I'm sorry, but you're not actually talking sense. You're ranting like a kid that isn't getting his way, and you're getting oddly confrontational about it. C'mon...
Tyler's closing in on peak Kante without the ball. With the ball, Tyler still has work to do. If his ability with the ball improves significantly, Tyler will be in the same class as Kante--a "world class"-level defensive midfielder.
Moyes is one of the few frequently-mentioned famous foreign managers that people like to bandy about that I think might actually make some sense for our program. But, honestly, we know what "level" Moyes is. He's been a better-than-average Premiership manager (a poor run at Man U notwithstanding) for a significant length of time. Relative to the historic level of our program, that's prestigious. He'd be the most prestigious manager in the history of our program. He isn't exactly a maestro, a Pep or a Klopp or a Nagelsmann.
I guess my source that said USSF had already announced Berhalter's extension+unfireable clause through the 2034 World Cup was wrong.
I don't know how, but CONCACAF has indeed become the crossing confederation at some point over the last 10 years. I don't remember it being that way in the 90s and 2000s. Ironic that it's such a stereotypically British way to play, but that's how CONCACAF teams play one another in general.
Just looked it up. Four finals and a CCL in 6 years. Count me as someone that doubts the people that doubt the guy.
He was just the wrong fit for Man U and whoever immediately followed Sir Alex was going to have a tough time anyways. But he’s a good manager for any team outside the big 6 in the EPL. If we were interested that seems like one where Stewart should be talking to Tim Howard for his opinion as to how he’d fit. I don’t think he’s leaving West Ham though. He’s got a pretty good gig there that’s the perfect fit for him.
There has never indeed been a time when US Soccer has been more run by soccer people than it is now. You could of course argue that there are people we should bring in to replace Stewart, McBride, or Cone but this is certainly an improvement from the days where Sunil Gulati was in charge of every major decision on his own. I think the current structure is also how the players want it. As someone mentioned in a different thread, the players were the swing vote at both of the last two contested elections. That has granted them a ton of influence as to how US Soccer is run.
I don’t know what club will hire him, but Berhalter will definitely get another job managing somewhere if he doesn’t continue with the USMNT.
Sunil Gulati most definitely WAS an amateur soccer person, and the hire of Klinsmann was absolutely that of a fan in charge of a soccer federation who was impressed by 2006 and made an amateur hire and an even more amateur move to extend his contract while the iron seemed temporarily hot. But that's not what this poster is talking about. This poster is talking about Stewart and McBride and Parlow as regards Berhalter.
Major League Soccer founder Alan Rothenberg calling Gulati "the single most important person in the development of soccer in this country".[7] So Sunil who played in high school and college, was coaching elite youth soccer teams as a 21yo and has worked with US Soccer since the 80s was an amateur soccer person. I guess he just does not look enough like some of the USSF good old boys for you. Talk about biases ...
none of those three has any experience managing an organization. They are all footballers! What professional experience do they have firing friends and good people for the betterment of the enterprise? None! That is the sense in which they are amateurs. Seems plain to me. And what do people who have little experience with difficult decisions do? They take the path of least resistance. This is just what it is to be human. Gregg is a fine but obviously flawed manager. Does the Fed really aspire to better or not? If they keep Gregg, then they will have accepted “top 20” status (you called this mediocre, not me) instead of insisting on better. Don’t be so defensive. I am saying the Fed is led by humans who aren’t ruthless, and Gregg is a fine but unspectacular manager. Combine those things and the US is likely to stay in the solid but unspectacular range. Do you really disagree?
I haven't been following this thread but just read this on ESPN.com and thought it made a pretty good point, which has been made in this forum off and on since Gregg was hired. From some dude named Kyle Bonagura: Allow me to make an NBA parallel here. When Mark Jackson took over the Golden State Warriors in 2011, they were an absolute dumpster fire. They had finished near the bottom of the Western Conference the four seasons before he arrived and had made the playoffs just once in the previous 17. It was a slow start under Jackson, but after a bad first season, they made the playoffs in his second and third seasons. They were, by any measure, successful seasons for the team, which had a young, exciting group of players about to enter their prime seasons. Sound familiar? Then Jackson was fired. At the time, owner Joe Lacob drew on experience from his time in Silicon Valley, where he learned there were different leaders built for different stages of growth in an organization. Jackson did a good job helping the Warriors progress from the basement to the second floor, but they were looking to get to the penthouse. After Jackson's dismissal, Lacob told the Associated Press: ''We just felt overall we needed a different person to go forward and get to the next level.'' That's where the USMNT are. This is not the same job as it was when Berhalter was hired. The opportunity to take over this group of players and coach them in a World Cup on home soil is one that will appeal to a much different talent pool of coaches than at any time in history. Maybe they won't find the next Steve Kerr and mirror the Warriors' level of success, but the goal for this team should be to reach unprecedented levels of success.
