Co-sign all of that on that guy, but Doug McIntyre did say they were expecting an announcement “sometime Monday” and of course Jeff Carlisle reported that the board was meeting Sunday night to approve the deal, so I don’t blame anyone for thinking it would happen yesterday. After reading Goff’s most recent update, I don’t get the sense it’s going to happen today either. Which probably means it will be announced as soon as I post this.
Well I must have misremembered. For some reason I thought i remembered a brief cameo against Uruguay but apparently not.
It sounds like one of those things where there’s still a few final details to square away but could be any day now (including today).
You would think if sources backed the idea of a Board of Directors meeting to approve the signing that somewhere along the way it got denied and now they are trying to rush to fix any errors in the contract.
To wit Today is the day for Mauricio Pochettino and the US Men National Team! Im being told he should finally sign his contract today and be officially announced as the new head coach. @ESPNFC— Julien Laurens (@LaurensJulien) September 10, 2024
i agree completely, though i would go a little further and say we are as bad as a team as i can remember. for all the guys that show any concern whatsoever for puli getting manhandled he may as well have sleep with all their wives/girlfriends. we are well into negative chemistry/team "spirit". i also agree (with your following post) that gregg bears a huge responsibility for this, even beyond the players. acceptance of his principles/vibes culture/etc was paramount- and that included yes men in every level of staff, youth coaching, etc. it was a cult of (boring ass) personality, and operated counter to any sort of meritocracy. buy in was more important than performance always. so there was never a team building of our individual players over the last 6 years- you had to prove your loyalty (fealty) to him, at which point he would assemble his idea of what the team should be based on that, not suitability. ive said it time and time and time again, he managed a vision of a dish, a recipe with no concern for ingredients. his supporters use players' support (particularly leading to his re-signing) as proof his success/potential going forward, but it was simply a public showing of that buy-in from guys who know exactly what happens to them, and their place in the team, if they dont. how long did it take puli and adams to make blatantly obvious statements counter to that the minute their nt prospects were no longer in their hands? ream and even zim from the olympics are popping off about playing for the shirt, too much complacency, guys need to be held accountable etc- where was that over the last year? and yes, its done, gregg is out. everyone wants to chalk of any honest evaluation of the state of the program to "rehashing" all the gregg-hate but you can look before, and even during his tenure (the relatively little he was even actually in charge) for signs of the overall mismanagement in the fed. after couva we set out to identify the necessarily then-current/next "generation", with grandpa dave caretaking puli, wes and tyler, but also jedi, weah, etc. gregg took the most obvious cream, and insisted on using lesser, "lost generation"-adjacent parts to fill in the cracks. and frankly that was exactly his level. that was the closest his vision and a team getting actual results were the closest. he won those baseline concacaf trophies without ever using weah, jedi, those allegedly "second-tier" euro players. he frankenstein-ed puli/wes/tyler, tried to squeeze every drop out of bradley, jozy, etc and skiped down to steady hands in mls while dismissing the younger euro options. and that was a fairly proven template in mls at the time- think arenas galaxy teams with beckham, keane donovan and 8 nobodies. the sounders even more starkly dempsey, martins and some guys to defend and get the ball to the two of them to be a dominant mls side. and it worked. gold cup, nl- safely at home, each being questionably "taken seriously" by other teams. that, of course, was exposed by qualifying, where we had to actually step out of our comfort zone, but the damage was already done. with his original approach vindicated he never found a way to (actually, genuinely) evolve beyond that. the limitations of that 1.0 setup were being made very clear, and his reluctance to truly move on to weah, and jedi, and musah from mls options led to barely qualifying. and heres where i have to add the disclaimer that it wasnt, and isnt, a matter of "mls vs other" in any way other than identifying where players were at. without miles, zim and even long (for, well, a short time) we wouldnt have qualified, full stop. i maintain that acosta used strictly as a 6 was unequivocally one of our best players. lletget and arriola were justifiable "stopgaps" for musah and weah (lovitz over jedi at literally any point was just bs), but not to the extent (and how, in acostas case) gregg used them. the cracks in the foundation were very clear, the solutions were apparent, but he was both slow and/or unable to adjust, to scale up in ability. so go back to that "vindication point"- post gc.nl wins, pre-qualifying. the hierarchy was already set. our coming complacency was set in stone. as evidenced by shaq moore on the copa roster months ago, jackson yueill on the gc roster last year. buy-in to greggs vision was- again- paramount. it mattered far more than anything else. thats the culture he created that is still present today. it explains the players support even