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

I will stop when we hear any rumors of any kind that have a whiff of credibility. FFS, the Giants are struggling at .500, football (college or pros) hasn't started, basketball won't matter till the Dubs get to the playoffs, and the 'Quakes suck. The USMNT is all I've got for the next month, and I'm not hearing anything to get my BS-posting (BS can be taken as either acronym) juices flowing!

Earnie!!!!! I'm soooooooo booooooored!!!! Please pick someone!

 

Personally, really curious over what's happening with their National team.

Basically since about '02, they've largely been anonymous and middling. Then
suddenly in 2017 they clean up in the youth tournaments winning 12, drawing 2, and losing zero tournament games. In the U-20's, games were tight, but they won all but two of the games by a goal (they won one game by two goals, and tied Guinea 1-1 in the other game), but in the U-17's they annihilated their opponents.

2017: Win U-20 World Cup
Finished +9 GD in the tournament, all but one of the games were close, but they won 6 and drew 1 and lost zero of their 7 tournament games.

2017: Win U-17 World Cup
4-0 over Chile
3-2 over Mexico
4-0 over Iraq
0-0 R16 vs Japan
4-1 over USA
3-1 over Brazil
5-2 over Spain

In 2018 they make the World Cup semifinals and probably should've made the Final if they'd finished their opportunities in the first half against Croatia. Regardless, wow. Very interesting, if those guys continue to develop while staying healthy, England should definitely be a top contender alongside Brazil, and France in 2022, Germany probably too.

 

I'm worried that there hasn't been much news b/c they want to give sarachan a chance to "prove himself" with these upcoming friendlies and "stake a claim" to the job lol....i imagine he has been lobbying pretty hard for himself behind closed doors.....

 

I think he has a track record which can be easily studied to determine if he is qualified to be the manager for the USMNT. No friendlies will change the record to any meaningful degree.

 

i mean yeah i agree but this is ussoccer remember...no country gives more weight to friendlies than USA.

 

No way Sarachan is staying. You'll see.

 

Wartime or Peace time?

 

Peace time, obviously.

 

If it was Wartime, Earnie becomes Michael and Bruce becomes Don Vito/Wartime Consiglierre.

 

When does Olympic qualifying start?

 

US soccer is a dumpster fire.

 

All this Porter talk gives me hope that maybe I can be the next manager. Like Vermes I too whine and cry at games. I don’t wear suits, but I can always change. I also tend to lose important games (US Olympics qualifiers) with superior talent like Porter. I’m like all these guys combine. I’m going to make sure I answer every call no matter if most of them are telemarketers just in case Earnie is on the other end.

 

Superior talent?!?

Which player on that team went on to do anything? Over hyped talent maybe

 

I would say it is so silent that must reflect some sort of a decision up top. Gulati had a media presence independent of how the team was doing. That has gone away under this regime. Stewart is quiet. Any candidates are quiet. This has to be on purpose.

I'd posted something on this a bit back saying we might gain something in contemplation but we might also lose the press/public "check" you get from your ideas hitting the street before they are implemented. If we know what they are doing we can critique it and if they'd wandered down a particularly dumb street maybe we stop them before anything's official. As is, between the "wait for x to take the job (x2)" plus radio silence we're entrusting a lot to the leadership.

 

We couldn't beat out just one of ES (3-3) and Canada (0-2, people forget that one) to get out of the Olympic qualifying group. We are usually superior to them getting out of bed, and the tournament was at home.

However I will agree, with the benefit of hindsight, that this group underwhelmed as pros and/or was snakebit:

https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...l-roster-for-2012-concacaf-olympic-qualifying

To me the failure to get out of a group of Cuba/Canada/ES at home is damning. I might hire Porter to coach MLS. But I wouldn't let him near the USMNT. In part, I think from watching him play the Dynamo in MLS, he insists on an aggressive formation and the games don't stay under control.

 

October 2019.

 

Porter is now backing up Vermes for the job

 

Re "made man," why should we risk a decent generation on an experiment? To me some of the people being suggested couldn't even win MLS. For all the criticism now, Arena and Bradley won MLS. To me if your job is coach and you haven't "won something" you're not either proven or prepared enough to help the national team win anything either.

 

I liked Porter a lot when he was early at Portland but the shine is definitely off. In hindsight though, the lack of talent in that generation is largely what resulted in us not getting into the World Cup this cycle.

We had 0 guys from that age group playing at a high level. T o be successful we should have had them pressing and even replacing guys who started this last cycle.

Missing that generation of youth, majorly hurt us. It should have been a major warning sign when they flamed out, but as always-- everyone wanted to point at the coach.

You have to first have the horses to compete.

 

You know there are always a bit of luck on the opportunities you get. Bradley's "opportunity" in the EPL being a prime example. But this is sports. You rise up by winning... Maybe some great coaches get missed because they never get in the right spot but that's the way it is in that industry.

