There are posters on this forum making the same case so not sure why you are surprised or upset? Allow that for many it has zero to do with Dolo specifically and more to do with disappointment at the lack of ambition by USSF. As Roger Bennet recently asked about the hiring of Berhalter in GB's first term, "Why that guy? What did you see that was so special about him?".
Yeah, MB wasn’t all that good at tackling. He was very good at ball recoveries as he was always in the vicinity of the ball. Like you said, he was good at clogging passing lanes which is very important. We gave up the tying goal to Panama in large part to our midfield, particularly Adams, not getting in a defensive shape to screen the back line. Adams heroically went for the tackle on the touch line by the center stripe and lost. He then threw up his hands wondering where his help was (hey, we’re a man down!) because he knew what what the danger was. Pulisic was also slow to get back because heveas semi-pouting that Reyna lost the ball instead of first timing to him. Ugh. Next coach should make the team watch that entire sequence leading up to Panama’s goal over and over and over. Rant over on my part!
Diversity in tactics has suffered with the fast and easy access to information. People influence people, and in the current world we're all influencing each other at a much faster pace.
Coincidentally, Adams and Bradley have two of the best and most dramatic long-range goals in US history. (Apologies to Paul C.)
MB90's most noteworthy defensive play was to squat and intently stare at the ball with focus and determination while the opponent dribbled by him.
Here's a study (from the most credible group I could find) that says that coaching "accounts for 20 percent to 30 percent of the variation in team outcomes." “Coaches are often credited or blamed for their team’s success or failure, and are compensated as if they are among the most important assets a franchise possesses,” said Christopher R. Berry, the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor, a leading policy scholar renowned for innovative analysis, including Chicago property tax assessments. “We find that coaches do, in fact, matter—and suggestions that coaches are interchangeable, which has been the dominant view in the sports analytics community, are not true. In every sport we studied, we found that coaches impact variables that contribute to a higher winning percentage.” Source: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/how-much-do-coaches-impact-success-sports This is consistent with my personal experience and view that leaders who make decisions at scale likely have a sizable impact on overall group performance. An extreme illustrative example would be a manager instructing everyone on France's team to walk instead of run. Even with Mbappé and a massive overall talent advantage, France would greatly underperform expectations and ultimately get crushed by even a youth team. As evidenced by the study, I believe there's a similar (yet obviously smaller) variance in outcomes based on relative manager quality in more realistic scenarios. I hear you on the extreme takes which I don't agree with either, but I'd remind you that the anti-Gregg contingent isn't a monolithic group with homogeneous views. And my main issue is the broad labelling of the fanbase as insane or other negative traits. Whether it's your intention or not, it comes across as being maligned for having a differing view than you on a message board. The only quasi-compelling point I've seen on the red cards is that there might be an accountability issue due to players potentially feeling too comfortable. Like you however, I put the vast majority of the blame on the individuals in the situations that you listed above. Also, I think most of the people who don't believe in Gregg as much as you appear to, believe his principles of play aren't overly conducive to scoring or maximizing our chances of winning more generally - so less about missing a one on one and more about not generating enough quality chances in the first place. Despite agreeing with you on many, many things, I simply disagree with the degree of relative blame you assign to Berhalter - and degrees matter in the proper positioning of things. As I've written before, I value your contributions on BigSoccer even if we don't see eye to eye on Gregg or the exact quality of the player pool.
tl;Dr It's trickier than just declaring you have ambition and throwing money around. Wouldn't you have to know everyone they've approached and been turned down by to allege lack of ambition? First of all, the club thing probably leaked because it's pretty harmless to have one flight of fancy get rebuffed like that. but if they're smart, you won't hear much more of that regardless of whether it's happening or not. so we won't know how ambitious they are or aren't being. secondly, given the reservations many of us have about a merely good club coach transitioning to national teams, it's very possible that some people's lack of ambition is other people's preference not to take a moderately successful club coach at the sub Klopp level. (Most club coaches prefer to remain in club soccer anyway. There are diminishing returns to getting 20 or 30 down the list of European club coaches just to demonstrate "ambition.") Can you name some folks who haven't publicly turned us down and who adequately demonstrate ambition in your book.
Thanks, interesting paper. Nice to have an upper bound. I can imagine it applies to club soccer too. However I'm really skeptical how fully it applies to international soccer for the obvious reasons.
Way back on page 7 or 8, I said we need Bora 2.0. We need to kick the marketing guys out of the room and bring in the engineers and data analysts. You want a guy who's used to the challenge of the international calendar, the short time with the team plus the need to find a simple and effective style of play that works with the players you have. The US is hosting in 2026 and it cannot afford somebody to be learning on the job. No matter the best club coach ever is still going to have to adjust the international football and the fact that he can't just put in a transfer request for better goalkeeper. So we want somebody no frills, has been in these wars before and knows how to eek out a result against a powerhouse. Hire them for 2026 and you can give Dolo, the job after in 2028. I have already said BVM but would be fine with Renard.
Not only was Egg not the problem, he was the only thing keeping this group of losers from completely crapping their pants. That is your position? It is a scalding hot take. I'm sure we'll see Egg's tactical acumen in his next position.
He is coaching a second division Dutch club now after falling out with the UAE association. He speaks English and would be absolutely perfect for the job.
The most important thing that needed to happen at this point was a shake-up. Players now have fresh motivation. Stale ideas that weren't working out will now be reevaluated with fresh set of eyes. It's important that we don't downgrade managers, but I do not believe that Cherundolo is a downgrade from Berhalter. The main thing is that we needed to hit the restart button.
Agreed. Though that second division club also happens to be where he spent the bulk of his playing career, so maybe a bit harder to disentangle from his current position than one might assume.
Pretty much. He met or exceeded expectations in every competition as manager until the Copa: 2019 Gold Cup: Runner-up at a time where we were clearly still second (at best) in CONCACAF 2021 Nations League: Beat Mexico for the trophy 2021 Gold Cup: Beat Mexico for the trophy with a C team 2022 WCQ: Qualified all but mathematically with a match day to spare 2022 World Cup: Got out of the group 2024 Nations League: Beat Mexico for the trophy All this with a team still ranked among the youngest in the world. He has also maintained great relationships with his players and had done a great job mending a strained relationship with one of our key guys.
It's too bad you won't let this go, but your strawman arguments about being out of contract and competing job-seekers are inapplicable, which, as an experienced lawyer, you probably know. In many states, including Florida, the Reyna's intentional interference with Berhalter's prospective business advantage, i.e., vilifying him to prevent him from being re-hired, would have been actionable if alleged to have caused his not being rehired, which looks like a jury question on these facts. Rehiring him would make this ugly story go away, while not re-hiring him posed the risk of litigation that would have kept it going, however remote a risk you might think it was. Whether the historically risk-averse fed considered this, we don't know, but I would have made sure they knew it was a possibility. You can keep on arguing, but my work here is done.
Iran in the World Cup. Also Morocco. Beside the point, we are not a top 25 nation, so we shouldn't be expecting to beat those kinds of teams with the pool we have.
I asked Canada head coach Jesse Marsch about reports linking him to the #USMNT vacancy — a job he very nearly had not long ago. "I hope they find the right guy." He'll never be interested, he said, "unless there’s a big shift in the organization."https://t.co/1kXhOD7v9e— Pablo Iglesias Maurer (@MLSist) July 12, 2024