Whoa if the usmnt is a distraction and you post that many words about asking ghe manager the right question is more then a tiny part of ur life. Again I'd try to enjoy the process more you obviously are free to be miserable I just find it's easier to enjoy my hobbies. Greg answered all those questions so u should be all set and no its not the 'mainstream media's(who doesn't really cover the sport in this country) job to make the coach uncomfortable.
I think the error in thinking here is assuming that media pundits behave the way posters on BigSoccer do. That is, instead or reacting to and assessing the coach's performances game-by-game, people here behave like pundits and collective media are conspiring to prop up a Manchurian candidate until his incompetence make him impossible to defend and they have to distance themselves from the enterprise to maintain their credibility. This is mostly projection and wishful thinking from people who didn't want Berhalter in the job to start with. These are fans who, due to ignorance about how sports conversations are actually had, format their "analysis" in the style of modern, online political spectating: they treat Berhalter like he is the candidate of the opposition MLS Party and analyze everything through an adversarial lens. When a pundit correctly critiques him, instead of seeing it as honest critique, it's seen as the pundit "jumping parties" or abandoning their 'candidate'. It's really lame shit. Berhalter has coached about 40 matches in just shy of 3 years with the USMNT. To put that in context, Greg Vanney got hired to rebuild the LA Galaxy after one of their poorest seasons in history last year. Vanney has coached 29 Galaxy matches this calendar year, his team is far from having an identity, has coughed up points to the poorest teams in the league repeatedly and is on a razor's edge of missing the playoffs. Vanney has, on more than one occasion, just gotten line-ups and tactics flat wrong and lost because of it. Yet nobody (sane) is talking about firing him because they realize these are all growing pains. By comparison, Berhalter has made some clear errors (Panama, Honduras) that so far have not really cost a great deal, while also managing to meet most expectations while he and his team learn on the job. If losing to Panama in Panama by an own goal and "plummeting" to 2nd is your coach's biggest disaster, you're frankly doing well.
Some good news: It seems that Manchester United may be looking for a new manager. I wonder if we could trick them into buying Greg Berhalter for the job? Remember that enough money can void almost any contract. And that: "Nothing is illegal if one hundred well-placed business men decide to do it." - Andrew Young
M.U. Has lost a few matches they should not have, in the opinion of their fans. The last, and what brought the speculation of the coach getting fired, was, I believe, a 5-0 loss at home to Liverpool. M.U. fans and the management for that matter, are not at all forgiving about home losses and even bad play for a few matches. So far this season M.U. has won just one match and stand at 7th on the table. It does not take much to sour M.U. fans on a coach/manager. In this case, however, I doubt Greg Berhalter could do worse. I watched three of M.U's matches this year, including the bumbling loss to Liverpool, and they have played horribly. There is zero chance that the M.U. people would want Greg Berhalter. They want improvement not stagnation and regression. I was just fantasizing about a way to improve the USMNT by tricking M.U. into making an offer to Berhalter and he taking said offer thereby getting the US a different coach.
Berhalter can only be judged on one thing. Results. People act like McBride/Stewart should evaluate him on something else. I'm not a Berhalter fan. But if the guy wins the Gold Cup and Nations League, and has us in WCQing position...................then he's not going to be fired. Zero percent chance. Zero. And it should be noted that the USMNT is broke. They're asking for donations for their youth teams. And folks on this board seem to think the USSF is going to buy out Berhalter's contract and hire a big name coach. The USSF doesn't have the financial resources for that. At all. If they fire Berhalter, which they're not going to.................they'd hire Berhalter 2.0. Peter Vermes or somebody like that.
If they are indeed broke, it's their own doing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbym...l-association-are-sitting-on-large-surpluses/ https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-...tion-projects-$28-million-deficit-for-fy-2020 ESPN says they were protecting a 28 mil deficit. Eating into that surplus, but sure they didn't lose 150 mil in a year? They have not released 2021 figures yet, so let's assume it was a similar deficit. That's still almost 90 mil. Not saying they should use that any certain way, scrapping the academy was not very smart. Just curious as to where you saw they were broke. Anyhow didn't mean to sidetrack the thread. You are also correct in assuming it would be Vermes or maybe they take a swing with a up and comer. Doubtful they try the Klinsmann approach again, Carlos seems more financial than anything. Gotta be better.
