Between the end of one MLS season and the begininng of the next, there are several months during which one can run Camp Cupcake (if it still exists under Klinsmann) and conduct a bunch of further discussions. Furthermore, there may be more than one assistant coach. Jogi Löw has Hansi Flick as his top assistant, Andy Köpke as a goalkeper coach, "athletic supervisor" Matthias Sammer, head scout Urs Siegenthaler, and scout Christopher Clemens . All these are football people (as is the Business Manager Oliver Bierhoff but his is presumably a non-football related job). The US team listed Mike Sorber (top assistant), Lubios Kubik, Jesse Marsch and Zac Abdel. If you hire a decent enough staff, someone like Sigi can still maintain his Sounders gig.
Can you imagine us having a guy like Sammer around camp as a fitness coach? Holy bankrolls, Batman! By the way, be it Klinsmann or Sigi or whomever takes over shortly, one thing I do hope doesn't change is our fitness coach Pierre Barrieu. That guy's excellent, and he's worked for USSF under 2 head coaches now.
The Germans have an American fitness trainer as well. PS. Personally, I'd rather have Carlos Alberto Parreira over Klinsmann anyway. Bring in those Brazilians.
Parreira, ah yes, I met him in 1990. Speaks very good English. A strong yet humble man. I too, would prefer him to Klinsmann, but Juergen has probably a 10% chance, Parreira maybe one in 1,000.
I've been on holiday for a few weeks and haven't bothered to read through all the threads, so apologies in advance if this has already been discussed ad naseum What about Martin O'Neill for U.S. coach? There was the somewhat contrived speculation here that Randy Lerner and M O'N parted company so he could take the U.S. job while BB came to Aston Villa... Edit: I should probably say I don't necessarily agree with the above contrived speculation. Would love to hear O'Neill interviewed though.
This may be a bit off topic but I just wanted to point out that Sammer is not some sort of fitness coach. His function is Sportdirektor for the DFB and that is the second most important job in the german FA, right after the President. He is responsible for the bigger picture and sets the general direction where the national teams will be headed to and coordinates them.
I see, and that's probably more appropriate to his stature within German football. "Athletic superviser" sounded to me like some alternate title for "fitness coach."
It seems to me the USMNT coach is responsible for the development of the team as a whole -- player development (including improved tactical awareness, etc.) must be the charge of someone with more long-range responsibilities versus winning matches and qualifying for tournaments. Pardon my ignorance, but does USSF even have a position for that in its current structure (what I guess is called a technical director in club football)? I don't know if it does or who that is currently. Would be great to fill both these roles at one time as a way of signaling commitment to take us to the next level.
Yes, two actually (sort of). There's Wilmer Cabrera with the title of Technical Director IIRC, who runs the Development Academy at Bradenton and coaches the U17. Then there's the position they just gave to Claudio Reyna, called something like "Technical Director of Youth Development" or something or other. His job as defined in the papers is more murky, but seems to involve coming up with ideas for spending the USSF's youth development budget and aligning youth soccer clubs/programs around the country with our player development needs/aims.
Reyna's job is to come up with a new, improved curriculum for training players in this country and presumably getting the clubs on board with it. Even though this is a very different job than the national team coach, I believe it would be very useful if he and the national team coach had extensive interaction and were generally on the same page.
Agree. National team manager: "To play the style of football I can foresee us playing over the long term, I need good attacking fullbacks that can provide width but also have great positional sense to keep from getting burned." Reyna: "Yeah, I'm trying to get travel teams to play more 352 with the wing backs as a featured position instead of an afterthought, with defensive responsibilities back to their own end line. We should get some good attacking fullbacks out of that eventually."
Lippi had to use some wingbacks as fullbacks in the WC. You'd think they'd have done fine offensively at the very least ... they did not. Then Prandelli put in Mattia Cassani, an occasional winger but mostly a fullback with Palermo, and the guy looked great vs. Ivory Coast.
klinsmann's own assessment of his tenure as germany's nt coach is that he succeeded in putting together a group of people to run the program the way it ought to be. could he do that here? to do so, would he import a german staff? does he have decent contacts with american soccer, to do locally here the sort of selection he did there? has he placed all the best talent he knows at the german nt?
That's also a question of money. Many German guys he knows make more money on their jobs than Bob Bradley did, and I doubt the USSF would pay a US head coach's salary to some staff guys. You don't get the best talent Klinsmann could find in Germany for 200K$.
Why bring Germans when the team is trending towards latino players. Bring some Brazilian technicians. The best technical players come from South America not Germany.
brazilian technicians and klinsmann pbl don't go in the same sentence. if the type of players and style of play is trending to the south american variety, you've got a reason for not seeing klinsmann as that attractive. if you bring him in, you're looking at a euro style, and quite possibly a somewhat new tack on who gets called up. anyway, i still have a question or two on what sort of staff klinsmann could put together here, and i wonder if that's a question in his own mind, and in the thoughts of the federaton as well.
isn't a Brazilian latin? We need a coach understands our structure in football, our region, doesn't play bunkerball & knows how scout young players properly.
How's US "trending Latin"? Of the WC starters, only Bornstein is 1/2 Latin (OK, Torres and Gomez are 100% Latin but neither got much PT under Bob) and the generic Latin strength is Jonny's main weakness. And Herc and Omar may be Mexican/Latin but their style is definitely not the Mexican finesse. That leaves Torres as a "pure" Latino in terms of soccer. PS. Benny is kind of a Latin but really not.
Well, then the US soccer culture will be largely comprised of players in the European leagues (and a few in Mexico).