No way in hell is the USWNT going to scapegoat Megan Rapinoe. They'd have a huge revolt not only from lots of fans (including Smallchief and myself) but from the rest of the team. Subway may or may not stop using that ad, but at worst that'll be the extent of this. Yes, there is a lying psychopath--a former president of the United States--who's saying that we'd have won a gold medal but for Megan Rapinoe. Yes, a good number of his cult members are spouting similar nonsense. We've even seen the suggestion on this board that players protesting during the National Anthem contributed to the team's disappointing showing. Alas, Megan Rapinoe and the rest of us have to live in a world with all this nonsense. I believe that Rapinoe will retire soon. Then the lying psychopath and his cult members will find some other target to ridiculously blame for whatever. I like and agree with the comments above by Smallchief, MRAD12, and NCChiFan. GO MEGAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m not sure why there’s so much Vlatko love going on here. I am in the category of fan that wants to understand why the USWNT played so badly when even when they are not successful in other tournaments at least they played hard to the end like a US women’s team. I don’t see why the manager shouldn’t be evaluated and questioned and put through the hot coals like the players. May I ask why he gets a “get out of jail free card”? Other than the same dumb, “he was FORCED to have this roster”. I’m sick of that story until someone gives me a legitimate source in the next 2 years that confirms this.
you will not get anyone to do that and if they said they had statements, I doubt anyone would believe them so....
I wrote a longer response but have deleted it. I'll just say: these three paragraphs are so full of over-the-top rhetoric that they're ridiculous.
Imagine if someone here had a "legitimate source" stating that Vlatko had been FORCED to take this roster by higher soccer powers. Is it reasonable to demand that the "legitimate source" be clearly identified before an audience of fans who overwhelmingly don't even use real names?
Is Vlatko forced to take this roster. I doubt very much that he was told too, but I also think dumping Morgan, Rapinoe, and/or Lloyd from the roster would have been an extremely risky thing for him to do with regard to his job. It's sayonara if he loses, but since he lost with those three it may be sayonara anyway. Coaches are cautious when it comes to dumping stars. However, I don't think any younger players yet have proven that they can replace any of the above mentioned trio. Part of that is because nobody has had much opportunity to do so. And while Morgan was pretty bad at the Olympics, Lloyd and Rapinoe were pretty good. Press, Heath...eeeh, hardly world-class. Williams shone well in her outings. The defense may have been so bad because it's not used to dealing with the barrage that Sweden laid down. Surprised and shell shocked. Dunn actually had to defend -- for a change. O'Hara, Sauerbrunn are maybe past their prime. Dahlkemper and Davidson maybe aren't as good as we thought they were. Ertz was fairly good during the tourney, but I wouldn't give her more than a B-. The midfield is a puzzle to me. I'm not surprised that Lavelle showed poorly. The Swedes could out-muscle her and I already knew that. I thought Horan was fairly good. What was wrong with Mewis? She didn't get the ball much for one thing. I don't blame Vlatko for losing to Sweden. They're good and they surprised us with their aggressive offense. The loss to Canada was bad luck, a questionable penalty call. Still, we should have beat Canada, but the soccer gods were against us. All this is by way of saying that I don't think Vlatko or any particular player is to be blamed. You lose sometimes. We did. I'd like to watch the Sweden game again and see if those impressions above are correct. Anybody know where it can be watched?
NBC Olympics website still has it. Probably need a basic cable subscription? Maybe @FoxyPlus will sneak it onto their sekwet kool-kids only Yooz-Noze-Whooz-Toobz channel It deserves to be archived and rewatched. As someone who agreed with Megan Rapinoe that the US is the kind of team that needed a "kick in the teeth" or a Not-So-Young-Americans good sock-in-the-jaw, I have to say it's rarely done more beautifully than the way Sweden did it.
Because he is a man. You better believe if Pia or Jill or other women had his results these people praising vlatko would be calling for Pia and Ellis to be fired immediately. Heck people wanted those 2 women gone after winning major tournaments.
Just a thought. There may be folks on these boards who may be feminists (nothing against feminism) or folks who feel that as a male coach he is not judged under the same standard as Jill or Pia were. There may be folks here who may feel that some posters were harsh on Jill and Pia but now are "easy" on Vlatko. They may feel it is a male vs female thing so they are adamant. Just guessing. I want Vlatko to continue because I have seen what he has done in the NWSL and I am an NWSL fan. Nothing to do with him being a male. He is well liked and respected by the players. He deserves a full cycle just like Jill did. Remember, under Jill's watch the US didn't even medal in the Rio Olympics. They came in 5th. At least Vlatko got a medal. Jill was given another chance and then went on to win a second World Cup.
I "thought" that there would be replays of Olympic matches on the NBC Sports app or on Paramount + or on Peacock but I could not find any Olympic replays on ant of those. I was depending of NBC for replays and it worked great throughout the Olympics. I have not checked back but I now have and I simply cannot find Olympic replays anywhere. It should be noted that I can find replays of last year's NWSL cup and MLS matches in various places as far back as two years ago. I am a bit disappointed as I would like to replay a few of the matches other teams played that I could not watch at the time but it looks like I am out of luck unless I just missed it somewhere but on the sites that support a search a search for "soccer" does not return any Olympic events. BTW: As far as I can tell Peacock does not include a search function. At least not on my Roku. But I would not expect full replays for soccer on Peacock as it seems to be the wrong network.
