When People Complain about Gregg, It Could Always Be Much, Much Worse...

this is the dividing line of the debate.

i have been a fan since the 90s.

I have seen the USMNT beat Spain.ending their 36 match unbeaten run. I have personally been in the stadium to watch the USMNT beat Germany twice. I watched the USMNT outplay Germany in the QF of a WC. I saw the US handily beat highly ranked Portugal in the WC. I saw a 9man us tie Italy (champs that yaer in the WC). I have seen the US beat everyone - Brazil, Argentina, Italy, etc....

I have seen the US smoke Mexico many times. Donovan owned Mexico.

I was in teh stadium when USMNT beat netherlands in netherlans and czech in czech.

I've been around and seen too much to have the low expectations that you think are naive. recent history seems to support you.....but this program and this country has been in a downspell....

the amount of talent currently available to the coach is unprecedented...so expectations should be at an all time high...your expectations arent even in line with historical acheivements....they are below them!

get it together man....I will never ever set the bar as low as you do.

thats not naive...its awake.

concacaf matches mean nothing.

 

Concacaf matches matter more than beating a Euro team in a friendly.

 

not in my eyes...not in terms how good the squad is...beating a euro team in europe has been near impossible until recently.

 

I still remember the 3-0 rout of Austria in Vienna right before the '98 WC. That performance was clear proof of how much progress the yanks had made, and it was definitely borne out in the results in France.

 

So you were happy about scraping through NL and GC with a bunch of 1-0 performances, with a team largely incapable of scoring or creating anything going forward, getting outplayed for large stretches by teams such as Haiti and Jamaica and Honduras (all at home), but then became upset when the exact same thing happened during qualifying? Only to then be happy again after 30 minutes of quality?

Nothing new happened during qualifying. It was the exact same team, with the exact same offensive inadequacies. If you're happy with the team pre-qualifying, i'm not sure how you can be unhappy during qualifying. Nothing changed.

 

the quality of a national team fluctuates even if the same teams are generally in the same general range of tiers....

but I pointed to individual rsults as evidence of what the team is capable and how the capability of the team should be conceptualized.....about where the bar should be for expectations.

I still dont understand why so many insist on keeping expectations below historical results...the USMNT has been one of the top WC teams from 1994-2014....making out of group more than many other "top nations".....making out of the group should be the minimum in my eyes...i've seen it in the majoirty of WC i have watched the US in since 1994.

 

The talent is unprecedented, sure. But it's also extremely young. That is the naive part -- expecting an extremely young team that has no idea of what their actual roles on this team are, no experience playing together, and no experience with the competition that they are in to come flying out of the gates. I think they can build toward that pretty quickly, but five points (no matter how it came) was a great start given those points and the challenges that the team faced in that window.

 

Exactly... good post!

 

Saying that we are one of the top nations in terms of World Cup results is going way too far. We were dreadful in '98. '02 was magical, but it also proved unsustainable. We were last in our group with one point in '06. We needed a miracle to advance from a group with Algeria and Slovenia in '10. We were lucky to advance on four points in '14 winning one of our four games in total. We didn't qualify in '18.

Expectations are not "historically low." Everyone expects this team to qualify. I think many of us expect the team to be dangerous at the World Cup and to have an outside chance of making a run. For me though, true expectations won't come until after this World Cup when the player pool, by and large, has some real experience and has had opportunities to take big roles with their club teams.

 

this excuse is weak...these guys are balling out on champions league teams and top 5 league squads...if they are good enough for that they are good enough for USMNT....this narrative is being put forth by the fed and coaching stafff as damage control.

the usmnt has the fricking 10 for the team that just won UCL.....

no excuses.

 

94 - made out of group beating Colombia one of tourneys faves
98 - made WC and didnt make it out of group
2002 - qf and easily couldve gone farther with fair reffing vs germany.
2006 - not out of group (but had tourney champs and another top 5 team in group wtf)
2010 - won elimination match after making out of group
2014 - survived group of death and lost in extra time to belgium
2018 didnt make it

so since - 1994 - when i happened to start following the usmnt

made WC 6 of 7 times.

out of group - 4 of 7 times.

how many other countries have made 6 of 7 last WC and out of group 4 of last 7? its not very many.

yes they havent had deep runs of other top 10 teams...but the bar is making out of group AT BARE MINIMUM.

 

I generally agree. I think making it out of the group should be the bare minimum for a coach to keep his job (and even then I wouldn’t call it a lock). At the same time, I don’t think we are at a point where we should expect to make it out of the group close to every time. Doing so is pretty tough.

 

Loss in extra time you mean, after barely making it out of an incredibly favorable group.