 

Bradley by that point had won at Chicago and coached the US to the round of 16 and the Egyptians during a revolution to within a round of that world cup. He more than earned it. It's sheer bias more don't get the chance, and for him it took new American ownership, who then took endless crap from annoying Swansea fans. Having barely survived relegation the year before Bradley they were then relegated last season. Far as I am concerned, good riddance to bad trash. Meanest fans to Americans I have seen. And that was his good luck?

I mean if you want truly telling it's we can't even get hired in the Championship or for EPL backmarkers, or as assistants. They'd rather cycle through mediocre English/European coaches (Owen Coyle keeps getting hired despite relegating a team and leading the Dynamo to the bottom of MLS), including guys who got other teams relegated, before they will sign an American coach. It's still the same game played on the same size fields. We have no language barrier, unlike Marsch in Germany. The learning curve can't be that much. And yet the only one hired right now is David Wagner at lil Huddersfield who probably comes off German as much as American.

Bias, pure and simple.

But to your other point, to me a good coach with good ideas and an eye for talent makes a Leicester or Aberdeen (SAF) into a winner, still. If they are in fact THAT GOOD. I've made arguments before based on Moyes about people who want to hire mid-table plucky coaches based on promise. The reality is while some may flower, others might have had decent talent and gotten middling results, and you hand them ManU and instead of the promise of amped coaching you get the same pattern of middling results. My theory: they never had to win every week before. Conversely, some coaches dismissed for coaching big money. You still have to make it work. Every year some coach handed an extension but losing his team, or handed a good team for the first time, in fact loses with a huge budget. It does in fact take something to cross the finish line in first place. Now, to me, ideally, you do it more than once, prove yourself. But I'd like to see you do it at least once before you try to win with the National Team. Otherwise I am replacing objective resume with subjective feelings and optimism.

 

No no. I was saying that was an example of bad luck. He worked hard and won but then the only opportunity that came for him in the EPL was a really bad situation. I didn't think his failure there was a reflection of his overall coaching ability at all.

And when I say "luck" what I am really saying is that the stars didn't align for him to get a chance a team with a better chance of a good turn around. Sunderland was a horrible chance at the EPL but it was all he got and all he was likely to get.

My point is as- good coaches can sometimes just not get the opportunities to coach teams with the right management, players or situations to succeed. Look at Kries at RSL vs NY. He's the same coach. His experience at RSL put him in USMNT conversations. Now he would be lucky to coach in the pros again.

We can say now, after three different MLS jobs, he probably wasn't as good a coach as he looked at RSL. He was just a really good fit at RSL. Just as Bradley was a really bad fit at Sunderland.

So its possible for average coaches to look great in good situations and good coaches to look bad in bad situations. But in the world of competitive sports- that doesn't matter. You are first evaluated by your record. Its the nature of the business.

 

To be fair, why don't Japanese coaches work in MLB? Successful Eurobasket coaches in NBA? Very many CFL coaches in NFL? To me it's born of a certain arrogance people think they do it better than anyone else. How long does the US have to play close games with England before we acknowledge the talent and coaching is in the same neighborhood?

 

Bob Bradley coached Swansea, not Sunderland, though I think that was another rumored destination. At the time Swansea was both deteriorating from a high point where they played pretty soccer and achieved some success, and struggling economically, which is why it got sold. An American owner bought the team and people freaked out. But the team was struggling before he got there and had nearly been relegated and went through multiple coaches the prior season. And then the fans went ballistic when it was an American. And the players didn't sound bought in. I don't think he ever got a fair chance. So I don't shed a tear a couple years later they couldn't save themselves from the drop anymore. I used to like the team for playing pretty soccer on a budget. But to me they came across like xenophobic jerks when push came to shove.

And one thing not being discussed is, that there may be at least some level of just that sort of gut reaction -- as opposed to objective treatment -- beneath the surface of every one of these decisions. Nationalism and arrogance. I mean the belief that a coach who is available because he got fired or even relegated his last team, but who is British, must be better than our best coaches. That we either play ugly soccer or couldn't possibly understand the nuance. Like they don't have Pulis going from job to job with defensive soccer.

I agree with you on Kreis, which is why I say ideally "show me something" at multiple stops before you even go near the nationals. Arena won in college and at DC before he was elevated. Sampson won at Santa Clara and LA. Bradley took Princeton to the final four and then won with expansion Chicago. My favorite example is always how SAF won at Aberdeen before ManU. He remains the last non Old Firm coach to win a Scottish title. I agree that you want repeat program builders. But my thing is you could be shopping that type of resume and a rather meh British team would hire Coyle or some other schmuck first. And in the rare instance you got hired, depending where, you might get booed by your own fans just for being American.

Conversely, until recently, any old British coach could get hired in MLS or USL. There are some people on here openly calling for a foreign coach. Limited experience, relegated his last team, fresh from playing, etc. We might still hire them. We endow them with an aura but if we go over there we can barely get a job.

 

Completely disagree.

We probably don't have enough talent to make it out of the group stage in Russia, but we have more than enough talents to get out of the Hex. Much more talents then the likes of Panama and Honduras.