Impact of Abby's Injury on Pia's Tenure

I don't think Pia should be fired regardless. She just hasn't had enough time to really make this her team yet, so my answer is D on both situations. I do think that Abby's injury will make not-firing Pia easier if the team fails to medal.

 

D.

I was wondering the same thing - how this will impact Pia. But "gold or fired" is a ridiculous ultimatum for a coach in this situation (unless the coach does something really insane). It's not realistic when you have at least 3 other teams who are easily gold-worthy.

Pia should be given ample time. She is too great of a coach, and I doubt anyone would fire her hastily.

 

i am a ryan apologist who thinks that pia is a good coach and who, especially now with abby's injury, will be given more time with the team if they get out of the group. i doubt that she will be let go if the team does at least that.

with abby, i think she should have been let go if they didn't get at least second place - meaning get to the gold medal game.

i still think they'll win it all tho! it's just a good old american challenge. that's all.

 

To clarify,my post was in response to a post by casocrfan.

If we had a program that evolved in a rational manner, A and A should be the answer. But this is a special case, I think, so I think the answer this time is C and D. Since this is the Olympics and not the WC, maybe D and D

With the top men's programs in the world, If you don't bring home the World Cup, firing is accepted and automatic. There is, of course, a pool of coaches that seem to rotate through all the national teams. some years the coach and players mesh well and have success, some years they don't. Both coaches and players accept that the key to longevity is success.

In many countries, the grace period isn't even through the competition in question. Already, on the men's side, people are calling for the head of the Argentina coach for not properly preparing his team for the Olympics. Just yesterday, I was reading in a blog in Spanish about how the Argentine attack (with Messi on it) didn't mesh well.

The defense was described as being a "disgrace, a complete shambles". This after a 0-0 result in a recent COMNEBOL match with rival Brazil.

The coaching world is very harsh.

I should probably include my original post was part of a conversation with CASOCRFAN:

I don't want to put words in casocrfan's mouth, but I think the 'price' we are both referring to was a result of the dynasty of like-minded coaches we have had over the last 20 years. They came from the same programs and had the same ideas, and the players on the team Pia inherited are all cut from he same mold. They kept the same players (often past their primes) and ran the same style of offense and defense.

Pia did make an attempt to bring some players who had different styles of play in the first camp or two, but some of the best of this lot were ignored for so long that, there being no other place for their skills, they were not in top form. What resulted was an unfair competition where the players who had already been on the team had an advantage. At least one of those players actually stated at the end of her NCAA run that she was ending her soccer career because she knew her style wouldn't be appreciated on the National Team.

As casocrfan has stated, there is a crop of young players, too, who might be able to contribute if given a chance.

Pia has thus far done a partial job, but USSoccer is in such a state that 8 months isn't enough time to change things. And change is needed.

I've even toyed in my head that we should institutionalize this change, and that perhaps we should run the Olympics like the men's side, and view it as a youth program, giving new blood a chance to show what they can do...

At any rate, Pia should be given more time regardless to bring more new blood in. I'd be pretty disappointed if the next World cup cycle didn't have at least half the team as new players (a player's career can't reasonably be planned at more than 8 years) So far, there wasn't enough time to effect changes on that scale.

 

What does "better than Ryan" mean?

He lost 1 game in his tenure.

 

If the U.S doesn't get out of group play Pia is gone not matter what since the group is rather weak. As long as the team advances Pia is safe since the quarterfinal round could be a very tough game - one the U.S. could have lost with Abby.

I agree with Clive 100%. One of the main reasons the rest of the world has caught up with the U.S is the national program's lack of evolution since the team's dominance. China is suffering from the same fate.

 

Yes, But wouldn't that grace period be the proper time to rebuild a team?

 

I say neither of the above. Surely someone like Pia has a series of plans "B" in case this or that happens or whoever gets injured. So one player will make little difference. Perhaps Abby is more than just one player, but still. I believe the U.S. will winn Gold as if nothing had changed on their team.

 

well said! no question about it.

this is a widely held opinion that i totally disagree with. ussoccer has done just about all that can be done by having yearly camps for 30 or so players, which is the worst way to develop a national team. as soon as other countries started training women's teams seriously, the uswnt was going to start getting caught. especially as some of those countries already have a soccer culture which we do not have. soccer culture is one of the most important factors in developing good teams. it makes it easier to attract the best brains and brawn to your team. the u.s. does not do that.

we should have moved on to the d1 professional league approach a long time ago. we did, and we started to get the payoff. that's how boxx, the world's best midfielder a few years ago, was discovered. then it all went to crap.

all hail the wps!

 

We should advance from the group. If not USSoccer will have the grounds to can her. Once out of the group, it just depends on who we face. As others have mentioned, the quarterfinal could be a knockout if, we merely advance rather than win the group. If we face a Brazil or Germany, a loss would suck, but not be shocking. If they(or anyone else) embarrass us, then Pia's job is at risk. It wasn't just the whole Scurry thing for Ryan, it was that they humiliated us, and that is unacceptable. Alot of this is going to depend on the coach who needs to make sure nerves don't get to the young 'ens. It's hard for me to realistically say with confidence, all the sudden Kai and A-Rod will be 90 minute plus impact players, game after game, as this tournament goes on. I hope youth means they don't know any better in terms of nervousness.

