And that's why an NT coach should only stick around for one cycle. Very few coaches will start all over in their evaluation, usually, they just build onto their established base.
I actually wouldn't mind Hiddink's name being in the mix. Beyond his wealth of experience, he also has an unmatched track record of taking outsider national teams into tournaments and getting them to play beyond their talent - to over-achieve and reach unexpected heights. Netherlands to the semis in 1998 World Cup (knocked out Argentina and lost in penalties to Brazil). South Korea to the semis in 2002 WC (a country that had never won a WC match in history). Australia into the Round of 16 in 2006 WC (Australia's first World Cup appearance in 32 years). Russia to the semis in 2008 Euros. And twice with Chelsea, he's shown ability to step into a team in meltdown and stabilize them and at least get them back to their own level of talent. Granted, he hasn't seen as much success with his most recent national stints, with Turkey and Netherlands. Full disclosure: I'm also a Korean soccer fan, so a bit biased. As a member of that fanbase, I'm obligated to worship Guus Hiddink and the ground he walks on, to spread his gospel to the nations, and also to be available to donate a vital organ should he ever require it.
If you are a Tata fan and understand spanish here is a nice vid of him from his players. http://www.univision.com/deportes/f...se-apodera-del-futbol-en-estados-unidos-video
I am in the same boat as you, I'm fine for Tab to be in control for the Nov. friendlies and maybe even Jan. camp, but after we need a fulltime replacement. Preferable one with a proven track record as an international manager.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017/10/13/patrick-vieira-adamant-hes-not-right-person-usmnt-job Interesting take
You don't build mental toughness from watching True Grit or The Sand of Iwo Jima over and over.... This "rabid dog" type analogy ad nauseum is counter-productive and has to go away. It serves no soccer purpose. The world is a violent enough place. Soccer is a sport, NOT a matter of life and death. I'd like to keep it that way.
Yeah, Viera has bigger fish to fry on club scene than to hook up with a national team at this point in his career. Especially USMNT.
Tab is part of the problem. The entire program needs to be purged. I get an interim manager usually comes in from inside. I get they want to wait to hire full time until the new president of the USSF is decided. There is logic in the decision but it's that same type of thinking that landed us Bruce again and us into this current mess. We can find an interim manager without close ties to the two trainwrecks that were our last managers. Gutali needs to go. We need to bring in a better quality coach. A tactician is a must. And I'd look for an outsider. South American, Dutch or Italian.
I don't really buy all the grit stuff either. That's stories for kids and soldiers who need to be motivated to meet their maker for an abstract reason which runs counter to the biological imperative. There is no replacement for good decisions, quickness and technical soundness. Pulisic doesn't run through CONCACAF like Hef ran through bunnies because he's got more grit than Bobby Wood. He just has a better technical foundation, brilliant vision, tactical awareness and enough raw athleticism to make it all work. We need that. We don't need more fairy dust, repeat viewings of Miracle and hope. I blame Hollywood for this type of thinking.
That reminds me of the time when the referees took victories away from the Italians and Spanish. #fixed
We have to qualify first... We have missed the past 2 Olympics. Yes, I think the US will be at the Copa in 2019. We also have 2 years until 2022 WCQ starts (the 4th round), that is not that much time. Also some think the 4th round is less forgiving then the hex. The US lost to Guatemala away and tied T&T away in the 4th round this cycle. Also in 2019 is the "a team" GC, we win this then we go to the Confed cup in 2021. Olympic qualifying is in 2019 too, which we have failed to field a team in the previous two Olympics. I argue 2019 is when real comp starts, with the Copa, GC and Olympic quals all in this summer, and WCQ starting in the fall. Whoever the interim is he needs to be building the team for a focus of summer of 2019.
Compare the USA match against Italy [in WC2006] vs. this last USA match against T&T, if you wish to focus on Arena. Compare the USA match against Ghana at WC 2014 with any match in Jurgen's last GC or the first two games of the Hex, if you dare consider your Klinsmann. What "grit" is, in the context of playing the sport, and what it means to lack it, is obvious. Just open your eyes and look..................It has absolutely nothing to do with Hollywood. In Weinstein's World "grit" is understood only as a breakfast grain favored by rednecks and other "deplorables". As for your riff on kids and soldiers, of which my bet is that only one of them you have ever been, it is pure irrelevance.