Love or hate him.. he is very thoughtful and transparent on these interviews with warshaw.. Download "The Gregg Berhalter Podcast" in The U.S. Soccer Podcast Feed wherever you get your Pods! Apple: https://t.co/yIvCBF00F7Spotify: https://t.co/NcF4CpE30O pic.twitter.com/0L7qmnGPN9— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) October 26, 2021
What Greg Berhalter says to the press is nearly meaningless. He is quite intelligent and he will present to the world the face that is most "acceptable." It is the actions that matter and he is NOT making the team better. Yes he has had the US win two nearly meaningless tournaments but the value of that is greatly reduced because those "tournaments" were mostly played on home fields and there were very few players that even had to travel much. The US seems to be improving but there are too many HUGE setbacks like Canada's tie and Panama's win to make the "improvement" appear more than temporary. The whole US soccer system has more real good players than it ever has had but the coaching has gone backwards. In fact it has gone so far back that I even miss Klinsmann. I now am almost feeling about the US coaching positions as I do about the Presidency: "Let's try it for the the next four years with no coach.(or President)" I believe that It cannot get worse and, sometimes, even a rudderless boat finds the correct port.
That’s a really harsh comparison. Berhalter has 2/2 trophies (both with signature wins over Tata Martino’s Mexico) and a decent start to qualifying. It seems like our government is on a failure streak like the last round of qualifying.
Those two tournaments were about as easy as they could be. They were both home tournaments and played, mostly, in front of friendly crowds. While the victories were good and some crowds proved to be hostile the games, except for Mexico, were not likely to put ant strain on the USMNT. In fact the fact that in most games the US is really struggling to score and that says that Greg has done nothing to right the ship. What you call a "decent start in qualifying" is, to me, really a testimonial on just how fragile the US is even against some pretty bad CONCACAF teams. Yes we "won" two matches by pretty good margins but we tied, repeat, tied Canada at home say that Greg Berhalter has done poorly. Of course I do not expect any changes to speak of so we will continue to bumble through qualifying but not because Berhalter has the team playing well but because CONCACAF is so weak. Out of CONCACAF there are exactly two teams that should have any real quality, the US and Mexico. It is quite clear that most people think we are OK and that Berhalter is doing OK but I do not see it that way. What I see is a different style but just as much lack of quality as we saw under Klinsmann. We will qualify, most probably, but we are not improving. Right now the US is playing like a typical good CONCACAF the only reason we will qualify is that the rest of the group is truly bad. Only Mexico and, sometimes, Canada are really threats. Yes we struggle against most of the teams in CONCACAF but that says more about how bad CONCACAF is than how good we are. The US is, at times, fun to watch but it is not playing quality soccer but that is not good enough given the quality available. The US should absolutely dominate all of CONCACAF but the coaches we have had, with the exception of two, have not been good enough to select the best players possible and put them in a formation to maximize results. All most coaches do is put players together and "hope" it works in the formation that is designed by the coach. Greg wants the team to fit his desired formation and style without ever even trying to pick a formation that the team easily moves into. I still miss Bora Milutinovic. He at least could get the team to be better than its parts. But Greg Berhalter is only able to get the players playing well below their abilities.
I loved the Bora era too. However, Bora was able to train the US team as though it was a club team. That’s impossible now. The team is really young and there will be growing pains, but so far the results speak for themselves.
Everything is always "worst case scenario" or "best case scenario" to explain team positives. It's exhausting reading this stuff. Do you even enjoy watching the games? We won back to back tournaments with 2 completeley differnt rosters. Whether the games or the tournaments were hard are completely subjective. The facts are we won both using something like 40 different players. That after that, guys still want to cry doomsday stuff says way more about the individual posters then the state of the team or the coach.
