News: Earnie Stewart addresses Gregg Berhalter Speculation

He really does think he is clever.... such a perfect call. I love the analogy I heard on US State of Soccer today.... Earnie and GB act like they are the parents and the rest of us are their children and can't possibly understand the process involved in creating a sophisticated brand of soccer. It is condescending and beyond irritating.

 

It is even worse than that. It is completely false.
Their "sophisticated" brand of soccer? It's as sophisticated as the Keystone Kops playing a match against the The Three Stooges, as reffed by Rodney Dangerfield, at the Dodgeball Finals in Vegas, as shown on "The Ocho".

 

Now that's a match I would pay to see!

 

Well, if it makes you feel any better about things I certainly do not see him blaming himself about anything

Because, after all, he's just painted himself more or less a victim of disrespect by outside detractors.

 

The closest I've seen is the Monty Python episode where the Greek philosophers play the German ones. Next would be the one where the one legged pirates play nurses? Arrh!

 

Earnie feels like the US soccer fans are San Fransisco or LA?

 

While I’d love a sophisticated brand of soccer, I’m FAR more concerned with a winning brand of soccer.

With the exception of the 1974 Dutch national team, no one remembers or cares about the runner up in a major tournament. Ask France if they care about their team playing a pragmatic style last year. They have a shiny gold trophy as an answer.

 

Huh? I get SF, but LA?

Back to the sh!t storm. I will continue to not watch the USMNT. It will get hard when qualification starts.

It may get better in the short term, but I have zero confidence in the long term.

 

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Unless you're the USSF. For them, the first response to any hint of trouble or controversy is to circle the wagons, deny that anything has gone wrong, insist that life is all peaches and ice cream, and then finally, blame the fans.

The USSF hasn't changed, and it hasn't learned. This is still the backwards, insular, incestuous, society club that it's always been.

If Earnie at least acknowledged, "Hey, things aren't going great" when our A-team loses to a team for the first time in 35 years, then this might be a sign that the USMNT recognizes it has a problem and is working on it. It would, at the very least, indicate that the USSF is able to recognize the blitheringly obvious.

But no, back to the standard routine, "Nothing is going wrong. No one is under scrutiny. Everything is fine. Shut up, you guys are just overreacting. You just don't understand me, I ain't listening, Y'ALL JUST HATERZZZZZ."

Bruce Arena reacted to criticism in exactly the same way. As does Michael Bradley. And hell, a lot of veterans on the USMNT. They've perfectly internalized this culture. Circle the wagons, don't listen to anyone outside this circle, because they're just haters trying to bring you down. Who's "outside the circle" has intermittently meant the fans, the media, the refs, FIFA, CONCACAF, Europe, MLS, the USWNT, German players, and Geoff Cameron.

This is the problem with building an organizational structure centered on insularity and exclusivity, and then trying to get that organization to be productive. Their reaction to any criticism is to immediately check, "Are you one of us?" - and if the answer is "No", then nothing you say can have any validity.

 

I just want to say back, “Dude. I don’t care how we play so long as we get the W.”

 

The best explanation of the current quandary I feel.

https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/how-the-usmnt-backed-itself-into-a-2022-world-cup-qualifying-corner-161135294.html

 

Good point. I don't think I'm the only one that logged a ridiculous watch rate for USMNT games, of any stripe, over the decades, from pointless camp cupcake matches, to the 57 iteration of a US-Mexico money grab, to actual qualifier and tournament games, to watching freaking streams of U17 games in random obscure tournaments. Just as true is the fact that I've missed all or large chunks of well over half of the senior USMNT's games over the past few years, and the watch rate has declined rather than increased w/time. Some of that is having a 3 year old, but I still managed to watch Sarachan matches, almost all, but these ones? Nope. I DVR and Delete. I spend far more time reading the match threads than actually watching the games. It's been that bad. I laughed through the loss to Canada because ---- 'em. If they're going to ---- on us, I'm going to laugh at them as they dig their own very deep grave. It took a lot to build up the USMNT fandom over the past 29 years, and now they've managed to nearly completely destroy that good will in just two short years. Kinda astonishing, and they have NO CLUE what they've done, despite example after example of attendance #'s collapsing at a rate unparalleled other than w/comparison to my redskins, which wants had the leagues longest wait lists for tickets, and now can't even give away tickets to locals.

Not a good idea to emulate Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen, or as another poster mentioned, KnicksDolan.

