Poll: Should Gulati Run for Another Term?

Uh, no. He should have resigned already

 

Where is the '"F" no' option?

 

I didn't know Sunil Gulati had three family members on Big Soccer until this poll.

 

Not a fan of Sunil staying on, but he does need to keep a post that allows him to follow through on the 2026 bid. No reason the Federation can't hire him for that job alone without making him head of USSF again.

What we need is someone who can stand up to the GOB/MLS hierarchy and assert the fact that the USMNT is a separate entity and is not merely a marketing arm for MLS and its owners. They have different goals and should have someone advocating for USS not MLS.

Who in the list of names would do that? Is Landon someone who would or is he too much in the GOB/MLS culture too make that break and stand up to the BoB Krafts of this world? I don't know. If he is, I am all for it. If not we need someone else.

 

My problem with Gulati has always been he's too beta male. I'm sure he's a nice guy but you can tell he shys away from conflict. His whole persona is limp. And, now we see the results of that - a limp dick US cycle.

We need someone who has some fire to him. Someone who isn't afraid to say, look this is our standard, this is the goal, and if the team doesn't perform we're going to make changes.

 

I think that it is hilarious that many of the same folks who were trying to get Sunil to fire Klinsmann and hire Arena as far back as after the loss in Honduras last cycle now want to fire Sunil because he did what they wanted.

 

How about Stone Cold Steve Austin?

 

Gulati should have fired Klinsmann immediately after the failure of the Gold Cup/Confed Cup.

If anyone would have pointed to when Klinsmann should have been fired it was on that date. Instead, Gulati refused to cut off the bleeding and in truth, the team was such a shit show that no one really could have turned the team around.

 

1)he should absolutely run again...if wynalda and ganz are his only competition he should also win easily.

2)the gc is garbage...arena won the gc this year...how is that working out?

3)its about options and he is the best option. he needs to make changes though its that simple.

 

The more people who throw their names into the ring as long shots., the easier it will be for Gulati to be re-elected. The "protest" vote will be split and those OK with the status quo will win. Seen this happen in politics many times. You want to oust the old guard, you need to come at them with a united front, which seldom happens. Get ready for Gulati to serve out his final term unless something changes dramatically.

 

If you look around the world, the normal is for presidents of football federations to last from four to six years. Eight years is a long, long term, and we've had only two of those since WW2: the ones before Sunil, Alan Rothenberg and Bob Contiguglia.

Sunil has been head of the USSF for 11 years. That's unprecedented. The Mexicans had Compeán for nine years and that was considered "too long," and even the Uruguayans who are the most status-quo bunch don't get them past the nine-year mark.

In short, it's time for a change. Eleven years is far, far too much.

 

Remember this?

CHICAGO (March 15, 2006) – A little less than three months before the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the U.S. Men’s National Team received their highest ever position in the FIFA World Rankings, moving up one spot to fifth place. Their record-setting position puts them two spots ahead of CONCACAF rival Mexico and in front of such powerhouses as Spain, France and England.


That was right around Sunil's election. We were top 10 for awhile at that point. The previous cycle we had produced our golden generation with a fraction the resources the current landscape has and had made a WC QF run.

Now look at us. Soccer stadiums everywhere. 22 MLS teams with more coming. 150M expansion fees soon. Academies. USSF sitting on 130-140M. SUM worth 2 Billion.

Sunil has ditched the game of soccer for the business of soccer. The more profitable SUM/MLS/USSF gets, the worse our NT and player pool gets. I'd compare it to when monopolies started taking over various industries and crushed mom and pop businesses, bought out small businesses, helped kill entrepreneurialism in various sectors. Profit only equals success depending on your viewpoint and which side of the equation you sit.

If you're a stockholder or executive for Walmart, it's great when you move into a town, set up shop, destroy local business and make profit. If you run small businesses, you're hurt. Perhaps destroyed. That seems to be what has happened to the American player. They've been held captive by a system which put profit for a few over them. When you start looking at all the anti-development restrictions the American player faces, it all leads to one place. They're in place so a few at the top can protect and make profit.

So here we are. And that's why Sunil's platform is business, business, business. That's also why Reyna was correct when he said we keep expanding, not progressing. 2000-2006 is a distant memory. Given all the business success our program should be a fair amount farther ahead now than we were almost 20 years ago. Instead it's as if the powers that be looking towards 2022 have zero clue on how to even get back to the level a broken landscape provided long ago.

We're basically Joe's Hardware and Supplies whose customers vanished when Home Depot came to town and we're supposed to be happy because Home Depot is telling us how profitable they are.