 

I'm puzzled. You say you totally disagree, then it seems to me you say something very similar. We are talking about a program that was held prisoner to one philosophy, you talk about the need for a culture of Football that atracts the best and the brightest minds.


Didn't we just say the same thing?

 

jackiesdad: actually, Pia is down three starters from the 2007 World Cup (Kristine Lilly, Cat Whitehill and now Abby Wambach) as well as Leslie Osborne who played significant minutes. Both Lill and Abby are first-ballot Hall-of-Famers. No coach is going to have an easy time replacing them.

(of course, I say Lill & Abby are first-ballot Hall of Famers, but for a minute there I was forgetting that most of the USSoccer Hall voters are men. Joy Fawcett, the MOST CAPPED DEFENDER IN THE HISTORY OF US SOCCER, and THE HIGHEST SCORING DEFENDER IN THE HISTORY OF US SOCCER, has now been passed over twice on the Hall voting list. For shame.)

Back on topic, I'd give Pia more time no matter what the team does at the Olympics. Number one, they have been playing a lot more attractive football. It's a big leap as the team played Heinrichs/Ryan ugly ball for years. Not only does she have to get the players onboard with her new system, she has to deprogram them from all the bad habits they developed over the last few years (booming clears to no one, charging forward at all times, bringing the ball forward the same way over and over and over, etc.)

I predict the U.S. will get out of their weak group & get creamed in the next round. I hope to be proven wrong.

 

no.

because by "soccer culture" i do not mean holding soccer seminars around the country, hiring the right coaches, picking the right players, and changing the youth soccer system, all of which ussoccer has attempted to do.

i mean something that can be found in brazil, and germany, and argentina and is almost indefinable. it's almost a built-in mind and body set that allows brazil for example to play very little soccer with their women's team and yet be competitive. the players are just naturally soccerwise. they are almost born with it.

that's what i mean by soccer culture. we don't have it, and ussoccer can't buy or create it. so we absolutely need a d1 pro league in this country. if you want the uswnt to start pulling away from some of these other teams, you better support the wps when it starts. it's our only hope.

 

Well I guess we really don't agree, then.

I don't buy the "Brasilian Athenas borne full grown from the head of Pele" theory. They work plenty hard at what they do. They are well coached and from what I've seen personally, Brasil and Argentina have well established coaching systems (well, argentina only in the last couple years). They didn't play internationals as a team, sure, (the men don't either, for the most part) but they do play.

The difference is that there is more than one coaching system, and more than one style of play. It's the blending that keeps the sport advancing. We haven't done that.



I also don't buy the WPS as the thing that will save US soccer. It will make the pool of possible players bigger, but it won't guarantee quality, and it won't necessarily enable players with different styles to get on the team.

The last women's league had players like Tiffeny Milbrett and Shannon MacMillan winning POY awards, then being relegated to bit parts on the WNT.

Milbrett quit over the way Hendrichs "coached". Other players were driven away.

Remember MacMillan as Supersub? why on earth would you take the player who Tony Diccico himself admitted was the one player who could make immediate impact , and relegate her to being a sub?

Because she didn't fit the plan the coaching system had. She was a soccer player.


Until you get a system that can identify and use creative players to their fullest. nothing will change. And those players are out there - now.

 

I don't think the federation has done everything it can to support the evolution of the women's national team. Here are some items:
1. the US Cup is no longer. Holding a tournament which brings in the top four teams in the world every two years would certainly help create a better culture.

2. Linking the old WUSA to MLS. The fed could have insisted upon this but didn't and it hurt the development of a stronger soccer culture in the U.S.

3. Bailing out WUSA, or managing it better, or getting the WPS up faster. Pick your option, but the fed let WUSA make major mistakes from the start -- mistakes that many warned about before the league started - and the fed did nothing.

While I agree that a soccer culture like that of Brazil or Germany will never develop here in the US, I don't agree that the federation has done everything it can to help develop something. In fact, I think the federation has done the bare minimum.

 

Be that as it may, how do you explain that the U.S. is still the top team or at least second from the top. Somebody must be doing something right, no?

 

Well, I wouldn't take a lot of solace in that. The US FIFA ranking right now is 2200. Germany is only 26 points behind. The sixth place team (N. Korea) is 2038.

There's not a lot to pick there, especially if you consider that N. Korea doesn't hardly play international except for required ones.

Further, The US rank was -7 points last go-round, All the other teams in the top ten held or went up. Korea went up 15 points.

Statistically, one loss to one of those teams and we could drop as much as 5 or 6 slots.

Is that the sort of trend you want to see continue?

 

I think Abby's absence will lower expectations for the team. But at the same time, it will allow other players to step up because they have nothing to lose. I think it will really bring the team together and in the long run, make them more flexible. I still think they have a good chance to win the gold.

 

I think the U.S is, maybe, the third best team in the world right now. Germany and Brazil are 1-2 and then Sweden, Korea, Canada and the U.S. are bunched in a group right below them.

Who is doing something right? The players. They are excelling despite the federation but my post is about how the soccer culture has been neglected by the federation, and has not grown like it could have. You're taking my comments a bit out of context.

 

Sorry about that!
For sure the Federation could do more. Could it be a case of the chicken and the egg? As long as the national team continues to do fairly well, maybe the Federation feels they need not to do any more and are just content with a status quo.

 

Very good point and, I think, the truth. The team's success has allowed the Federation to ignore much of what it should be doing.