 

Yep. But if Bob had started Mo Edu, instead of correcting that mistake down 1-0 after 30 minutes, the U.S. wins that game.

Also, the U.S. beat Slovenia 3-2 and won the group easily, the ref just didn't want that to happen.

 

it was off the top of my head...whatever

6 of 7

and 4 of 7
is accurate.

so what is "success"? making it to the WC? gimme a break.

beating up on minnows like el salvador and honduras.....???

 

Gregg Berhalter did not take over some powerhouse team known for sexy football. The team was coming off a catastrophe and a situation where it was clear that it was going to need to quickly turn to an extremely young generation of players. Anyone acting like forming this team -- given where it was coming from -- should be anything but a long and sloppy process is kidding themselves.

 

I'd prefer to have a coach who always came up with solid game plans for each situation and opponent, but when they make a mistake, I want them to handle that mistake in the locker room at halftime the way that Berhalter did in Honduras, with the proper adjustments immediately, owning up to his own failed gameplan and putting the fault for the first half on himself and not the players. That way, they can see that the coach owns that he'd made a mistake, but he's fixing it right now, so they can just go out and give their all and expect a better result. That's how you keep your players and their belief in the team high.

 

We'd played well for 5 out of 6 halves of that group stage, but we were hosed by not one but TWO bad no-goal calls that would not have withstood VAR scrutiny today. That meant that we had to chase the game for nearly 180 consecutive minutes before the end of the group stage. We outplayed Ghana and were unlucky to finish level with them after 90 minutes, and in the last 30 we simply had nothing left in the tank, but we almost certainly would've had more if either of those two bad no-goal decisions hadn't gone our way.

Two big bad calls like that in a group stage are a lot for almost any side to overcome, much less one that is regarded as 50/50 to get through a group.

 

Stop talking about what Gregg took over and what he has right now. This team shouldnt be struggling to draws against El Salvador and Canada period. And all comes down to tactics and playing players out of position and where they are comfortable with. That is 100% on the coach. The job of a coach is to get the maximum amount of performance out of the talent he has. If Gregg isnt doing this I assure there are coaches out there that can. Gregg is on the clock.

 

"What he has" is a very talented and very young group of players. Hardly any of them are truly established at the high levels that they are playing at with their clubs, and many of them have had availability issues. Most are improving -- or, at least advancing -- rapidly, which means that their form must constantly be monitored and evaluated as the pool is in constant flux more so than other nations who can rely on more of a set, established group. Inevitably, these players need to be coached through pivotal moments of their growth as a player as they are in the early pivotal stages of their professional development.

The bottom line is this team is no easy slam dunk to coach. It's growing and evolving nicely, I think, and it's great that they have experienced both some success and some of the realities of highly pressurized situations.

 

Why should we stop talking about what Gregg took over and what he has right now? Back up your assertion with a reasonable argument.
Which coaches exactly could "maximize the talent" of our current players? Why would they be able to do that and why do you think they would want to coach the national team?

 

I would assume anyone who wouldnt get fired from a 2nd division swedish team for his lack of ability to orchestrate offense. Which shockingly is the same problem we are having now.

 

Brendan Aaronson
Christian Pulisic
Sergino Dest
Weston Mckennie
John Brooks
Tyler Adams
Jordan Pefok
Gio Reyna

Are all pretty much locked in 1st teamers for their champions league sides. I dont know what you are talking about here outside of Mckennie who would be a lock in starter for most midtable premiership sides. There is no team close to the USA in concacaf in champions league minutes played.

Konrad De La Fuente is going to be a starter at Marseille barring a drop in performance or injury. Yunas Musah is pretty much the only guy who fits the bill of young promising prospect you want to bring a long slowly.

Do you think a champions league semi-final against Real Madrid with billions watching is less pressure than a nice cool evening in Nashville against Canada?


Lets talk tactics for a moment not talent. Why is Gregg playing a midfield of Acosta, Sands and Bello with Tyler Adams at RB? Why is Pulisic having to travel 3/4ths of the pitch to receive the ball to make runs because their is no connection between the midfield and the forwards? Why arent we getting our best attacking player 1 on 1 in space on the wings?

 

recency bias. look it up

you are overweighting the last cycle in terms of your current expectations.

yet another why I hated klinsmann....he tampered down expectations for this team.

Bob bradley took the squad to a final of an official fifa tourney that included spain, italy and brazil (and they had a half time lead in that final vs brazil)

Arena took the team to a QF of a WC.

Now, the team has Waaaaaay waaaay more talent than EVER...

yet somehow bc the team has struggled recently (under crap coaching)....we're supposed to politely lower expectations????

no.