Thanks, Sunil.

 

I think even the most ardent U.S. fans were skeptical of that number five ranking back then.

 

And as long as the above mention people and groups stay in charge, that's not gonna change. Better find another US national team to root for.

I hear Cricket and Rugby in the US are always looking for new fans.

 

We also had Gene Edwards from 1974 to 1984.

But I agree with your general point. If I had to pick my number-one reason for wanting to see Gulati defeated, it would not be the debacle of the current World Cup cycle. It would be the belief that three terms should be enough for anybody.

 

Right, the exact number was dubious. (CONCACAF used to be overrated because the formula didn't account well for the Gold Cup happening every two years, and also our teams playing in Copa America.)

But @jond 's larger point stands. I don't know if we're actually worse, but we aren't better, and

1. Our CONCACAF rivals outside of Mexico have used MLS to improve their player pools and
2. With all the infrastructure now, there's no excuse for not being better.

Sunil's weakness is in the technical/soccer parts of the job. Well, really, his inability to identify the right people to run that side of things. Or maybe his neglect of that side of things.

Here's how I assess Sunil...when a leader isn't an all-around great leader (and those are few and far between) the best thing they can do is contribute what they do well, then get the hell out. Because once a sports head coach develops a team's young talent into stars, the team no longer needs an ace player developer. They need a head coach who turns winners into champions. A CEO who guides a corporation through the start up phase is rarely the right person for the expansion phase, and that CEO is rarely the right person for the consolidation phase.

Gulati was arguable the right person to use USSF powers to get MLS on a solid financial footing. But that job has been done. We don't need that anymore. He succeeded in addressing the biggest problem in our soccer. It's a great accomplishment. But by addressing that, he's "created" a new "biggest problem," one he is poorly equipped to achieve.

 

Not sure I buy "no excuse." Generational talent ebbs happen. Rival teams hit performance peaks. Bounces happen, injuries happen. Couple all that with the notion that U.S. soccer interest as a whole is still a ways off the beaten path of our mainstream sports culture, and I'm at least willing to entertain the idea that the 2018 failure is more an inevitable blip than evidence of a system wide failure.

If big teams like Italy and the Netherlands can crash out of their big pond, why can't we crash out of our little one? Yeah, we were upset bigtime by T&T, but the main reason we were in a do or die position on the road was because we dropped two home games, one to the best team in the region, another to a '14 quarterfinalist. Not to mention that even in past cycles were we finished atop the hex, it's not like we cruised through every game. A few bounces or injuries or failed saves the other way, and '18 is not the first failure since '86.

My point still stands. I'm not ready to adopt a total alarmist mindset yet even though I'm certainly open to a leadership change.

 

How does his supposed weakness manifest?

Which one of his challengers would be better and how would we tell in say 2 years from now, if they were in fact better?

 

I think it shows in his hires. Missing the Olympics twice is a real failure.

 

Sure, they happen to smaller talent pools. Costa Rica can go from a quarterfinalist to missing the World Cup, because they have a limited population. The US has one of the biggest talent pools in the world. This big of a swing is not because a few million kids were worse than players before them. That is a total copout.

 

Having worked pretty closely with USSF for a few years, Sunil's single distinguishing talent is taking care of Sunil. He is a text book politician. He knows how to navigate and thrive in complex systems. He knows nothing about the game of soccer. Many posters here are more informed, and understand the nuances of the game better.

But you know what? That would not matter, if Sunil acknowledged it. If Sunil were to say, "I am going to hand over the soccer to the experts, and focus on the business side within the international community," I would vote for him 10 times out of 10.

 

Numbers mean little without a proper culture in place. I don't think we're anywhere near where we need to be in terms of the game being loved and viewed as important on a day to day level.

 

We have 3M+ kids registered to play soccer every year.

T&T has a population of about 1.4M.

This isn't a popularity or cultural problem. It's a systemic problem. We're just arguably the most inefficient country out there when it comes to developing players.

Which other country has as many academies as us, as many teams drawing 15K+ fans as us, as many coaches as us, as much money in the youth game as us which is in the billions, has as many soccer stadiums as us, a company like SUM worth 2 billion directly connected to their 1st division and federation like us, a federation surplus of 140-150M like us, investors willing to hand over 100-150M just to join the 1st division like us, yet can't put out XI players with the touch and skill on par with an average top 10 league pro like us?

We're doing something seriously wrong.

And it'd be even worse if that one kid didn't have a Croatian passport.

 

Sure they do. You keep waiting for culture. Others will keep building the game in spite of it.