This sounds like a good parallel. And I don’t think the USSF leadership has the experience Lacob could draw on.
Yes, I disagree. USSF is the third professional football organization that Earnie Stewart has managed, after AZ and Philadelphia Union. You will recall that I have said, and said repeatedly, that I believe that we should hire a new manager this cycle, whether now or 6 months from now. But that's not the same as believing that we could replace him with just anyone and count on that being an upgrade. What so many seem not to process is the fact that nearly all managers are flawed in some important way, and the few that aren't tend to manage very, very big clubs. So no, I don't agree at all. The Fed, even aspiring to be better, would be irresponsibly stupid to think that all their desires will be made manifest if they simply say "see ya" and hire whomever happens to be available. It only makes sense that they would investigate their options, and it doesn't follow that if they end up extending Berhalter over the short, medium, or long term, it's simply because they're "satisfied," and aren't "ambitious." For one thing, they might not like any of the altnernatives. Most of the alternatives that people post in here I strongly believe would be disastrous, even worse than a second Berhalter cycle. And I tend not to like second cycles, especially those of decent but unspectacular and flawed coaches.
I think Berhalter has proven both in previous jobs and with the US he can get a team to play good defense. We started a 35-year-old guy who has yo-yo'd between the Premier League and the Championship along with a guy who never saw this level of competition until we got to Qatar as our primary cetner backs, and we were still very hard to break down for the most part. A lot of it had to do with the construction of the midfield but he really did do a fine job creating a defensively sound team that defended as a unit. And, for me that really is extremely important for a mid-level team like the US. We're not going to run and gun successfully with just about anyone at a World Cup (well, maybe a few with the next one and the expanded field). We need to be sound and strong defensively and we were. I think he deserves credit for this. It is also what we have been long known as, a difficult team to beat filled with athletes. Might need to learn to do this without expending so much energy if we want to make a deeper run though because playing this way really wore us down. He has also regularly shown an inability to set up this team to score goals and does have the same issue on his resume before. Our offense was poor. Whatever stats exist about possession and the like don't matter as much as the scoreboard and we failed to score far too often. We always went wide, which only gets you so far, it eventually leads to the ridiculous number of crosses we hit because you eventually hit the endline and don't have anything else you can do. With no strong 9 in the middle, playing down the wings to get the ball over is futile. And we never got more bodies in the box. If you don't have one guy who can finish them off, you need to get bodies in the box. We did neither and barely explored other ways to get in on goal. Two beautifully constructed goals in four games and one fluke isn't enough. We were never adept at getting our best players the ball close to goal regularly and put too much of the attacking burden on the fullbacks who start furthest from goal. It was completely ineffective, and it wasn't just a problem at the World Cup. This team created few chances in most games whenever the competition was decent. You can compensate for that somewhat if you are good at set pieces, but our set pieces were terrible. This team is not set up to score goals in pretty much any way unless we get a great individual play to spring someone, or the opponent just gives us a gift. We were good on one side of the ball, but on the other we were dire, and this is not the first time this has been a problem for a team coached by Berhalter or for the US in general. How responsible the coach is versus the players is always difficult to tease out and honestly I don't think either lived up to expectations in teh attacking third. The only attacker I think performed better than at his club was Weah and that was because of a small number of specific traits, basically being fast. Again, using speed to attack instead of anything more nuanced is something Americans have long been known for and what plenty of our coaches really value and know how to use. Most of our other attackers were either worse than they are elsewhere or were little used. Pulisic was mostly "good" Pulisic but he's been up and down everywhere for club and country. None of the strikers made an impact beyond a very lucky bounce for Wright to get a goal and the subs were always on too late. Players certainly could have performed better but when you regularly get a team where no one is stepping up, you do have to question the setup. McKennie was decent but he misfired whenever he got on the ball with a late run into the box, didn't bring the energy and failed to impact set pieces. How much was fitness we'll never know. We hit par, Berhalter did some good and some bad but I can't say he made the team clearly better than I would expect just looking down the team sheet. He got practical when it mattered, seemed to cycle through a ton of guys right down to the roster release day, time that could have helped build cohesion and try out more options tactically. This wasn't a difficult player pool to sort. The guys who played a lot were clear choices with a couple left over. I didn't see anyone that was a coach's interesting choice turned good. Most of those rode the bench or underperformed in scant minutes. Players left off could have played a role and there was dead weight on the roster. 4 points out of Iran and Wales should be expected, again hit par there. We did well to stay organized against England and see out a pretty drab 0-0. I wouldn't put it past US Soccer to make an even worse hire if they got rid of him but if they were open to some experienced options they could likely do better. And while I am just guessing, I would be surprised if this isn't US Soccer's decision. Berhalter is not going to have a selection of high-end jobs waiting for him and he'd be looking at a loss of prestige with where he would likely land. The whole we're waiting on Gregg to sort through his offers and maybe he'll still want the job seems a bit of PR to me. But hey, who knows? I think they'll stick with him and we could do worse, but I don't think it would be difficult to do better.