I enjoy watching the matches. I also think the team has systematically underachieved offensively (despite winning a lot), and that that is on Gregg. Sorry.
I have never understood that kind of opinion. I always wonder if those people never actually played soccer in America, where you encounter people from all of these countries that are underestimated and find out that the the players are fantastic. Bolivia, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guatemala…everyone produces really good players. And that’s aside from Mexico, whose players are very intelligent, cultured, sophisticated, and highly skilled. If this region belongs to anyone, its Mexico. We are new on the scene.
I am not sure I see the argument you are making. I admit to instinctively resisting what I call the “CONCACAF is magic” argument. If there is something going on that favors less talented teams over more talented teams in CONCACAF WCQ, it seems we ought to be able to describe what it is. Is it that these other clubs actually have more talented players than the U.S., and that our belief otherwise is mistaken? Is it that by virtue of growing up in a richer futbol culture they are more savvy than our players and so can reasonably be expected to play better? Is it all about the home field advantage—the heat, humidity, lousy pitch, hyper-hostile fans, gamesmanship, etc? If you think that some combination of those are good reasons that we should not expect to win most matches, or show competence and lethality as a team in these matches, then I think you have to address the claim that most of our squad plays under different but equally intense pressure with their clubs. Just because these players are young doesn’t make them innocents. I can see why good players from the MLS might struggle going down to hostile CONCACAF environments moreso than players who face the 24/7 on- and off-pitch pressure of big club competition and expectations. I’m sure there is a rejoinder to that, but since posters here have been making that argument for a long time, it seems to me that dismissing high expectations that are based upon that idea, without addressing that argument, is insufficient. At least in my opinion.
This is anecdotal but I think worth pondering. My son's team plays at a great field, plays a high tempo passing style and is highly ranked. They went and visited a decent team with a field using a clumpier grass. For the first 45 minutes they could not get a passing rhythm and started lumping the ball forward. Their opposition calmly played a better possession game and got the first goal. It took another 15 minutes in the second half for them to figure out that playing their normal style they were a better team anyway and they came back and scored two goals for the win. The extra bounces and the slower movement of the ball was enough to get this team off their rhythm for three quarters of the game. To me, this generation of players has played all it's life in nearly ideal conditions. They've played in the best fields and against the best players. They just don't know what it's like to play decent players in crappy conditions. It's not that they fold, they just never get in to their rhythm. The only thing that helps in those situations is experience.
If you watch El Salvador play, and I mean you watch the team from their perspective, you’ll find out very quickly that those are soccer players out there. If you played at all competitively in the US, you encounter guys from ES and other countries who can really turn the screw on you. Overconfidence in soccer is for the young and dumb.
Its not Berhalter's decision where to play the Gold Cup or Nations League. Those are CONCACAF tournaments. He can only go out and win them, which he did. Berhalter also can't control what the rest of CONCACAF is like. El Salvador isn't chopped liver. They gave Mexico everything they could handle at the Gold Cup. Over the last half year, Costa Rica failed to beat them. Honduras failed to beat them. Panama failed to beat them. So.................. Its very hard to judge CONCACAF versus the rest of the world right now because there are so few inter-federation games since the start of COVID So how does El Salvador stack up with middle-of-road Euro teams? I don't know. I don't know how anybody could know. They haven't played a Euro team since the restart. They did play the reigning Asian Champions, and lost a close 3-2 game in the Gold Cup quarterfinal.
El Salvador's best players were born and raised in the US. I'm not sure about turning the screws, but they are currently spinning their wheels in 7th place on the Octagonal. Behind a Jamaica team that's a disorganized mess and a very bad Costa Rica.
Lose? No. But this whole thing was triggered by someone saying we should dominate everyone in the region (inclusive of Mexico). We're simply not there yet, and despite some players in the Champions League, I personally don't think we should be expecting to completely dominate every team in the region.