 

I think the bet by Berhalter/Earnie is that as shitty as we will play, the rest of CONCACAF will be shittier. If we can't beat Canada home-and-home (who is unlikely to even make the Hex), I think that's a risky bet.

Of course, I'm not the one at the table.

 

I'd give Arena a mulligan here, he earned the right to be a -----, reminds me of this PA back in the 1990's talking about middling comic Carrie Snow, and her terrible attitude, versus dealing with Diana Ross and her's. His point was basically, "Diana earned the right to be a diva, who the hell is Carrie Snow?"

Arena may have left us w/the worst of all possible memories, but he does have:

A ---ton of National Championships with Virginia.

Total Dominance of MLS with DC United (won 2 of the first 3 titles, and his '98 club accomplished something no other MLS clubs ever did for decades if ever, beat a legit South American Powerhouse for a title with his '98 team)

Dominant takeover of LA after the team failed to win with Beckham and Donovan early on.

Took USMNT to its best performance ever in 2002.

Did tie and nearly beat Italy in 2006 w/his drawn up game plan (game 2 was his, games 1 and 3 were drawn up by assistants), Italy would later win it all.

He then turned around New England this past year.

He's an insufferable, self-aggrandizing -----. but he's won everywhere he's been. He's been able to turn around foundering franchises (LA and New England, cant remember how things went in NY), was given plauditz for how he handled 2017, until the roof caved in (I know there's a "how was the play mary lincoln" aspect to that, but after he took over, the results were nearly everything everyone wanted, period, through June, he just imploded after the gold cup which he didnt use properly because he got over confident, we might have been more likely to qualify if hiccups had happened in March/June), and of course he has '02.

Arena has earned at least some of his irrascible nature. What in the ---- has this FED, or egg EVER done to earn anything like this kind of self-satisfied, "eff you and like it" attitude? The Fed's presided over the worst decade in USMNT History in terms of identitifying and developing talent, and the worst performance in the history of the USMNT in 2017, and they've hired the worst performing USMNT coach since I started watching in 1990. In addition, EGG's logged more "worst I've ever seen" performances as coach than any coach in my watching history with the USMNT, and I've watched what, a half dozen, and seriously, in most cases, its 3-4x as many "WTF?" performances as guys like Gansler, Bora, Arena, Bob, and hell, even Sampson.

What on earth have they done to earn any of this attitude?

The answer is: nothing. They're the "F" student, strutting around like he's hot ---- in front of future cell mates laughing and egging him on. He has no idea the rest of the building is building a future while all he's building is a tomb.

 

These two paragraphs sum my feelings pretty well. I get that no press conference is going to feature the GM/sporting director coming out and saying, "You know what? We've sucked this summer and fall." I know we're always going to get some level of sanitized "coach-speak" and cliches.

Earnie's press conference yesterday was beyond that, however. It was really a slap in the face to the fans who - by purchasing tickets/merchandise and by watching TV that sponsors use to give money to USSF - ultimately support the organization.

Even if Stewart would have come out and said, "Our results have not been what we expect from our national team. We are working hard to identify the problems and to fix them," I could at least recognize that USSF doesn't just think everything is rosy. The organization has had such a lack of urgency and accountability for so long that they aren't going to get any sort of benefit of the doubt from the fan base. As another poster said, Earnie expects us to "trust the process". Unfortunately, this isn't the NBA where tanking for a year or two brings you the #1 draft pick. You don't get to draft Leo Messi or Kylian Mbappe to your team if you have a bad record.

I won't watch the games this week, and I'm making sure I don't purchase anything from the sponsors of US Soccer. I wish the American Outlaws would draft something to send to each one of these sponsors and ask them what justifies keeping them sponsoring an organization that seems to care so little about accountability and success.

 

Word... and it is certainly how the US was able to compete w/ some of the best teams in the world in the past. Create a gameplan that plays to the strengths of your squad and do whatever it takes to get the W. Now we are told to basically ignore the results and focus on tiny windows of attractive play? What a joke. Remember, success breeds success. When a team wins their confidence grows... the belief in themselves grows... They start believing that they belong near the top. And more often than not they start to perform better than the sum of their parts.

 

Off topic (or maybe not). This just in:

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/diarrhea-poured-on-woman-hollywood-homeless-564585101.html

 

Hell I was thinking the 'Black Knight' sketch...."it's only a flesh would, come on fight!' Absolute denial about the current situation. Ego over intelligence.

