Rob Stone: US Manager shortlist is Ramos, Tata Martino, Marsch, Berhalter, Friedel, Osorio & Vermes.

And certainly not the USMNT, which is currently joke status.

 

I never said they wouldn't. Just saying this is a mediocre short list.

And, if you think about it, who better to use the MNT to hype suMLS, than an MLS manager. But, that's not what I'm saying. All I said was that's not a great short list. I mean, Freidel and Ramos are actually being considered?

For me, I can't believe Ramos is still on the Fed payroll.

 

Damn it!! Thought you had some good news for me!

 

I think Osorio is a serious option. I wouldn’t mind Vermes. He’s built a program and gets max effort out of his players. Internationally he might not be up to it tactically.

Jesse Marsch I am open to that idea. I respect his work. Berhalter is newer but he is really intriguing. He was a great player for us and his strikers all get a ton of chances. That is a coach thing if you have speed merchants getting tap-ins.

Tab Ramos I actually think he deserves an interview and a long look. We have had some good runs with the U-20s. He is pragmatic, but then again you have to be internationally. We are trying to make an honest hire? There is no magic potion. Tab’s teams qualify and look good in the tournament. This is a guy who, when eventual champion Brazil lost Leonardo to his skull-elbow, we considered losing him a disadvantage despite playing a man up.

Tata Martino. I don’t know man. You can probably sell me that drug.

Brad Friedel is disqualified for accent.

 

Lots of new information here for me. 1. We had a cricket team; 2) we don’t have a cricket team now; 3) There was corruption; 4) we had enough people who gave a shit about cricket to warrant a team. All surprising.

 

Ramos: Mediocre. I think he's improved his coaching, but I still don't like his squad-selection.

Martino: Very overrated manager. We'll probably be helped more by Atlanta's American contingent getting more of a chance to play than his NT coaching.

Marsch: Top 3 candidate.

Berhalter: Secondary candidate. Not terrible, not great. I think you could group him in with Ramos.

Friedel: No.

Osorio: Secondary candidate with Berhalter and Ramos.

Vermes: Top 3 candidate.

 

I actually agree with most of this. I would put Berhalter above your other secondary candidates, but still behind Vermes and Marsch.

I do get nervous though, when national team candidates are the ones who aren’t afraid to play youth. Pareja a couple years ago, and Marsch now.

 

Why no Vanney though??

 

In no particular order of preference:

Marsch---players get better under him. he brings young players through the ranks. has successfully managed big, difficult personalities. has been tactically flexible and innovative. has been successful in league and ccl. has his UEFA badges. speaks(?) german.

Vanney---has successfully managed big(for MLS) players. has brought along young players. has shown tactical flexibility in mls cup and ccl, where he won the former and made the finals of the latter. players improve under him.

Berhalter---has his UEFA badges. speaks german. has had an extensive playing career in europe. has gotten career years out of players. has been lauded by players and peers for tactical innovation. has overachieved based on budget.

Guillermo Barros Schelotto---had a very successful time in MLS. as a coach, won the league with Boca Juniors, his current team. in the past, expressed in an interest in coaching in the US.

Steve Cherundolo---one of the most successful european careers by american. has his uefa badges. speaks german. is an assistant coach in the B1. has expressed an interest in being involved in american soccer.

 

You might be right about Berhalter. I like his coaching and the style he plays, I'm not sure if it would work with our NT. But I'm not anti-Berhalter. If he got the NT job, I wouldn't be upset with that.

 

i like berhalter due to his start in managing overseas. im a hard no to marsch cause you can draw a straight line to bradley, to arena...im just not interested in the same ideas weve had for the last 20-some years minus klinsmann. and im skeptical of foreign managers due to klinsmann.

my shortlist is pereja, berhalter and cherundolo.

what bothers me about this list is why have we been pissing away a year waiting for the world cup to end to hire a manager if osorio is the only option there?

 

Great idea on Cherundolo. I totally forgot about him. Not how you go from B1 assistant to MNT HC. But could make sense if we get the right TD.

 

I agree it is an oddly unimpressive group. If you want an American coach which isn't an outrageous wish this is what we have and it has to be an MLS coach, so the reasoning throws the SUM conspiracy out the door. Out of this list Berhalter and Vermes seem like the best we have but does that mean high quality at the International level? Martino too.

 

Not sure what to think of Wagner. Is he the guy who won promotion from the Championship? Or is he the guy fighting to stay up in the EPL? To me Championship is MLS level so I don't think that's the equivalent of managing the all star team that is the USMNT. We should be a top 16 team so I don't know if I want an underdog manager. I don't think a coach that fights hard (or is viewed as high potential) impresses me much. I want to see one who wins. That goes for a lot of the names on the list.

Personally, I am not even a fan of the Moyeses of the world. Moyes for years was who people wanted for MLS teams or USMNT. He did make Everton into a top 10 team. But to me if you've coached a mediocre back of the top 10 team, but no titles, you're a little too used to grinding and don't have the virtuosity some of the top team managers have who literally can win every week. SAF won Scotland and made Europe with Aberdeen. Aberdeen. Leicester was a miracle. You want a rare breed coach go find me the guy who accomplishes that much with nothing much of a team. Finishing roughly where we'd expect with a "small club" excuse is not exactly stamping your authority that you are value-added and can make any team far better than it deserves.

