It was a sham coaching search regardless of how you feel about interviews specifically, no one else was considered and that’s ridiculous. Then all you list as Berhalter’s competition is a bunch of MLS guys, when we had Julian Lapitique calling us! Jesus, you don’t even list Tata as part of this supposed competition. Then even amongs those you listed Berhalter is clearly inferior, he’s never won a fing thing and his career win %, goals for and against, basically every metric, is pedestrian to garbage. So please defend your ridiculous post and tell me how Jay Berhalter’s brothers resume is superior to other legitimate options.
This is why USA football will never progress. The standard is mediocrity. Regardless of the history, with this group of young talented players, that should be viewed as a disappointment depending on the group they are drawn in (given they qualify) for 2022.
Schmetzer seems to actually have a lot of the qualities to be successful as an international coach. He's willing to adapt. He comes out with game plans that at least take the other team's style and strengths into consideration (his game plan against LAFC was brilliant and executed very well, IMO). I think that his tactical substitutions are generally good. Am I saying he's a world-beater? No, but I am saying I think he would be someone that could take what he's given and find a way to get the very most out of it. That would be a vast improvement over the "Sorry-ball" system we see with the MNT today.
They didn’t actually fire Arena. They allowed him to take some time and reflect before he chose to step down.
Schmetzer's team is built just like Gregg's Crew were: around a veteran S. American play maker whose like is not available to the USMNT. Roldan looks good for Seattle, not because of Schmetzer, but because his job is simply to win the ball and get it to Lodeiro. Trapp had the same thing with Higuain. From all reports, Schmetzer doesn't do any talent identification. That is all Lagerway. At least Gregg had to do that in Columbus. But there are a thousand guys in World Soccer with similar or better resumes than both of them.
I'm not saying they were searches because I don't think there were any, real searches. I think every single cycle save for 1994, had a preset destination. I remember 1998 when Arena was hired, I can't honestly say others were or weren't considered, honestly I can't remember, what I do recall is that there was a sense in the summer and fall of '98 that Arena was the autohire if he took it because his United had won back to back MLS titles, he was the most accomplished college coach before that, and he'd just defeated the South American/Central American's champion in that tournament that evolved over the years, Vasco De Gama (was that the name, it was an explorer), the only time the US won that tournament or its equivalent across decades. The only concern was whether he'd walk away from such dominance in MLS, but he did, the loss to Chicago in the MLS Cup, while deserved, was almost certainly to some extent, a byproduct of that (for the first two decades, and maybe all time, no MLS team came close to what DC United accomplished '96-'98). 2006: Sunil was hard after Klinsy period, when he couldn't land him, it seems as if Bob was the reluctant non-flashy hire. 2011 was a firing specifically to get Klinsy. I don't think there's any way to look at 2017 or 2018 other than as auto hires. Arena was a desperation put the fire out fire, and honestly, I thought it was fine at the time, and if there hadn't been a Gold Cup that year, I think we would've qualified. I think the failure to qualify was partly an endemic problem with development and all the things we talked about, but it was also bad luck. #1 Lost Morris, the key speed weapon to pull people off of Pulisic in the fall. #2 Lost JAB that unhinged the defense in the fall as well. #3 Refs totally flub an obvious PK in the early moments against Costa Rica, game is TOTALLY DIFFERENT if they make the right call. #4 Even w/the Costa Rica debacle, the team righted itself against Panama w/a tour de force game where even Jozy woke up from a hex long slumber, and this was actually a problem because the players relaxed way way too much, and Arena got sloppy w/the 11, ignoring normal rotations that would happen because the medical reports suggested players would be okay even if they only had 3 days off. A ghastly decision. Hurricaine also lead to bad publicity photos of playing piggyback w/angered locals/the team? #5 T&T gets a pair of wonder goals that normally never happen. #6 Both Costa Rica AND Mexico collapse and give up leads they had in the second half, w/Mexico losing in part due to a ball that bounces off the cross bar, hit the keepers head, and then goes back into the net, and Panama scoring off a blatantly obvious no goal, which VAR would've disallowed. All of that had to happen. It's still obviously an abomination and inexcusable, but its also not wrong to argue it was also a crazy sequence of events, crazy as hell, otherwise Arena isn't the reviled figure he is now. W/regards to '18, it's clear the delay was caused by the performance of Berhalter's squad in MLS, and his desire to finish his term there. They decided to wait an entire year to replace him, failing to use the firings/resignations etc after qualifcation campaigns and the WC eight months later to interview a vast collection of potential international candidates, instead fixating on a second tier hot commodity in MLS who couldn't or wouldn't come in until 15 months after the debacle at Couva. I don't think there's any denying that there wasn't a legit process to that hiring. It was a hiring in search of a justification, rather than a true search, and hiring of the best candidate process.
All due respect to your point, but sitting down and seeing if you have any sort of rapport with someone is kind of a necessary component of hiring somebody. Resumes matter, but the person not being a complete jackass when it comes to interpersonal skills also matters.