 

Yuck. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/diarrhea-poured-on-woman-hollywood-homeless-564585101.html

 

Just as a basic PR move this is boneheaded by Earnie. Let's say he really does think that what he said is accurate (and he may think this--I think a lot of people, esp people in power, have convinced themselves that they are doing right or well regardless of enormous evidence to the contrary).

The way he delivered this message is garbage. It essentially rejects the basic premise that if you want to have a constructive dialogue, you need to at least show respect for, if not acknowledge the validity of, the opposing point of view. It's a simple psychological tactic that rookie negotiators and PR people use all the time.

But here, Earnie is basically saying "Things are great, and Gagg is the coach for the foreseeable future, and anyone who suggests otherwise or questions my authority is bullsh!t." This while we've had a run of results that by any objective standard are beyond embarrassing for this program.

it's hard to have any faith in an organization whose leaders seem to be more concerned about defending themselves against any criticism, however valid, than realistically assessing the situation and improving. Can you imagine how much better it would have been if Earnie had said,

"Things aren't going as well as we hoped but we chose to invest in Gregg and we're going to see things through at least the year. I appreciate the fans' support especially when the results haven't been what they are. But we're working hard to make needed improvements all the way up and down the program, and we appreciate the supporters' faith and patience during the process."

Anyway I never, ever thought i'd say this but F Earnie Stewart, man.

 

I believe ES made the wrong choice by bringing his career to the US. He was a decent guy at AZ Alkmar. He has become too comfortable in this 'good old boys' club and had regressed significantly.

 

It's actually much worse than it seems in LA now.

 

I don't get why Earnie elevated expectations in this way, which puts enormous potential public pressure on Berhalter if there's a hint of stumbling during WC qualifying. If Gregg stumbles out of the gate, Stewart's comments will be hung around his neck.

I can't imagine Belichick, say, responding to one of the Pats' annual craptastic early-season performances by saying, 'there's no doubt in my mind we'll make it to the Super Bowl.' The tone-deafness of everyone associated with the Federation is dumbfounding.

 

To be fair, making the Super Bowl isn't a great comparison to qualifying for the World Cup out of CONCACAF. 3.5 teams go to the WC, out of a confederation that typically only has 2 decent teams per cycle.

And nothing will be hung around Berhalter's neck. If (when) Earnie's statements get thrown back at them in a year's time, the USSF will dodge it in their usual manner - completely ignore it and pretend like nothing has happened. For Chrissake's this team just lost to Canada for the first time in 35 years, and they haven't even mentioned it. In the last Hex, when we'd failed to win a single away game and just been thrashed by Costa Rica at home, the USSF were business as usual. When we went 12 months without a head coach or a coaching search, the USSF never mentioned it.

And if the USMNT struggles in qualifying, it'll just simply go unacknowledged again. When we scrape out a squeaker 1-0 against St. Kitts and Nevis, Earnie will comment on how proud he is of the team winning a tough match. When we salvage a draw at El Salvador off a flukey last-minute equalizer from Zardes' left buttcheek, Berhalter will sit down at the post-game presser, tersely discuss why tactically everything was correct and this was technically a victory, and then the game will never be mentioned ever again. When we earn a tough 0-0 draw by bunkering down and ceding 75% possession to Curacao, Earnie will not give any public statement and Berhalter will refuse to acknowledge the event ever happened.

And if we do fail to qualify for Qatar, then the federation will go radio silent for a few months, with absolutely no public presence, and then emerge by announcing the next set of friendlies, as if nothing had happened. And I sincerely believe that even if we didn't make it to Qatar, there's a 50-50 chance Berhalter remains as head coach.

Part of the problem is our weak, impotent, crony soccer media, who all owe their jobs to being "inside" with the USSF and are part of the USSF's informal network of special pals and act as unofficial members of the Federation and extensions of the USSF's public relations corps. They're not gonna criticize the USSF because (a) it would cost them their contacts, which are their professional resource, and (b) they would be criticizing their friends.

And that's what the USSF ultimately is, at its core: a group of friends. Friends helping friends. Building up a big ol' network of friends. And then asking that group of friends to run a professional, international, competitive operation.

Earnie Stewart sticks up for Gregg Berhalter because he's Berhalter's friend. It's not his job to defend Berhalter - he's Berhalter's superior, his job is to oversee and cooperate and enable mutual success. His job is not clapping back at critics of the Berhalter family like he's in an argument on Twitter. But Earnie does that - because he's Berhalter's friend. And he uses his professional capacity in order to do it.

Which is a basic example of what is fundamentally wrong with the USSF.