People forget, Arena won 4 NCAA titles in a row and in MLS, Bradley won MLS with an expansion team, Sampson won MLS, how about rather than picking the cutesy choice, get the recent equivalent with a track record. Ramos hasn't taken U20 to some unusually high finish. Most of the others can't even win MLS.

 

I am not bothering going through breaking down each candidate because IMO it's not a serious list. I think you're biting down on the PR hook to start + and - shoddy names leaked to a journo before the process is supposed to start, probably because someone is realizing that with the world cup approaching, us out, and the milquetoast Sarachan held over to June, they worry we are losing interest. But their whole concept is roll with Sarachan til summer and otherwise leave the job vacant. If you feel like momentum is lost, excitement is waning, and that matters, maybe your concept is jacked. Personally I don't understand a team wasting a year to close the gap to what we just missed. When you're floating new names just after hiring a caretaker and delaying the decision to await a GM it kind of sounds indecisive and cross purposes. Courage of your convictions. Decisive. C'mon.

 

https://sbisoccer.com/2018/05/peter-vermes-signs-contract-extension-with-sporting-kc

fwiw

 

Ya, I said, I'm not pushing SUM is promoting MLS with the manager hire.

I'm not for or against an American manager. I want the best manager we can get. I keep saying let's make a run at Benitez. That doesn't mean shut down the search. Just, make him an offer.

But, ya, whomever the best manager we can get ....

 

Marsch, Martino and Berhalter are the only names on that list that don't suck.

2 years ago, Marsch let Dax McCarty go. This past year, he let Kljestan go. If you think we need to really turn over the player pool, Marsch is your man (of the domestic candidates.)

Martino has a good eye for talent. That's a major plus. Of all of the 200+ national coaching jobs out there, being able to evaluate talent well is a bigger advantage for the USMNT than almost every single national team. You have to be able to compare MLSers to Liga MXers to stars in Holland to marginal starters at Schalke to stars in the Championship to starters for bad teams in big leagues. It's an incredibly daunting task. Can he coach OUR players well? That's a concern.

When you watch the Crew, you know they have a plan. That's a plus for Berhalter. I don't know if that's the plan I would prefer for the USMNT.

I've said for a long time that IMO, the best situation is either a tactically smart coach who, let's face it, is going to be a foreigner, paired with a US-centric assistant with a fair amount of influence. (The reverse could work too, but in that case, the US-centric head coach would need to be someone strong at the psychological/motivation part of the job. He'd need to be an expert man manager. I don't see that American right now. All the top Yanks with any experience (by that I mean, not Friedel) have very strong tactical identities.)

 

GM: Coach, we're going to give you all the specialty tools you can ever hope for. Sophisticated wing play, CL caliber central midfield, blazing full backs, battle hardened forwards, all the tools any tool box could ever want!

Coach: Great! where's my hammer?

 

The interesting thing to me is that these kinds of names are suggested but no one mentions cupholding and reigning coach of the year Greg Vanney, who fwiw also had some caps. Who just took the CCL final to PKs. I assume the knock is TFC "buying it" but I tend to believe a crap coach can get in the way of actual winning.

When Berhalter faced Porter, Berhalter's team showed up cold and got beat by Portland. Portland is not exactly loaded either. But no Porter on the list. Porter is no longer fancied. I say that not so much to advocate for Porter -- who couldn't get the U23 qualified -- as knock down some of the hopefulness. How is Sarachan any worse than most of this set. And that's not pro-Sarachan, that's like, how watered down is this getting.

Most of the list sounds like it could have been done 1, 2, or more years ago. It does not scream "on top of the American game."

 

The simplest answer would be that the GM will not be in charge - or entirely in charge - of hiring the next coach. That would fit with rumors that no one wants to the GM job because it doesn't hold any real power.

If this is indeed the short list - and to be frank, it's mostly the list that I expected - then the only real reason why they'd be holding off until the WC is over is because (a) they want to have a fresh image re-launch of the MNT in the public eye under our exciting new head coach after the previous cycle and the ignominy of our failure has faded, and (b) they want to hire the GM first to rubberstamp the decision, for the sake of formality and to uphold the image of the GM as having any real authority.

We may have been hoping for the USSF to make a big unexpected splash, but realistically, we all expected it would be a domestic hire, with strong MLS and/or MNT ties. This list is pretty much what I expected. I'm not thrilled, but I'm not really surprised.

I'm only surprised Sarachan or Bob Bradley aren't on the list.

 

Can I be real a second?
For just a millisecond?
Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?

We are outgunned.
Outmanned.
Outnumbered.
Outplanned.
We gotta make an all out stand.
[New guy is] gonna need a right hand man.

 

That's because, at least in my case, I don't view what Toronto has done as much of a model upon which to base the USMNT. Vanney has built his team around 3 superstars by MLS standards, and the entire team essentially supports their production. He's been very tactically flexible in figuring out how to best do that, but that doesn't sound like anything that applies too greatly the the US National Team to me...

 

Well, Bob Bradley might well be the best and most qualified American soccer coach in the world at this point in time, but I don't blame anyone for not wishing for any retreads...

 

Really? You don't think there's an argument that we have pulisic, then Adams/mckennie (hopefully) and we build around that?
We don't have a couple dozen guys to figure out in any sense OTHER than fitting around pulisic.