USA - Colombia exhibition (Saturday, 1/28) pre/in/postgame thread [R]

Smooth deflection, Ma Reyna!

 

Who knows what everybody’s motivations and desires were. By all accounts the families were friendly with each other. I don’t know the exact timeline but I think Berhalter had been hired before Reyna picked Sebastian for the loan. Maybe Claudio wanted Gregg to chose Gio for the World Cup team at such a young age so he gave the impression he would help Sebastian’s career and maybe his coaching staff pushed back on Berhalter’s talent and that’s why Austin dumped Sebastian. With Gio returning from injury Berhalter had a very good excuse to limit Gio’s opportunities. That would explain why Gio was moping around so much at the beginning and why Claudio resorted to blackmail to force Gregg’s hand.

 

I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that these guys are making decisions based on how they perceive their respective sons get favored or not. That would be really unprofessional.

I think the whole Gio thing would have been fine - they worked it out in house (and Gio had some playing time, even in the Netherlands knockout game), until Gregg made the mistake of recounting the Gio story (w/o naming him) at some leadership event. Everyone assumed it was Gio, it snowballed, and it was Gio's mom that leaked the story from what I understand.

 

You’re right, it was Berhalter publicly badmouthing a player that created the mess. That was unprofessional, which makes it more believable that he might be unprofessional in other aspects of his tenure.

 

It was an unforced error for sure. My understanding was that he was at some leadership conference. He told the story w/o naming names, not thinking it thru - that 1) word would get out of the conference about the story and 2) that people would assume who he was talking about. And then it pissed off Gio's mom something fierce and it just so happens that she has 20-year old dirt on Gregg.

If he winds up losing his job for that, I think an argument can be made he was hard done, but sometimes you don't get the breaks and he had a good run (and arguably he got a break by getting the job in the 1st place). But if we're trying to find someone who never ever screws up, we'll be looking for a long, long time and then we'll only think we found someone who never screws up until they screw up.

 

Jeff, you have great insight to youth soccer and our academy, but, oh, for goodness sake, you have been hanging out too long with the parents of 12 year olds.

 

Go back and look at the timeline, the mess started before the post-World Cup private speaking engagement and I believe it was Sports Illustrated or ESPN ? that was about to publish a story naming names so the whole world was about to know what went down.

 

Whatever you say, Ma Ebobisse!

 

No Cade in starting lineup?

 

Dang, almost completely different lineup. I wanted to see how Cade did against stronger competition. He will probably get in there at 70-75' or so. Not sure why we need to see Arriola at this point. Or Kellyn Acosta. Or Walker Zimmerman. Somewhat interested to see Hoppe and Williamson. Hoppe seems to have a lot of um, hop, in his step, and Williamson looked like he wanted to impress on every possession, which will at least make it interesting.