I think England underperforms a bit relative to their talent, but I also think the two teams are much closer than you give Spain credit for. Rodri is an incredible player. With Pedri, Olmo, Ruiz and Merino, their midfield stacks up well against any. carvajal is an excellent right back and cucurella is a solid left back. Laporte imo is very underrated, and nacho and le Normand are solid as well. in the attack, morata isn’t a great goal scorer but he is smart and technically gifted. And Williams and Yamal just finished breakout seasons. They’re damn good. with England, they have plenty of talent, but their left back situation was a mess. Given that, I don’t think their back line was as good as, and certainly not better than Spain’s. Their midfield underperformed, but again, spains midfield is really good. Southgate’s big mistake was playing Foden out of position. That and not using their depth more really hurt them. Spain doesn’t have the same quality depth, but they rotated guys better and had favorable scheduling.
I absolutely believe this and think its misguided when you see so much about the disaster for soccer in the country if we don't do well or the gains to be had if we do win one more game. Growth of the game in the US is a long term project. The failure to make the Cup in 2018 didn't stop it and neither would a poor performance in 2026. Neither would a solid performance change the landscape all that much after the initial rush dies down.
Yep. I’ll give an anecdotal example of what is growing the game imo. A good friend of mine is also a big soccer fan. He follows the usmnt pretty closely (though not like we do on this board), but he’s a Man U/EPL fan who never paid attention to mls until Charlotte got a team (we are from North Carolina). He’s been to a few of their games and commented that he was surprised by the level of play. He’s not a big fan now or anything, but he pays attention some and has a lot more respect for the league. Getting more people like him to watch mls, and having kids grow up in cities like Seattle and Atlanta thinking the local mls team is as cool as the other pro teams, along with the continued growth of academy systems, is what soccer needs in order to keep growing in the US.
Benitez was released because he wanted cheap a$$ Mike Ashley to invest more money in the squad. Ashley refused and let Benitez walk. Benitez performed well at NUFC given the extreme spending restrictions from Ashley. He won the championship and then got a paper thin squad to overachieve and finish mid table two seasons in a row with a bunch of jobbers. To say it was "up and down" ignores the realities of the general effects that team spending has on table position in the premier league.
it was well below that. https://www.football-espana.net/202...as-compensation-package-still-not-agreed-upon
If we get a Spanish speaking head coach, it’d make sense to bring in someone like Hugo Perez both for translation to the players and knowledge of the domestic soccer landscape.
that makes all the sense in the world, but ironically thats basically why perez will never work in ussf again.
This is how one of the analytic firms ranked the squads. England a bit ahead but fairly close. I myself would say England has more talent but Spain is pretty clearly the better team.
Which was preceded by flaming out at Real Madrid (where his successor won three state Champions League titles), and the Newcastle tenure was followed by poor coaching jobs at Everton and Celta Vigo. And the situation at Everton isn’t great, but that hasn’t stopped Sean Dyche from doing much better there.
Ok here’s what McBride said. Charlie starts his question to McBride about Marsch at the 37:00 mark. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...-network-podcast/id1614458454?i=1000662327703 “First of all Charlie, I guarantee you he (Marsch) was sitting on that comment (about the US Soccer Fed) forever. He was waiting for someone to ask him, so he could throw down (laughs with Tony Meola.) Listen I think, like any organization you have to have integrity. And, if you’re going through the process, and from what I understand, you know, he was very much of the opinion that he had the position. I had heard from other people that he had the position. Not from anybody inside the Federation, but from other agents. You know, understanding…how that process went. I can understand why he feels that way. Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re a soccer organization, a sporting organization, or a large company, a Fortune 500 business…if you don’t have integrity through the whole process, you’re going to be found out. People are going to start talking about it. So I completely understand why Jesse said that.”
Agreed. But it is interesting to see how even those guys can be made to look bad at ti es against an opponent that is in the flow like Spain. There was about a 5 min stretch where Rice went from solid player doing his job to a flailing giveaway machine. He recovered but those could easily have been the margin of victory, and it seemed down to how organized Spain’s pressure was.
Matt Crocker has the chance to do something very funny.... GARETH SOUTHGATE'S FULL STATEMENT...Bit of class as he steps down as England manager."I hope we get behind the players and team...and understand the power football has to drive positive change." 🏴❤️ pic.twitter.com/QgFt6qyENC— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) July 16, 2024
I think Southgate would be an ok coach but the English offense was underwhelming. Why does anyone think he'd "unlock" our 9 problem?
You sure know a lot about our new coach! Tell us, what's his preferred formation? Will he play with 3 CBs? Do his teams perform well in the attack?
