You've said this multiple times, but you haven't cited. FIFA gets the money for the World Cup sponsorships. They pay operating costs, but I've seen nothing that the host country even gets a disproportionate cut of participation money (which in CONCACAF routes to the Fed, not the US directly).
I'd want to know what went wrong in LA as well, but regardless, I'd want to be looking into international coaches from anywhere, I don't care about the MLS angle and don't really get why we insist on using domestic coaches, we should be open to any one, and be focused on guys that can unlock the attack more than anything. I've had an odd journey w/Bob. Was not a fan for most of his time w/the team, became significantly more enamoured afterwards w/his return to club coaching in Europe, and later in MLS, but then became a bit disenchanted again as I heard stories from Conrad, Pearce and others about him. I'd like us to move beyond the small plastic kiddie pool of domestic options to the ocean of options from around the world. Maybe we end up choosing a Bob type domestic, or Bob himself, if he's the best fit, but honestly I'm beyond frustrated that the creativity in hiring basically extends to coaches and players affiliated with the USMNT or MLS circa the 1990's and early aughts and that's it. That leaves out 99.99% of the potential pool and is beyond idiotic to me.
Coaches have lifespans as well. Every good coach has a certain level of stubbornness -- you need the persistence to see things through some adversity to be successful. But age and success feeds that, and there's some literature out there that has coaches having a peak of about 10 years. I think particularly with tactically minded coaches, their ideas can get stale and exposed and if they don't adapt, they start to fade. It's hard to argue that Jose Mourinho, for example, is the same coach that won the UCL with Porto. I don't know for sure, but I do wonder if Bob is reaching that point. I also think that in Toronto, he, like Arena, is hanging onto older players that aren't good anymore. The Omars and the such. IIRC, his last year in LA was a combination of injuries and poor defense. Vela played half the games. Diego Rossi was sold partway through the year. The defense was punctuated by some player regression and -- stop me if we've heard this recently -- really poor goalkeeping. They were playing Tomas Romero, who was fresh off playing at Georgetown. In the offseason, they smartly got Kellyn Acosta, Sebastian Mendez, Ilie Sanchez and Maxime Crepeau. Maybe a CB, too, but they basically loaded up on defensive minded midfielders and a GK. So I'm not entirely sure Bradley's issues was with coaching -- I do wonder if it was more around the players and priorities, and I don't know how much was him and how much was Thorrington.
Considering LA was largely great until his last year makes me think he still has it, and I think most people saw Toronto falling off all along considering how much was invested in old broken down talent that was way past it. But I also am just beyond tired of this. Are we really going to go: Arena-Bob-Klinsy-Arena-Arena/Bob Disciple-Bob? Seriously? It's so --- damned lazy and unimaginative. And the Marsch angle is just as bad. What about Marsch looks good over the past what 3 years or so? Nada. What frustrated people w/Berhalter? What Marsch is even worse at (inflexibility and system above all etc) and just like Berhalter, Marsch's record is spotty and erratic. Marsch is basically very much the same incestuousness we've seen going on from '98-'22 w/the exception of the Klinsy thing which was about Sunil's love affair w/Klinsy's marketing rather than a particular direction or anything else. There are a gazillion coaches out there, can we move out of the cul de sac that is domestic guys connected to Arena and look around beyond that please? The world is full of countless streets, not just this little tiny half circle cul de sac of UVA/Northeastern US affiliated dudes.
When it comes to Bradley, I think he did more with less than any other USMNT coach. The Spain team that he beat 2-0 at the 2009 Confederations Cup: Casillas, Ramos, Pique, Puyol, Capdevilla, Xabi Alonso, Fabregas, Xavi, Fernando Torres, David Villa. They brought young Juan Mata and Santi Cazorla off the bench. That's not to say we were talentless. Of course we were with Donovan and Dempsey in their primes. Not to mention Howard. But we had no business winning some of the games we did in the Bradley era. Also 2010 WCQing we won the Hex and then WON THE GROUP at the World Cup. Didn't just advance. Won the group. His crime was losing to a very strong Ghana team in extra time in the Round of 16. Personally I think that as time goes by, people will begin to appreciate the Bob Bradley era more. And frankly, given some distance.............I think the Berhalter era will too. I think we'll view it as a transitional cycle that Berhalter navigated with a VERY young squad.
One of the American options is seemingly off the board: Pellegrino Matarazzo is on the verge of being officially named Hoffenheim head coach. Worth noting he lives in the area, family settled there & previous spent 2.5 years on the TSG staff. #TSG— Derek Rae (@RaeComm) February 7, 2023
Jim Curtin is so honest on this podcast. Curtin says that he would love to be the head coach of the #USMNT one day. He then says he would leave Philly to be a USMNT assistant coach. “So you would leave your head coaching job to be a U.S. assistant”Curtin: “Yes” #DOOP https://t.co/cSlCNqZ4NY— Seth (@SethMan31) February 7, 2023 Completely agree... Curtin head coach + Marsch assistant coach!!
sad to see matarazzo is off the boad (hoffenheim). ive had the same issues with marsch most do (in addition to starting as yet another branch of the arena/bradley tree), but the idea of a voltron-esque super staff is...probably horrible but interesting. curtain talked about this is an earlier interview as well, his willingness to serve in any way possible for this wc and inferred he may not be the only one (no, i dont have a link, youll have to google or ignore me). but the one thing about marsch that lingers is this- does the rb system fit our pool? its not a world away from what gregg was doing, but with an offense. and gregg with an offense minus his, er, questionable player selection is worth talking about. of course we dont know that marschs player preferences would be any less troublesome, or how much a top line assistant would ultimately be able to sway him in his general stubbornness either. but- wagner and matarazzo are off the board. marsch is the clear frontrunner if its american or bust. so, just for fun- whats your "super staff" (assuming marsch as the head man and everyone being willing to sacrifice their club career for three years? to get them out of the way i would take gregg as defensive coordinator (although he only gets 6 players including gk/adams) slash lead recruiter and bradley as the steady right-hand man who was once married to a system but far outgrew it- but ultimately them having the first chair in this job before is too much suspension of disbelief even for an exercise. i will say though the smartest thing we could do today is hire bradley as the interim manager. that said curtain gets the lead assistant gig. dolo- who pretty clearly has the highest potential to move up in the soccer world (so to speak) magically says yes. im not sure we have specialists, though. something is clearly going on with armas though i dont have the first clue what- maybe hes the "wildcard", the experience in multiple systems/setups.
