Well, that's pretty much the question right there. One obvious idea is that he shouldn't, because a failure on that front will impact his overall effectiveness. Another idea is that if our coach can't get one of two spots for the Olympics, how sure can we be that he can win one of three spots in the WC?
Totally different qualification process. Olympics basically comes down to one game, and that one game might well be Mexico.
It should be completely separate. Not only does it often go on simultaneously creating a scheduling conflict, there would be a conflict of interest one way or another. Maybe they over-value one job over the other. Better to be as autonomous of an individual as it gets. I didn't even like awarding the responsibility to an assistant like Herzog. Loyalties are to the senior nt HC and apparently he knew very little of the pool at the time. Tab could get bumped up if there's no scheduling conflict. Otherwise Cherundolo was just dismissed with Stuttgart's HC and he's going to be around the U.S. program now. They could start grooming him for the role. Tell him to start scouting the u-20's going on now, as well as youth in MLS. Should be familiar with a lot of the German-based Americans already.
All I know is, someone needs to care about the Olympics. We have a solid core of u23s, although not all will be released for qualifying I'm sure.
I wish they had named a U23 coach a year ago and only used U23 players for friendlies since most of the new core will be from that group. Then once they named the regular coach he could integrate into that group. The U23 campaign would have had a real early start for qualifying.
I’ve said this a lot, so forgive me for being repetitive, but we need a full time u23/B team. Ideally, I’d schedule that game between the two games in the FIFA window. It would be one large camp, however the assistant/u23 coach might make most of the decisions for that game. A hypothetical model would look like if we had a full time u23/B team this go round. Call-ups (*=extra call up) GK: Guzan, Horvath, Klinsmann RB: Yedlin, Cannon, Moore CB: Miazga, Brooks, Long, Carter-Vickers, Zimmermann, Trusty*, McKenzie* LB: Villafana, Herrera*, D. Acosta* MF: McKennie(out), Adams, Delgado, Trapp, Acosta, Canouse*, Durkin* AM: Saief (out), Lletget, Green, Pulisic, Gall, Amon*, Sabbi*, Gooch* FW: Weah, Wood, Novakovic* ...That is 10 extra call ups from what we have. We could play the Faroe Islands or some random club reserve team... that doesn’t matter as much as getting the group of players together and getting them use to the system we want to play. How this could look: Squad vs Faroe Islands GK Horvath (Klinsmann)46 RB Cannon (Moore)46 CB Carter-Vickers (McKenzie)46 CB Zimmermann (Trusty)46 LB Herrera (D. Acosta)46 CM Canouse CM Acosta (Durkin) 70 RW Sabbi LW Amon AM Gall (Lletget) 60 FW Novakovic Squad vs Italy...limiting myself to Sarachan’s senior options: GK Guzan RB Yedlin CB Miazga (Long) 80 CB Brooks LB Villafana (Moore) 46 CM Trapp (Acosta) 70 CM Adams RW Delgado (Gall) 60 LW Weah AM Pulisic (Green) 80 FW Wood What happens here is we’re building that u23 team while also bridging players to the senior team. The players are coming in, meeting the senior players, getting use to the style of play the head coach wants, but getting some time to build some familiarity. Now, what would happen again is qualification, but that’s always going to be a giant cluster building a cohesive unit. However, if we apply this formula towards the Olympics, bringing in a few key pieces here and there, we will help build the backbone of the team as it prepares for the Olympic qualifications.
I like this idea. Could schedule against lesser lights like maybe some of those Carribean teams that are going to get more games against better teams.
My guess is the USSF isn't going to want to spend money having U-23s travel to Europe for friendlies.
There are enough players now that they could have a strictly U-23 European squad on those dates and focus on domestic players when at home then hold one or two combined camps as possible. That way all they're really paying for is coaches/trainers to cross the Atlantic.