I have friends and coworkers who play at YSC in rec leagues. They're moving YSC Academy (the high school and Union's academy) to a new Facility that's being built alongside Subaru Park starting with the new school year in August/September. Thiago Almada chose to play in MLS, though he's not going to be there much longer. Diego Rossi chose MLS. Facundo Torres chose MLS. Robin Lod chose MLS. Daniel Gazdag chose MLS. Carlos Vella, Pedro Gallesse, Jonathon Mensah, etc. All of these players play for the national teams (Vela is "retired" but he's still one of Mexico's best ever talents), in South America and Europe. If MLS wasn't a quality league, they wouldn't be here. MLS is growing, and that only helps young American Players. I, like you, don't understand the vitriol that MLS gets from USMNT "fans." Even Earnie Stewart got a ton of flack from fans.
I might have missed this but is Brian McBride not a candidate for the SD job? Has he taken himself out of consideration for the job?
Good players play in MLS but the salary structure makes that less likely to indicate overall league quality than it might in other places. I was a big fan of MLS while it was a fledgling league trying to do whatever it could to be relevant and not insolvent. Now that it’s a billionaires club I resent the fact that it is a league of unbalanced teams with have and have-not players. Just give every team a hard salary cap that won’t risk the viability of the league and let clubs build their rosters in a manner that makes them the most competitive.
They’re getting there. Slower than people would like but the salary spend continues to increase year by year and the league continues to slowly eliminate some of the MLS specific rules (like the allocation order).
It doesn’t appear that he is under consideration. But given we don’t have a full list of the candidates under consideration we don’t know for certain.
McBride served for 3 years as the GM under Earnie, right. Any word on why McBride is not under consideration for the SD role while Gooch is a candidate?
From his own comments it sounded as he was interested kn a separate job that doesn't look like it's materializing and decided to leave altogether
IIRC, Earnie surprisingly announced that McBride was not returning right? Now that Earnie has left and the roles seems to be under reconstruction one would think that McBride would be a prime candidate given his 3+ years experience as a GM. What am I missing?
They could already be there. They choose not to be. For that, as far as I'm concerned, they are mostly irrelevant.
MLS is clearly not irrelevant given their involvement in the global transfer market and the success a lot of MLS teams have had in their own markets. I think the thing is it's not just a billionaires club either. Franchise values have definitely gone up, but there is a pretty wide variety in terms of net worth across ownership groups. And someone like Don Garber can't just dictate to teams as to what he wants to do. He's got to have support across his owners. Alot of the bigger money owners with deeper pockets very much want to be able to spend more, it's the smaller market teams whose owners can't really afford to which are the stumbling block. Which is why we see gradual change, but it's definitely moving in the right direction. You can't just strong arm the smaller market teams and force them to do something they don't want to do.
Tin hat theory? I kind of thing Batson and Cone may have wanted to clean house and put their own people in charge and McBride being out of contract gave them that reason. Do I have proof of that? No but everything with McBride and Earnie leaving all seems almost too convenient to me
Do you have a link or source for that conclusion? Has McBride gone on the record? Brian's leaving was always somewhat mysterious to me but that may just be because I have not been following it very closely.
Earnie was the one that ousted McBride, right. When Stewart later informed the board of McBride's ouster during "executive session," a source said. https://sports.yahoo.com/brian-mcbride-wont-return-as-usmnt-gm-231357801.html Here is Brian's original statement. pic.twitter.com/2CGWzhDXSR— Brian McBride (@BMcBride20) January 26, 2023
McBride specifically said he was planning on stepping aside from the GM role but didn't announce it earlier because he didn't want to distract from the World Cup and because he was interested in a new position that USSF was creating. That position got put on pause and so he continued in his plan from leave. That part we all have from McBride directly. What we don't know is how interested McBride would have been in the sporting director job, and what the other position was and whether USSF will ultimately hire for it.
Yeah, I don't find any of it mysterious. The job was terrible and also kind of pointless, and McBride doesn't necessarily have the background you'd want in a Sporting Director. I think he's run his own youth team? Maybe there's some role there? They brought him on because coordinating releases ended up being a crapload of work that no one likes doing. It does sound like he and maybe Earnie tried to create a better job, so I'd be interested to hear on that. I suppose it could all be people pushing people out, but I suspect it was more that the job sucked. And I suspect that both Earnie and Brian could have been tired of all the bullshit. I don't think the Reynas got them canned, but I'd be crazy to think that the constant BS wasn't pushing Earnie to PSV.
The other thing you have to remember on Earnie Stewart I'll add is that his wife and his family continued to live in the Netherlands while he was doing the job. I can't imagine it's easy to live apart for your family for as long as he did and that also made it very hard to turn down the PSV job.
Yeah, I mean, if that was my situation, I'd likely be long gone. But then add on the Reyna's texting me crap and saying things to me that make me have to go to Cone... like, why stay?
I'm not sure if this means anything in regard to the sporting director search, but seems odd he'd be on the roster call. On this #USWNT roster call with Vlatko Andonovski: Oguchi Onyewu.— Jason Anderson (@JasonDCsoccer) March 28, 2023
Isn't he a player rep on the Board of Directors? I do think there's a real chance he gets a job there, whatever it is, but he could be in that role as well.