Completely agree with this... not only would the "incestuous" optics be bad, but it would just objectively be bad given American coaches keep showing they're not at the same level as a lot of their counterparts.
Sorry but Berhalter's "system" was nothing like what Marsch employs. They are very different. Also, what is this with people saying that Berhalter was tactically inflexible. Did people not see a difference between the Wales and England games? Did people not recognize a difference between the first 75 minutes and end of the Iran game? Do people think that we played similarly in Gregg's early camps as we did in the World Cup?
Actually Klinsmann not Bradley had pretty much all those guys aside from maybe Howard in their best years! Dempsey - Fulham 2011-12 (and w Spurs the next season) Altidore - AZ 2012-13 Bradley - Roma 2012-13 Jones - Schalke 2012-13 (post-switch) *Donovan!! - LA Galaxy 2014 (talk about shooting yourself in the foot) and even Howard, Everton 2013-14 is up there Bradley had very few players for their best years, not really even a lot of the slightly older guys like Beasley, Bocanegra, Cherundolo... even Jay DeMerit's sole Premier League season was 2006-7.. the only ones I can think of off the top of my head is a flash in the pan like Herc Gomez (but then if we're counting lower level guys who were never NT difference makers, Klismann also had Wondo 2012) and the tragic cases of Charlie Davies (2009) and Stu Holden (Bolton 2010-11)... *I still maintain that Donovan was at his best once he started playing alongside Robbie Keane
I get it. I just didn't want it to seem like I thought our pool was terrible. It was fine. I always thought under Bradley the USMNT played better than the sum of its parts. Something we can't say for much of the last 8 years.
It’d make sense that a foreign coach would be bring in at least one American assistant and Curtain would be a strong choice. He’d also probably end up coaching the Olympic team in that situation.
Shrug. Cone said that the new coach will be hired by the new Sporting Director. She also said she wants that person in place by July 20th. So we may not even be interviewing candidates for the head coaching job until July. Any of these rumors we see online about the USSF being interested in this or that coach (like Bielsa yesterday) has to be complete bunk. By the time we're interviewing candidates, the pool of available coaches will look different. And it should be noted that Matarazzo was available because he'd gotten fired from Stuttgart after their dismal start to the season. That's just for the people who aren't piling on Marsch right now. Coaches get fired...................
The Bielsa stuff if it’s true is likely Sportslogy doing outreach to potential candidates to gauge interest. Cone specifically mentioned they’d move forward on some of the coaching search stuff in order to make sure the sporting director can hit the ground running. They’ll likely hand the next sporting director a list of pre vetted coaches who have confirmed interest. Coaches do get fired all the time and it’s likely any coach we hire will have been fired at some point in their career.
From Curtin's perspective: 2023-2026 - USMNT assistant coach 2024 - Olympic coach post-2026 - candidate for USMNT coach? Curtin would certainly have a strong case for the 2030 cycle, given his success with Philly, if he was the USMNT assistant coach this cycle and it went well, and if he did well with the Olympic team...
I wonder how interested he would actually be in USMNT. He has lived in Germany since 2000 and working on his coaching chops there since 2011. He has familiarity with Hoffenheim and you can get yourself on a coaching merry go round there and stay coaching for many years. Why disrupt that for craziness and risk of USMNT when you still have Bundesliga options relatively early in coaching career?
The team coaching thing of Marsch and Curtain would be a really poor direction to go in my estimation. You're not getting more, better coaching by throwing two guys at the problem, especially without one being the clear leader. You're getting a lack of cohesion and one set of wasted ideas against another. I don't like the idea of either of them really, but I would prefer either of them individually over the pair. If they would do something with Curtain as an assistant, it only looks workable to me if you bring in someone with higher status and experience that Curtain could legitimately learn from. Marsch just had his second poor stint as a head coach and has never coached an international team. He's not the guy you put in charge for Curtain to learn from. And what happens when they inevitably disagree? I can see the appeal in a focus group make everyone happy sort of way, but it looks like a really bad idea to me. Now, bring in some top-notch head coach and let Curtain learn as his assistant and guide them through the US soccer landscape and I can see the benefits. But Marsch and Curtain tag teaming things sounds like US soccer trying too hard to be clever and ending up making a silly decision.
A comparison of Berhalter's system vs Marsch's system is a good discussion point and I would start not with the caricature descriptions, but with the managers own summaries. Berhalter described his system as using the ball to unbalance his opponents and create scoring chances. Its fascinating the revisionism of GB's system as some kind of defensive masterclass! Marsch described his system as high tempo and very tough to play against by aggressively pressuring the opponent and scoring on fast direct transitions. Berhalter's system is vectored towards the club (Barcelona), country(Spain) point on the style line. Marsch points to in the club(Liverpool), country(France) direction. IMO Marsch's style suites our player pool, especially the mentality of our core leaders.