I don't like Tab being anywhere near where roster selections and player selections are made on a full time basis. Just as erratic as JK was after Brazil, maybe worse. He just isn't very sound tactically which is what we must have. Flexible and adaptive. Not Tab (the coach) style. Guiding a team of youngsters through a couple friendlies, Im fine with, as long as theres no condition that would get him hired on full time. I think the new coach will use the WC time as a camp time, no games just team stuff to get a grasp on the players and scout. Ideally the coach would be hired by Jan to get a camp there too. But I don't think that will happen, Sunil will wait until after the election, which is understandable. I imagine you'll hear Ancelloti, and just about any high profile coach out of a job name come up. Take the time, hire a technical director and a coach. Dual roles rarely work.
I agree. We basically have an extra year in the cycle, and with Qatar being in winter it’s basically a five year cycle from now. Any new manager also has an unspoken mandate to go young and a license to turnover the spine.
Needless as it may be to say, I pretty much 1000% disagree with you and beerslinger. If you or beerslinger are arguing that we need to build a team full of smart, technical players with excellent vision, who exercise fantastic decision making on the field, I'm with you and totally agree. We do want that. As many great players as we can get. However, mental toughness is the cutting edge difference that separates winners from losers. I've pretty much earned a fandom based Ph.D. in the relevance of mental toughness and grit in sports as a fundamental difference making characteristic in battles between strong teams. I am a Capitals, Indians, and expos fan in hockey and basketball (not as relevant in football w/the redskins, or basketball with the Boulez), and this year, as in last, all three of those teams entered the playoffs with if not the best rosters around, they certainly came in w/close to it. The Capitals have put together numerous best in the NHL Presidents Trophy seasons, but in the playoffs they have ALWAYS come up small. Indeed their track record when up by 2 games is so bad it defies explanation (they own a sub .500 record when ahead by 2 games in a series, have a near .300 record in OT games in the playoffs, their defeats to the Islanders, Rangers, and most famously to the Penguins is damn near legendary-it's so bad grantland put an article together before a game 7 choke three chokes ago), look at the Nationals and their mental melt downs in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017, always imploding in the key moments. Look at my Indians, up in the 9th in '97, error and lose in extra innings, up 3 games to 1 on the redsox a decade later, again choke, up 3 games to 1 on the cubs, again choke, up 2 games to 0 this time on the yanks, again choke. It's not something out of fantasy. Mental toughness, and the ability to handle pressure and rise to the occasion is what made the USMNT so damn impressive in the 90's when they were always better than the sum of their parts, and even during the Arena, and Bradley era's it was noticeable. This is what drove Alexi to madness, its what drove Donovan to grossly misremember the past in that interview on Sirius that showed up somewhere (talking about how the '02 side just flat out wouldn't tolerate such god awfulness, forgetting that due to horrendous injuries, and bad timing, the US lost 3 consecutive qualifiers in the meat of the '02 cycle and came within a whisker of missing the '02 cup and all the glory that came with it (or the pratfall against Poland, which admittedly was also hugely unlucky). I'm never going to deny the crucial importance of technical ability and skill, it is the most important factor when it comes to getting in position to win anything. You have to have the talent to even step on the field. But the decisive factor in winning, the decisive factor in true sporting success is always as much mental, as it is technical skill. Brady's Patriots, Montana's Niners, The Bears with Buddy Ryan, compared to without him, the Redskins when Gibbs came back, compared to without him, in hockey the Caps often had teams as good or better than the Penguins but the penguins had the mental toughness the Caps lacked. In Basketball, Jordan needed help before he could win it all, but once he got some, nobody could touch his side because he was both great, and also mentally tougher than anyone (see his deranged HOF speech to understand just how big a role mentality played in his success). If you watched the USMNT the past several years, other than a blip in '13-'14 after the near melt down in early '13, there has. been something, "rotten in Denmark," when it has come to our mentality. We've seen it in leaks to the press, the sort that never ever seemed to happen in the past, we've seen it in games where we clearly quit, something that never used to happen, we saw it in coasting efforts like last week against T&T, you saw it in us dropping points at home in lackluster manner. Mentality, toughness, making it hard as hell to play against us is something that has gone missing in recent years. Identifying the talent that has it, and the talent that doesn't will be important in coming years, and figuring out which vets we want in house, to help usher in the next generation of players will be crucial. I wouldn't argue for a second that bringing in "try hard/work hard" guys over talented guys makes sense. That's idiotic. What I do want though is a genuine "team" with great leadership and mental toughness to go with the technical skill and soccer acumen you and I both prize. This is also one of the reasons why I've begrudgingly respected certain aspects of Tab's performance since 2015. Even if I haven't liked his lineups or all of his choices with regards to rosters, his teams have shown a ton of fight, and after having dealt with some epic beat downs in the group stage in 2013 and 2015, it has also shown an ability to fight, and grind, and generate results, even when things are going against them, sometimes winning against the run of play (Colombia in the Round of 16 in 2015, against Ecuador in the group stage last may for instance), and other times going down with all guns blazing a la the QF losses to Serbia and Venezuela in the previous two cups, matches we probably should have lost rather convincingly, but instead pushed into extra time and genuinely could have won with a bit more luck.
