San Diego FC loan new signing Alex Mighten 🇺🇸🏴 to Nordsjælland 🇩🇰, who they have a partnership with, for the rest of 2024. It’s good that he’ll be keeping match fit, but honestly I’m not sure how many minutes he’ll get. Mighten joins fellow American Milan Iloski at the club. https://t.co/4lJ4NrLFH0— American Ultras Talk (@ameriultrastalk) August 31, 2024
Good luck San Diego FC Marsch: "Our players know the US pretty well, too... I had anticipated that Mikey, with Gregg Berhalter being a big influence for him, would play a similar style of football. So we were able to craft a match plan to deal with some of those things... and we executed really well"— Charles Boehm (@cboehm) September 7, 2024
In their defense, San Diego FC has never lost to Canada. (Haven't run all the numbers TBF but definitely not since MLS was founded.)
𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯 𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗠𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘆 𝗩𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘀.▫️ Led the @USYNT U-20s to the 2022 Concacaf Championship▫️ Qualified the U.S. for the Olympics for the first time since 2008▫️ Coached the U.S. at the 2023 FIFA… pic.twitter.com/vegs319BB9— San Diego FC (@sandiegofc) September 16, 2024
Before San Diego FC spoke to Mikey Varas, he was enamored by the project. So much so that in interviews, he told the club if he didn't get the job, he wanted to help in some way. “Something special is going to happen here and I want to be part of it.”https://t.co/fLh7H42NuH— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) September 20, 2024
I have no idea if Varas is ready to be an MLS head coach, but I think he will be good for the developmental / young play aspect. The question really is whether he can handle the head coach parts of the job well enough. Because they still have to not suck.
Are we sure? Look at Tab Ramos. I think it's the opposite. It was the opposite with Ramos. Ready for an opportunity, but not good for the "developmental/play play" aspect. Also wasn't a good MLS coach, even if he fairly earned his chance.
One guy we can be sure will develop young players is Caleb Porter given he did so with Akron... look for the Portland Timbers to be a top development academy by 2015
An interesting nugget in there: Mikey Varas said he would have been in talks to be an assistant on Mauricio Pochettino's USMNT staff.“I had a World Cup on home soil on the horizon. I wasn’t going to give that up for just anything.” https://t.co/dtDmVytfe6— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) September 20, 2024
Ramos didn't fail at Houston because he didn't develop players -- he couldn't even get a relatively veteran team functional. And Varas has a pretty good history, from my understanding, in the FC Dallas youth ranks that Ramos never had. They might have the U20s in common, but Varas has actually done youth development at the club level and been generally praised for it.
First of all, I said Ramos wasn’t a good MLS coach, so you’re just being selective with what you pull out of my post or didn’t read it properly. Never made the development aspect the disproportionate focus of my post. Also, I’m not really sure Varas had such a better development track record prior to the U-20 head coach job. There were real questions if he was any good when he was given that job. Ramos was also the U-20 assistant for two years, so he didn’t just get it off being a good prior player.
Not sure about any similarities between Ramos and Varas except that they happened to coach youth teams, so all these guesses are pretty random. He will be either below average MLS coach, or above average. Just average is also possible. The same goes to youth development. But fortunately, at least, unlike Porter, he isn't a horrible jerk.
I said that I thought it was questionable whether Varas was ready to be an MLS head coach in terms of running a team, but that he'd be a good pick for youth development. You are the one who said not only that you think it was the opposite, and that Ramos was the opposite. I'm not sure you know what those words mean, but that means you think Ramos was ready for the head coaching aspects but crappy at player development. That's what the word opposite means. You did not have to use it; you are the one putting half the emphasis of your statement on that. If you did not mean to address both sides of the statement, simply use different words. I don't really think my thought that someone who has been a long time youth coach but never really been a real head coach of a senior team would be better at the development than the head coach stuff would be all that controversial, but you are welcome to your opinion.
The comparison is they were both U20 coaches with similar results who also served as USMNT assistants.
No, you're right, words are too big to me because you took a different meaning from my post than the plain meaning of the words I used. What a condescending reply. Varas has earned a chance. You don't have to have a genius resume to get an MLS job. Being a moderately successful US U-20 coach usually is good enough over time to get that chance. From that standpoint, he's ready for a chance. Whether he'll be good in MLS is an entirely different discussion. Not every coach who had the resume for a chance ends up being good enough. Further, not every good youth coach is actually good at developing players when the job changes from developing exclusively youth players (or developing players in a lower league) to being in a job where you are tasked with balancing all of it. Most coaches will default to whatever gives them the best chance to win, whether they come from a development background or not. That's why the "he was a good youth coach, so he'll do great for the young players when it comes to development" mantra often fails. The best way for him to keep his job and advance is to win, not to develop players.
Well those two had fairly extensive coaching experience outside the USMNT which is less true for Varas and Ramos.
Varas was the assistant to Yuchi at the FCD academy back when it was the best in the country. Losing both at the same time (even though to the same club as coaches) set it back. I don't think he will do good but mainly because first year expansion team coaches are always cannon fodder. Just really hard to go from nothing to decent although it occasionally happens it seems more of a result of talent acquisition than coaching.
Actually a lot of clubs do fine their first year (like St Louis last year)..............and then reality sets in (like St. Louis this year). MLS is a very difficult league to consistently win. Parity reigns supreme. So multi-year success is down to really good front office work and good coaching. Cincinnati and Columbus make so many good signings. And it makes fans of other teams say "why don't we do that?" As far as I'm concerned, a USYNT job is very different than an MLS job. That Athletic article about Mikey indicates he has a very good reputation amongst those FCD coaching ranks. FCD's academy does seem to turn out coaches that move up the chain. All the way back to Pareja. Doesn't mean they're all successful. But coaching development does seem important there. Now Aldaz has moved into a more high profile job. The conveyor belt of coaches in and out the door is great, but not the most conducive to consistency. Particularly when it comes to recruiting, etc. I have no idea if Varas will be successful as a head coach in MLS, but he's worthy of the opportunity.
That's what you get when you say I'm being selective on what I focus on when there's really no other way to interpret it. If you meant something else, you just could have said it. Anywho... I don't know what earning a chance really means, and I don't mean that in a snarky way. When I look at his resume, I would be extremely suspect of hiring him because he's never been a head coach of adults, and he has just two years of being an MLS senior level assistant as well as what, like a year of USMNT assistant experience? It doesn't mean he's going to be bad, but let me put it this way: Varas has limited senior level experience, limited head coaching experience at that level and limited club experience at that level. That's enough for me to question whether he can manage an adult roster effectively in terms of man management and motivation, and also whether he can handle the tactical and technical aspects of even MLS-level coaching. And the US assistant / U20 pipeline that seems in full force has not been overly successful. This isn't just the Berhalter guys, but even Arena and Bradley's crew have rarely give us a successful tree member from their USMNT staffs. You are right that not all these guys are good at development, and also right that many of them eschew playing youngsters when the pressures of keeping a job come on. But I'm not sure why we'd assume that to be true of Varas, especially with ownership so focused on development. And given his personal resume, I'd bet he's far more knowledgeable and comfortable with that than the other. That's all.