I just got to say how much I love the guy as a commentator. As a member of the US press, he is one of the few that expresses the right amount of outrage at our performances. His conversation with Ian Darke after the Canada loss just sounded so on point, I was like thank god for this guy.
Mehhhhh. He has gained some notoriety for that and his post-Couva diatribe. In the intervening two years he has been quiet as a mouse. Wahl had a negative piece yesterday as well - does that mean he's adored as well? They are both pretty much USSF sychophants, who toe the company line just about 99% of the time. Good that they have made some noise now, but it could have come earlier in my opinion (ie. every week for the last 5 years)
apparently, soft coverage isn't only a ussf issue. "Because you're friends with them," [Draymond] Green said. "And you want all the access from them. So the way you guys will come out and bash players, you don't do that to organizations because it's all about access and protecting your future. No one really protects these younger guys' future because it's all about what can I do for myself. So no one talks about the organizations. It's always just the player, player, player because they can't do s--- about it but be young and their name carries no weight and then be out of the league and onto the next thing. So that's what I think it is. No Phoenix writer is going to bash the Phoenix Suns. But let's be frank about it: When he was there, the organization was terrible. Everything was going wrong, but he get blamed like he's the problem. When he left, ain't nothing go right. So that's my take on it."
I don't see why we should give a ton of kudos to a commentator who is merely voicing the outrage shared by almost the entire fanbase. Furthermore, you never know in the pundit world whether the words spewed from a commentator are really his or if they are scripted. It is all about having takes that generate clicks and re-tweets. In this case, I fell pretty comfortable that he actually feels this way... I mean, almost this entire forum feels this way. What I really want is for several of these pundits to publicly call for GB's resignation.
My issue with him is that he spends more time complaining about Berhalter not being hired earlier than he does the obvious, which is that Berhalter shouldn't have been hired at all. Because, you know, our problem is that Lovitz didn't get integrated soon enough.
Our of hiring the wrong coach or taking a year to hire a coach, the latter is the more preventable mistake.
Twellman, Holden, Lalas and Wahl have been nothing but shills for years. They should be put to pasture with Bradley.
I think Twellman's been the best of a bad bunch being the soccer media. He was quite good on the Canada broadcast the other night but I also think a lot of it has to do with ESPN not having the rights to US soccer matches for quite a while. Whatever it takes to get some honesty I'm okay with. He is actually much better on Twitter and has even dared to criticize Bradley a time or two on there. The Scuffed podcast is the best in my opinion for analysis. I don't always agree with just how much youth they want to call up but they diagnose the problems and the inevitability of some of them continuing really well. TSS is a distant second. They are far too patient and optimistic in the face of some of the glaring issues but Taylor has been coming around. I also applaud Taylor for bringing Sam Spiegelman on the other day who called it exactly as he saw it. The other Athletic guys have largely been shills as far as I've heard.
Twellman didn't sound anything like a shill during US v Canada. He called the US effort a "disaster." He didn't sugar-coat his disgust at the poor play. Bravo for him in calling out coach and players for a p-ss-poor performance.
Twellman is okay - it's just that the rest of our soccer media are so tied to the USSF's apron strings that Twellman doing something normal journalists do is somehow revolutionary. Ever since ESPN lost the US Soccer contract, their TV side has been more free with the criticism. The ESPNFC show (which I feel is very underrated) has been quite vocal about their criticism of US soccer. The Twellman rant went viral, but I thought this panel breakdown of the USA-T&T game was more insightful - if also extremely brutal and painful. It probably helps that most of their pundits are not American-born - however, I don't think they can be dismissed as simply anti-American (except Craig Burley, obviously). They speak their minds - and that's probably because they owe neither their reputation nor connections to US soccer. But even their US contingent isn't afraid to speak up. During this past Gold Cup, I was surprised to hear Hercules Gomez straight-up say, "The Gold Cup doesn't matter." I mean, yeah, it's true, but it seemed bizarre that someone was willing to say it. I appreciate that. It feels like at least one part of our soccer media is maturing.
The tone on ESPN from Twellman/Darke as well as on ESPNFC afterwards is far closer to reality than it would have been if broadcast on Fox.