Please take Osorio. Please. Oh, I also see Miguel "El Piojo" Herrera on the list too. After Herrera was outed by Mexico in 2015, Greece, Saudi Arabia & Chicago Fire approached and offered him the manager role for their respective teams but Herrera turned each of them down. Herrera wants to manage a European club. That is his dream. I'm not sure if this dream has changed (it's been 2 years since he announced his club abroad dream). The past 2 years he has managed the Xolos and now with Club America. Herrera's biggest black mark for me was his tactical change in the second half against the Netherlands (2014 WC -- R16). He sub'd out Giovani dos Santos for Javier Aquino. Herrera opted for a defensive approach. (Many Mexicans thought this was a poor decision) Louis Van Gaal reacted appropriately and pretty much threw everything (including the kitchen sink) at Mexico until they scored. Herrera isn't a bad manager but I don't think he is a great one either. He has a very good (first) game plan. It's his "plan b's and plan c's" that are questionable for me. Herrera is a player's coach and can rally his team together really, really well. Maybe that's something USMNT needs? Herrera will make his team play for each other. His infectious energy is contagious.
I don't think anyone doubts the value of mentality, but I think some may disagree on its level of priority. Plenty of teams have shown good fight but got steamrolled because they were lacking so much elsewhere. I had a Chihuahua who never met another dog that he wouldn't charge at, no matter how many of him they could fit in his mouth. Feistiest, bravest, fiercest dog I ever knew - but that didn't stop him from ending up at the vet because another dog literally chomped down on half his torso in a single bite. So having the right mentality isn't enough. And hiring a coach based primarily on mentality and toughness and chemistry and motivation and other intangibles is foolish, and shortsighted, and is almost certainly what the USSF will do. "This coach is just the right guy to get our players focused and motivated and tough and working together and believing in themselves. What, tactics? Yeah, I'm sure he can do that, I dunno."
I don’t know who our next coach will be but I do know that by this time next season, Atlanta could be in last place in the east and no one will want Tata. If I had to bet, I’d say that by this time next year, Sunil is still the president and Tab is still the manager. Just because that would be the most US Soccer thing to do. Don’t know if anyone heard “The Fallout” on SiriusXM, but Wynalda was saying that he talked to a board member who said something like, “yeah we need to develop a plan,” to which his response was, “you don’t have a plan?!” So yeah, i think the board will be upset and say they need to change things, and then a few months from now, they will realize that it’s just easier to keep things the way they are and they won’t change shit.
Regardless of what he said in the media, I think Bruce knows he failed miserably and deserves most of the blame. If he didn’t quit, i bet they wouldn’t even have fired him until the next Gold Cup (if it went poorly).
I think this is exactly the approach that's needed. I'm ok with a totally outside hire, but it has to not only be a good coach objectively, but also the sort of personality that is capable of acquainting themselves with our idiosyncratic system, player pool and league and could formulate a plan to work with them as opposed to being some high-minded "well I'll just tell them how they're supposed to do it in a real football country" type that washes his hands of it all when that inevitably fails. One could say that our previous outside hire failed because A) he was not a particularly good coach to begin with, and B) that he was more concerned with politically preaching revolution as opposed to pragmatically guiding evolution.
Arena just wanted to make it through with JK's players and then make changes after we got out ticket punched. He didn't want to take any chances.
I think he could get away with B if he had not ultimately sucked at A. The game is advanced beyond putting 11 guys on a pitch, rolling the ball out on the field, and saying have at it fellas.