Schmetzer as a coach for USMNT? Sure but he is improving all the time and USSF wants consistency which makes Berhlater ideal.
schmetzer notwithstanding, i do wonder if mls playoff results arent a better predictor for suitability as a national team coach than mls regular season results
Yeah, I agree as a last step you need to meet them to establish rapport. My point is you don't find out if someone is a good coach or not from an interview.
This is basically a Mad Libs question to be honest. Literally, any name you can think of in the blank.
I would add that it's my recollection that Lletget was playing really well early in the hex, then he got hack-a-caf'd.
Playing experience does not mean a lot for coaching experience. I honestly can't see a negative to not being a former NAT player or playing in multiple countries. Other than connections in said countries. But that's if playing experience was within the last 5 years or so as those people move a lot. I mean it's good but I don't see it as being a negative if that is missing. I'd much rather see it as a coach or front office executive. Interviews are more important than what you're saying here. Being able to articulate what you see as the future is important not only to bosses but with this being a public job, the fans and players. For example on resumes alone pick from here: Coach A 39 percent win percent. Coach B 48 percent win percent. 2 cups, former youth director. Coach C 65 percent win percentage, multiple countries managed and experience with U national teams. Coach D 40 percent win percent. 1 MLS cup, 1 CONCACAF champions League final. Coach E 3 cups, 42 percent win percent. Who ya got?
I don't want to dogpile too hard, but I think this ("I don't think an interview has anything with a thorough manager search") is a surprisingly bad opinion and one that I haven't heard bandied about before. Interviews are essential parts of any serious hiring of entry-level burger-flippers, let alone sporting executives or high-profile sports coaches. For high-level, decision-making positions, they provide an opportunity for candidates to articulate their vision for the future. They give the hiring manager an opportunity to gauge the interpersonal skills of the applicant and determine personality fit within the organization. For the applicant, it is a sign that they are seriously being considered for the role, and have an opportunity (should they do well in the interview) to get the job. For the hiring manager, it helps them winnow down resumes to only those candidates that they suspect could be great fits for the role, and it becomes yet another point to differentiate candidates with similarly-strong backgrounds. For the fans, it proves that there is an active coaching search going on, and that there are candidates that are being thoroughly vetted. Heck, a good interview can totally change someone's mind about a candidate. Mike Tomlin wasn't highly-rated by the front office in Pittsburg. They had him in for an interview simply to satisfy the Rooney Rule, he blew them away, and was hired on the spot.
If Egg wanted a veteran playmaker he could've gone with Nguyen or Lletget. He also could've gone young with Parks, Pomykal, or Ledezma. More likely, Roldan looks good with Seattle because he isn't being coached by Gregg while there. This is a pattern that repeats itself with many USNT players.
Interviews should play a small role in hiring. They should be the cherry on top, after the best candidates have been chosen. Yes, you might want to interview 2 or 3 candidates, but you don't need to interview 10. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillma...cience-proves-job-interviews-are-useless.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/opinion/sunday/the-utter-uselessness-of-job-interviews.html Maybe the Steelers didn't rate Tomlin for unfair reasons before his interview. And Tomlin didn't have any head coaching experience before being hired by the Steelers, and only one year as a defensive coordinator, and was still successful. So Berhalter had tons more experience compared to Tomlin.
First, you linked what amounts to a re-hashing of a 1979 study on INFORMAL interviews. Even in the article itself, the Yale researcher in question says that in order to get value out of an interview, you need structure and to challenge the interviewee, which lines up well with the fact that interviews are valuable and that just asking fluff questions is not valuable. The second link, an opinion piece, is an even less-valuable critique of "unstructured" interviews, backed up by annecdote. The bit about Tomlin must be trolling. Tomlin's resume did not point to being a good head coach. That is undeniable. Yet his preparation and skill shown in the multi-day interview indicated that he was an excellent candidate. Berhalter's resume does not even point to him having been the best available candidate in the Eastern Conference of MLS, let alone the world of soccer. And, instead of immediate success, Berhalter looks more and more like Adam Gase/Freddie Kitchens every day, not Sean McVay. Not to mention, when the Steelers hired Tomlin, they'd already interviewed multiple other candidates multiple times. They looked for months during the Cowherd's final season, and spent 2.5 weeks interviewing their shortlisted candidates. The USSF spent a year doing almost nothing to hire Jay Berhalter's not-very-successful-brother, all the while turning down candidates for not speaking English, or being "too late" to be considered... 9 months before actually hiring Berhalter. The USSF coaching search was an undeniable sh*tshow.
None of this post explains why Berhalter got interviewed. Regardless of anyone’s weird opinions about interviews specifically; the coaching “search” conducted by the USSF was a sham, a charade, an outright fraud conducted by the de facto CEO, in order to hire his own brother, whilst willfully ignoring many candidates with far better resumes.
Schmetzer brought Torres back into the lineup, otherwise using his standard XI in the playoffs. It didn't really work, but the lack of effective Toronto striker play kept Seattle in it. His best moment occurred after Seattle caught a break and went up 1-0. Instead of turtling after the goal, Schmetzer was bold and partially fixed what was wrong with the formation with an aggressive sub of Rodriguez for Brad Smith. Because of this, they started to find opportunities with Toronto having to push forward.