Just writing a list possibilities here; USSF feels a bit too early to fire him(wait till the storm boils over) USSF likes he’s trying to bring advanced passing tactics or at least more refined version from our previous crass, ‘kick n run’(which the US tends to be criticized for) so willing to see this transition go through despite growing pains USSF might feel there’s more parity these days so a bronze ain’t too shabby USSF ecstatic that the men’s are finally doing so good(top 10 in newest ranking) that they’ve put the women’s on the back burner(as implausible as it might seem, this how the rest of the world treats woso) Perhaps Vlatko well liked by the players themselves(so far no bad mouthing like Solo did to Ryan)
Where is my chronology off? She won the World Cup in 2015 after taking over with one year left to go from Sermanni, She came in 5th in the Rio Olympics in 2016 and then won the World Cup in 2019.
In reality, the USSF would have sounded out coaches and their plans with regard to tactics and personnel. Then there is/was the Markgraf role. Some coaches would not want to operate in that environment. Think about the likes of Harvey and Dambach. There are coaches who would not want them to be a part of the team. Eventually the candidates who are willing to operate within those parameters emerge. Are there ultimatums? No. However it becomes very clear what is expected and you either take the job or you dont. As far as bad luck/penalty call, the USA dominance/streak has had several moments of good fortune to sustain. Its all part of it. Coaches and players take credit when its positive so must take the blame when it isnt.
You forgot to mention in your original reply that Ellis won the 2015 Women's World Cup. You instead started your post with Ellis didn't do well during the 2016 Olympics and didn't even medal, acting like that was her first big tournament with the team or something. It wasn't, it was her second big tournament one year after WINNING the World Cup. She was heavily criticized during that 2015 tournament btw, even though she managed the team well and made changes. She has been criticized much more than Vlatko with 90 percent defending him and giving him praise and a perfect 10/10 rating. He could do no wrong. He did everything correctly and perfectly during the Olympics according to you people. I just want to know why, why does he get a pass? Nobody is quite saying it but yes, I'm wondering why Pia Sundhage and Jill Ellis hardly ever got praised on this forum and he is being looked at as the greatest coach of all time by some people here. It's hard to not think it's a gender bias. I want someone to prove to me it isn't gender bias, either by showing me evidence that Pia Sundhage and Jill Ellis were defended by you guys as well, since you guys clearly don't think you're gender bias or some other reasons. To be clear, I don't want Vlatko fired necessarily, but I want him to be fairly criticized just like the players and I want USSF to do a full scale evaluation on his performance during the tournament, just like they would do any other coach. As for the people on here, there's only about 15 of us active on this forum anyways so I'm going to try and not take it seriously the fact that 13 out of 15 active members on here praise Vlatko and blame the players 100 percent. This is just a very small slice of USWNT fans and a very bias bunch I hate to say.... probably composed of white males. I may be the only woman of color on here. I'm done with this subject, I am very eagerly awaiting a person I considered a friend on here to say all four of my paragraphs are over exaggerated and irrelevant.
To all your points especially the second one: YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT? Did you watch the olympics? Not only did we get a bad result this is the worst any US team has looked since the Greg Ryan era.
Here’s the deal with Vlatko…. He coaches a group of potentially the loudest/biggest mouths in sports…. These ladies have the courage to criticize/praise ANYTHING. So when you see pretty much every player who speaks to the media say, he’s a fantastic coach, blah, blah, blah….(with the only real gripe I’ve ever seen is when he coached for a tie and you had players not necessarily agree, but also understood/respected the approach) then I think people automatically go to the players performance….. Unless someone here has deep sources within the team or is a player lol, I don’t think we’ll ever know why this team played the way it did.
First of all there are many people here from diverse backgrounds. Some of us are immigrants, some white, some black, some hispanic, Asian, etc.. I know, I've met people from here at games. I feel people trying to find racism and/or chauvinism where it may not be. Why would I or many of our male posters even be here if we are chauvinists? We wouldn't care less or waste our time with women's soccer much less post about it. We are here because we care about the game and the women's game. I actually liked Pia except when she was running up and down the sidelines high-fiving everyone after the 8th goal against teams like Guatemala. Jill Ellis took over after Sermanni was unceremoniously fired and we have discussed our opinions on his firing at nauseum here many years ago. I was never a fan of Jill Ellis even when she coached UCLA. Has nothing to do with her gender. I feel any one could have coached that 2015 team and won. They were young, hungry and talented. I was in Vancouver for that Championship game. Japan was and looked terrible. I agree, Vlatko should get scrutinized like all coaches. But I don't agree with a couple posters here who want him run out of town on a rail. I believe he deserves a full cycle.
Vlatko is not a good NT level coach if he can only win games with "his picks". Pia inherited a broken team that she had to rehab in less than a year. Ellis inherited Pia's team. Both women managed to win their first major tournament. But for Vlatko he gets a pass for not winning because this was not "his roster".
If you have access through your provider, there are replays available on the NBC Olympics page: https://www.nbcolympics.com/replays/sport/soccer
Just writing possibilities why our over-the-hill gang did look so average. But what might get him fired; CRS coach says Ertz probably wouldn’t be back for the rest of the season, so did Vlatko sacrifice her from completely healing from injury by starting/playing her prematurely?
You may be right, but the RoW is in a very different place now. International soccer is very different. Less time, bigger egos, less time with players, less routine and in the case of then USA women, more pressure. Vlatko is good with x's and o's in Club soccer. Jury is certainly out at International level.
I do have access and i finally found the women's soccer matches but, on my Roku, I have to scroll through all Olympic days to find the Women's soccer matches. The matches, again on my Roku, do not show up on a search for "soccer" or "Olympic soccer" or any other search terms I have been able to use and there is no search available the searches the Olympic section itself. That is the only way I can watch the replays is to go to the Olympic section of the NBC app and then scroll through each day until I come to the match I want. It is a shortcoming of the NBC Sports app that the Olympic channel is not searchable or able to be filtered by sport. I "can" watch on the computer that I have set up as a HTPC but it is not the way I prefer to watch. My HTPC is not really a comfortable way to watch anything. But, sometimes, it is the only way.