suffice it to say that if there's a chance to get two VCRs ... well, you know. At some point you just have to think about what's best for your family.
Maybe not knowing is a good thing. A re-evaluation of long entrenched players by someone from outside the system that entrenched them could be of value. But wonder if he has the guts to come in and make his own selections at this critical point in the process.
Although our qualification has not yet started and we still do not know whether we qualify or not, FIFA confirmed Brazil as the host for the World Cup and the event was postponed for one month, which means that it will start in November and not in October as it was previously scheduled