Its the same issue. The Federation took forever to hire a technical director, took forever to do a coaching search, and in the end only formally interviewed two people. And of those two people (Berhalter and Oscar Pareja), they chose the less accomplished one. Oscar Pareja. Won trophies in MLS with the youngest and least expensive squad (in terms of salaries). In other words, did more with less than other coaches. Known for working really well with younger players from academies, thru the youth national teams (he was on Wilmer Cabrera's U17 staff), thru MLS. Bilingual. The list goes on for why he checked all of the boxes. Lovitz is lovitz. He's not the problem. When you watch the USMNT play, even the good players look horrible. Its a team that looks significantly worse than the sum of its parts. That's coaching. To some degree Twellman is still an employee of ESPN, a partner of the USSF and USMNT. He can't go completely scorched earth...........................
I agree that it's unfair to make too big of a deal about Lovitz because between he and Berhalter, it's pretty clear which one is more over his head at the USMNT level.
The other thing is, if your good players are playing their game, you can usually 'hide' a guy who isn't really up to the level but who knows his role.
I like him also. He can be grating at times, but I agree the large majority of the time with his comments. It’s sad that we have to celebrate the fact that he is one of the few with the sack to call out the USSF and the current situation because so many others are afraid to.
As most have said Twellman can't be as angry as us all the time on the air. His job is to also partially cheerlead but he picks his moments to go off, he does it well and you can't deny that.
How can he say we will qualify for sure after all he said? Haha. It's the same arrogance as saying we would beat Canada for sure. I guess he just wanted to undercut the meaningfulness of qualifying even if we get in.
I’m just glad that at least the media is waking up to the deficiencies of the USSF... 2014 was the last good year in American soccer. In 2015, anyone with half a brain could see that the ship was sinking. But, the problems were ignored? And the pundits and fans called people chicken Little. Things got worse in 2016, and culminated in disaster in 2017. Believe it or not, things seemed okay on a coaching end in 2018 with Sarachan as his team seemed to at least come out hungry. But how sad is it that I ask for the USMNT just to play with desire? Furthermore, that coaching situation was worse than the hiring process in the federal government. To be blunt, it really shouldn’t take a month or two, TOPS!, to get the right coach in place. How can that be? Because any decent organization is always looking at the better alternative. We got Juergen Koop? Well, what do we have to do to get Pep Guardiola? That’s the type of thinking we need to have in the program. Nonetheless, we had this joke of a hiring process, Berhalter was finally given the reigns, and 2019 has been the ugliest year to be a US soccer fan. True, we didn’t qualify in 2017... that was disappointing. 2019, has been the year that I don’t give a damn anymore. The USSF is okay with us being a top 75 team, not good enough for the World Cup, maybe not good enough for the Hex, so long as they can upcharge ticket prices and fill it full of fans from other countries. It’s such an embarrassment. And EVERYONE needs to go. The board needs to demand more. But, they don’t have enough guts, heart, and brains to do so. It’s really sad. 10 years ago... I thought we would be a legitimate soccer nation. I guess the good news is that our domestic league, has matured well over the years, even if it’s still a ways away from the target. But, the sad news is that this US soccer team is going to do nothing but turn away even the most die hard fans. There’s no way they’re getting new fans. And that’s the heartbreak in it all.
Burley does it better and had been doing it for years. It's easy to bash the Fed and team now but where was this criticism years ago? Twellman was one of the biggest shills for USSF/MLS and to say he deserves praise now is ignoring everything else to this point.
Burley is not American. I am not being a Xenophobe, just he is the best American call out the USSF. Fridel or Ramos aren't doing it. Wahl just kind of reports. The best we got are Twellman and Gomez. And being one of the best domestic players ever, Twellman's has more force when he speaks. I would love for people like you take a marketing class and tell me how a sport would grow, if all the people reporting on it kept saying the organization running it sucks. Basics of development and people rather keep football a fifedom!!
Even Wahl, who has admitted to printing what he was told to print as opposed to losing access, is critical of USSF. There's nothing cutting edge about it now. Twellman hasn't been a hard hitting analyst for years. He's a coin operated machine doing what is best for his brand. Analysts/journalists are supposed to be critical. That is part of their job. NFL,MLB,MMA,NHL, etc have all been heavily criticized. I don't know a single organization with the insecurities or bubble USSF/MLS has built around itself. What an odd statement you made.
In fairness to Fox....after the current Bundesliga season ends their Soccer properties are down to the US National teams, the World Cups, and MLS. They don't have nearly as much leverage as ESPN has these days. With all of the soccer properties they currently have, if they piss off the USSF not many soccer fans are going to drop their services just because they don't carry a handful of national team games a year. Not to mention Fox Sports doesn't have as wide a platform (they don't have a nightly news show, let alone a soccer news show) to give the National Team and its' current state the scorched Earth hot take treatment.