If a change is made soon, I’d bet a fair amount of money on Ramos. If Berhalter is fired, Jay and Earnie have to go as well. To wait 13 months (Jay) and 4 months (Earnie) with zero vetting or interviews of any other candidates has to be a fireable offense. They made the call to not do a legitimate search. If their hire fails that miserably, they do not deserve a second chance.
Sad but true. the USSF is deeply screwed up and the only thing that could fix it is a complete purge. Ramos might well have a honeymoon period and be more realistic than Berhalter,
I agree. Now is the time to go forward...not backward. Re-hiring BB is in the same category of keeping the old players on the field, or calling back Omar Gonzalez. Bob was adequate and better than some of the others, but we need a fresh look at the players and style of play now, not a re-run.
Funny how in their first games back with their clubs Pulisic, Sargent, and Yedlin all look good. Pulisic entered the game as a sub and changed the game IMO. Sargent notched another goal. Yedlin played well and had a goal-saving clearance (costing Pulisic an assist). It’s almost as if we have some decent players that can contribute at the highest level but they are playing under a “system” and coach with the USMNT that brings out the worst in them.
Of course the problem with our "Berhalter out" requests of the USSF, headed by Brother Jay, is that it has kinship to going to Billy Bulger to request he help us get rid of Whitey Bulger.
Plenty of time to hire someone from the outside. The Berhalter hire only took so long because they were waiting for Gregg to finish another mls season, not because of any inherently time consuming process.
Right now, in KulturKampf Berhalter, we can hear "When the Going gets Tough, the Tough get Going!", "Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead!", "We have not yet begun to fight!", "Yeah? You and what Army?", "How many Divisions does Taylor Twellman have?", "Nuts!" and other famous cliche'd sayings of the "eat shit" variety. What they could instead be saying is: "Is that an Iceberg we're plowing into?" "I just pressed the Red Button, is that bad?", "Hmmm, this Albatross looks a lot like Mikey, doesn't it?", "Why did General Egg order us that stupid Land War in Asia?" , "Maybe it wasn't so smart to say Tata! to Martino?". What they should be saying: "We take full responsibility for our leadership of the USMNT, and its failure to make any progress whatsoever after the debacle at Couva. We thank you for the opportunity to serve US Soccer, and have done all we can for it. It is now clear, in the best interest of the sport we all love ,and of the national team we wish to see thrive in it, to allow others the same opportunity. We are at a standstill, and a fresh perspective and new leadership is needed. Thank you, and Godspeed."
This pretty well sums things up... https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...-mls-canada-gregg-jay-berhalter-national-team
All of this is completely true. Unfortunately, we all know nothing will change. At this point, it may take nothing less than a corruption scandal that took Blatter down to tear this out root and branch. The combination of poor on-field results and the consistent and plentiful reports of a toxic work culture should be enough, but it doesn’t appear to be so.
So what you’re saying is we have to root for the US to lose. Normally, I could never do that. However, desperate times may call for desperate measures..........
Adams was very successful at Red Bulls as a RB. He's played that position before. Some argue it's actually his best position, even if it's not the one he likes to play the most. Now moving him to RB to start Bradley is a bone of contention. But Adams at RB in a vacuum is not. Your thought is rather sloppy. The instructions to our players and how he expects them to play is cavalier at best. Except against minnows (who in the past we have been too wasteful with the ball against), we are simply not a play-through-pressure, create-chances-in-the-final-third side and we won't be for years. We don't have enough players who play like that or have ever really played like that on a regular basis at the professional level, and until we do, that CAN'T be our identity. Players are having to think too much and aren't able to simply play. A national team doesn't get to train together the way a club team does. You have to simplify. Back in the days when you could be pretty certain that we were a 442 counter team, we could play better than the sum of our parts because every player understood his very simple role and committed to it. The last time I saw us this disorganized was in the latter half of the Klinsmann tenure, when nobody knew what they or their teammates were doing and it showed clearly.
I was searching for the right thread to bring this up in until I read your post. Spot on. I can't ever recall a week where the USMNT players were more successful across the board: https://ussoccerplayers.com/2019/10/goals-for-miazga-sargent-boyd-gil-diskerud.html When you add in some of the MLS Playoff performances... e.g. Morris, Cannon and Paxton... it becomes evident that GB is not even close to getting the most out of the talent on his roster.
Nobody outside some Roldan fans around here, and Bradley fans at MLS, ever talked about Adams being a RB. Red Bull never considered him a RB. He mostly played wingback when he broke in, sure, at 17. They then traded their captain to move him to CM, a few months later. If his best or possible position is RB, why the hell do you trade your captain to move him? Why has his only minutes at RB since his rookie season in MLS been with the USMNT? "Adams at RB", is nonsense. Gregg didn't think he would be starting for RBL and excelling when he hatched his Trapp/Bradley regista plan at this time last year. He has said he has abandoned that and Adams is a CM. It was the first of two gigantic red flags in March. The same error in thought that led Gregg to put Adams at RB, are the same error he has repeated over and over. But that is the charitable way to describe the situation.
Looking back at what a player did 3 years ago to support your argument is lazy at best. This is all you need to know. He's top 10-15 CM in the Bundesliga last year He's the top CM in our USMNT roster Consistently playing an average MLS CM Trapp and still trying to build our team around an over the hill Bradley just show how incompetent and stubborn GGG really is. This program is turning into garbage really quickly.
I don't disagree with this sentiment; however, do we not want to improve and go forward with the young guys? Why would we want to go backward. Saying he was the best manager since BA does not mean much. I, for one, think that we need a new, perhaps younger, coach to coordinate all the Euro and MLS young talent. I truly believe it is there, just needs a really competent coach to find and use it properly.
Attacking and Defending CM? He didn't play the entire season so I am not sure how that effects his ranking... but I read that he was rated something like the 4th best CDM in the Bundesliga over the 2nd half of the season. He was flat out fantastic and it boggles the mind that GB ever considered him in a RB role just to keep Trapp/Bradley on the pitch. It borders on the ridiculous. Too bad he hasn't been able to stay healthy... I really miss his genius on the pitch.
My problem with this is that there are literally hundreds of coaches with international experience in the world at any given time, and surely dozens available. Perhaps we interview some of them? It's not as if there are only a half dozen available, there are an absolute ton. However when you rig the process w/English fluent only, living in Chicago etc, well, then we know you don't really want to hire the best coach, you just want to hire a very specific one, and almost certainly one w/nothing to recommend him for the job.
Bradley's USMNT teams had a habit of giving up goals early and late and in between. So did his Swansea team. In his biggest derby games with LAFC, they have let Galaxy score a boatload of goals. There is no reason to go back to that well. Lots of coaches out there. Of course, if they stick with Gregg too long, then they will have to bring him in as an "emergency", just like Arena. Even though Arena was hired 12 months earlier without a search, for all intents and purposes. The GOB network just recycles itself.
Bradley was an interim when Arena was fired, then given the job. Nobody was interviewed. Klinsman was a pet project of Gulati, nobody else was interviewed. Arena was hired to replace Klinsman with nobody else considered. Sarachan was an interim, nobody else was considered for the position. GB was basically hired with nobody else considered. There hasn't actually been a coaching search for 20 years!