Anyone hoping for a more attacking team would be disappointed by Southgate as he shares a lot of Berhalter's conservatism on the field and also in terms of making changes, although he did change things up in a positive direction over the course of this tournament. He would command some respect and he'd at least hit par with this squad. I'd prefer someone who'd be interested in being at least a little less boring but if it were him or Dolo, I might prefer Southgate just because of his international experience. He's been more successful than many seem to think because England has been similarly loaded for decades and the results he's gotten have been better than what they've usually had. You have to go way back to find an England team that did better than his squads. Sure, some of that is down to a lot of talent but talent has never been a problem for England, its more often been a lack of putting it together. But yeah, it would not likely yield an exciting team.
So I don’t think he’s earned all the criticism he got with England and he’s got their best results in basically forever, but I don’t think he’s the guy for us. I didn’t think this at past tournaments but I think he got these Euros wrong despite making the finals. I also think more than tactics the big thing he did was massively improve the vibes with (which have historically been fairly toxic). And which works for England given their overall talent level. This is a good article from the Athletic that I think does a good job talking about both the good and bad from his tenure. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/56...y-england-manager/?source=user_shared_article He and Crocker do have a preexisting relationship so I’m sure they’ll talk about the job. He’s the coach USMNT Twitter probably deserves but not the one I’d want to see hired.
All I see is an article with a severance pay of about 4M per year of what is left on the three year contract.
this is one of those times im just prompted by another post, it isnt a direct reply/agree or challenging your post sort of thing. but- its interesting you mention vibes, because for all the parallels between him and gregg its primarily off the field stuff. the vibes, the new age-y holistic synergy approach to football, etc. like hes already got a powerpoint presentation on yoga being a positive influencer on youth team gk coaches ready to go. that was the same bond crocker had with gregg. i know its crazy to say im "worried" about getting a world class manager, but the possibility of continuing on that philosophical road with one of his (crockers) pals is just a red flag to me. my worry- specifically- is that that could simplly be a much easier, more comfortable hire for crocker than a renard or a mourinho (who i mention only to illustrate im just naming names) who may be better fits. i dont really have strong feelings on southgate one way or the other. his club career isnt all that impressive at a glance, steady upward-ish trajectory into a huge job. i dont even want to get into the weirdo mindset of semis and finals being great and underachieving. i just dont see how he really fits what we need/have been lacking. "international experience" doesnt really mean anything to me. i mean, how much did eriksen help mexico and their historic fifth game problem? i would mention klinsmann, but hes an outlier to me- its not that he was a guy that just didnt work out, he was crazy pants. he never showed any quality as a manager. and while i dont think the money is a huge concern, its hard for me to say "sure, give southgate $10m like we would have given klopp". i think "doing it" at 2 places is an entire world away from doing it once. and yes, dortmund to liverpool isnt exactly the hardest row to hoe (talent-wise) but england havent over-achieved. id say solid 7 out of 10 (with england historically being about a 5 out of ten in terms of playing to their talent/ability level). anyways, my point is i dont really think a continuation- even just of a general philosophy/approach- is what we need right now. we are in a tricky spot. on the one hand we cant gut the house and start building from the studs up- we just dont have enough time for that. ive said it before we cant rebrand in two years. but the (extreme) other hand is your big sam, nothing is sacred, blank 442, fill in the names- that doesnt get us anywhere we want to be either (though it would give us a true account of our player pool). thats the needle i think we have to thread. thats why my preferences run from benitez (who im really glad someone has finally at least mentioned in the media) to dolo. they dont have a set ideal, or final picture in mind where everything is filtered through that. they make winning teams out of what they have (to obviously wildly different degrees of experience, and "proven"-ness). i dont think our pool is incapable of better, more consistent play. i dont think a 433 is the problem. i dont think being defense-first is the problem. i do think the insistence on building out of the back/possession was a really bad fit. i dont think we one tweak away from being an offensive juggernaut. mostly i think everything was tangled too tightly, and the more gregg tried to loosen the knot the tighter it got. that 21 gc team approach was never going to directly translate up to our better players (who would somehow make 1-0 leads on fluke goals from fbs stand up vs the netherlands), and forgoing high pressure to get reyna on the pitch wasnt going to solve our attacking issues. gregg had his positives, clearly, and he had his ceiling. but subtracting those cumulative negatives is the point, not blaming him for not being dechamps or whoever. southgate brings a lot of similar, potential complications before even getting to tactics. the importance most people are giving to international experience i give to simplifying, maximizing what we actually have right now. we can decide to become a proactive italian, or conservative french, or counter-attacking croatian-style team after the world cup. we are on the clock, with very little time or ability to (meaning comp) become something else.