Well, under Gulati our Technical Director was............for instance Klinsmann. He took on both the coach and technical director role. His youth technical director, who did a lot of the behind the scenes leg work, was Tab Ramos. There were also plenty of "soccer people" on the Technical committee. In no way, shape, or form, was Gulati making soccer decisions on his own. The USSF is a beaurocracy and these decisions go thru multiple committees and voting cycles. [Right now........................Carlos Bocanegra is the co-chair of the USSF technical committee. This group ultimately will vote on the choice that is put forward by Stewart/McBride. It can't go to the board for approval for a vote without going thru that committee. By the way, Oguchi Onyewu is currently on the Board of Directors. So is former MLSer Nelson Akwari. They have a voice too.] One of the reasons we know that all of these tweets about Berhalter negotiating a new contract are bunk.................is because that's not how the USSF operates. Stewart doesn't unilaterally decide he wants to re-sign Berhalter, and get that done in a week. That's not how the process works. One expects that this will take a while. We'll probably have an interim coach (maybe even Berhalter) like we did four years ago.
I certainly agree that Berhalter would be better than some random guy or gal. But what is your expectation that the Fed is actively looking for a better option? Doesn’t it seem like the power in the negotiating relationship belongs to Gregg? What trial balloons have been in the media? Only that Gregg might look for a club job and the Fed is negotiating with him for a new contract. Not that the Fed is interviewing candidates or evaluating the recommendations of a search committee or anything like that. So the writing seems clear that Gregg will get re-newed and the Fed never really seriously considered anyone else. Maybe they did, but I can’t find evidence of it. And that’s consistent with a Fed that isn’t really willing to do what it takes to move the US forward. Sure, it’s possible that Gregg is the best available candidate despite his flaws. You can believe that. A more likely explanation for Gregg part II, to me, would be that the Fed didn’t do its job to find a manager for the next step. Why would they abdicate that responsibility? I posit some combination of it being too difficult and because they are satisfied with where things are.
I don't think any of that is really applicable. As Stewart has already said in a recent comment..................NOW the federation is going to sit down and review the cycle. I expect that no decision has been made regarding Berhalter or other candidates. They aren't negotiating with Berhalter or anybody else yet. That's not how this works. Its just a lot of twitter gossip that's gotten people all roiled up as usual.
If you read the Ringer post mortem on the 2018 cycle, it was very clear that soccer decisions like who was the coach of the team were very much solely being made by Gulati. He ran US Soccer like his own personal fiefdom. He was subject to much less oversight than now exists, and that’s part of the reforms that have been made by US Soccer since that time. Also reported around that by a few reporters, while Klinsmann had the technical director job, he wasn’t actually performing the duties of the job. They were being handled by Jay Berhalter the CFO. There’s a number of things one can say about Jay Berhalter, but he’s not really a soccer person. Tab Ramos was doing some of the work related to the youth teams for sure, but his ambit didn’t extend beyond that. The structure that exists currently that Stewart has to work through, is not a structure that existed previously. And under Gulati’s time, the board was basically a rubber stamp for whatever he wanted to do.
I disagree with that analogy. Curry has been arguably the best player in basketball for part of his career. The USMNT might have some untapped potential, but we are nowhere close to being a dominant force like Brazil or France. golden state actually set the nba record for regular season wins. also, I see a lot of people say this about how attractive the job is now. Who exactly is it supposed to be so attractive to? Most agree that Marsch probably wouldn’t leave Leeds right now. Matarazzo? Maybe. The types of foreign coaches who are interested in international coaching might be interested. So maybe a guy like Van Gaal or Roberto Martinez, but Van Gaal will be like 74 in 2026, and would almost certainly prefer to keep coaching the Dutch if they’ll let him. And I don’t think Martinez is all that exciting. Everyone talks about this being a great opportunity, but to me it seems like a lot more pressure than opportunity. I don’t think the pool of potential candidates has really changed, and I’m not sure that it ever will that much.