after "the line" (concacaf at home and no higher) was apparent to everyone. it explains the chemistry issues of "to get in the team you have to have been in the team", but you cant get in the team until youve been in the team so...? how could you expect any fight, heart, pride when thats the case? of course our players are entitled and lack intensity or any real sense of cohesiveness? more importantly, why is that anyones fault other than the players? why i am still banging on poor gregg about this? because with possibly two or three exceptions none of them are petulant, spoiled babies with their club teams. when puli was in that toxic, black hole of chelsea he still performed (both with them, if they deigned to use him, but certainly us). he just kept pushing, and with his move became the player we all saw in flashes. juve never sat wes down for acting like he was the man, it was his team- he pushed and worked. is there a lack of motivation with their club teams? do they coast for 70 minutes? but somehow we have 30 guys who miraculously stop being professional once theyre called into the national team completely independent of any other factors? that argument is beyond any reason or logic. the problem is the national team- from the fed higher ups to the manager that cultivated this culture, to the assistants and endless string of youth coaches/interims to keep that cancerous approach alive? and mikey varas has the gall to say its on the players? when he sent out greggs first team or their direct backups? when hes been a part of that poisoned culture for years? get the f out of here with that garbage... of course players have to be accountable. they have to give everything they have in whatever team they are in. they have to perform as well as they are able however mis-used and/or mis-managed. no one says our players are at the level of germanys, much less frances. but if you think these clubs, at the levels they are, are only entertaining american players for jersey sales- at the expense of their performance- youre simply dumb. but the problem is us soccer. its the national team. its not the players- players who have (almost to a man at this point) literally been bred to fit in and buy-in at the expense of everything else. poch wont make a difference in terms of xs and os. you can be so craven as saying high press, playing out of the back, etc is basically what gregg was doing, though it sure makes you look pretty dumb. and no, he cant make players any better than they are with their clubs. but he can create, and impose, a culture that doesnt make them worse. im all for that "real test" of how good our pool actually is. like i said two or three hours again when i started writing i belive its every bit as good as its made out to be up to and including being a "golden generation". our players are beyond what any pool before them has been, and its not by just a little. people say all the time 94 (which is a little hyperbolic), or 02 (for sure) or whichever team would kill this current team- i couldnt agree more. team being the key word. i just hope we/i get to see these players as a team before its too late. because they havent been that since, what, the summer of 2021? and no one put them above any "historic" us team. as for blaming gregg- as soon as everything he put into place isnt still our active default we can finally close that chapter. would we be any worse if we had kept him on until next april or whenever poch gets around to signing a contract? no (clearly we can look even worse). but we wouldnt be any better, either. this- what we just saw against canada- is well within the +/- of what we are, or can be, until we absolutely clean house/completely change the culture of the team. thats what will, or wont, make poch "worth" the big money. as much as i love and support and objectively rate our pool hes too "good" for us strictly as a tactician/game manager. but if he thinks he just has to pick out his 11 plus 5-8 and go nuts on a whiteboard we are in trouble, and the quality of the pool over these collective 8 years is a completely moot point.
The problem with making Pulisic the Captain is that he ends up being his own lawyer instead of having Adams argue his case.
carlisle is really counting on all you fed-lovers to defend (meaning retcon and misrepresent) how objectively wrong hes been at least half a dozen times to this point. i mean, he doesnt have the credibility to be taken seriously as a twitter rando right, much less as a "journalist. i mean, the level of semantics that its going to take that poch has basically been our guy for the last month and a half is astounding. but i know you guys are up to it. youre as shameless as a mid-level garth brooks hit.
i think adams has disqualified himself from the captaincy with his selfishness. i agree puli isnt the ideal guy, like deuce before him. im not sure we shouldnt look real hard at wes for an answer there.
EXC | La firma de Mauricio Pochettino será en estos días, en principio no está previsto que lo haga hoy. Está todo acordado para que sea el técnico de cara al periodo mundialista hasta la Copa del Mundo de 2026. No se espera que esté hoy en el partido contra Nueva Zelanda. pic.twitter.com/LwEauAN70l— Eduardo Burgos (@edu17burgos) September 10, 2024 This guy says not today, but in the coming days
USSF is definitely a place where the person who had to approve the press release left early to go coach his kids soccer game and so it's going to be a day late.
You might have been joking, but this line stood out to me in the Athletic's description about the process of wooing Pochettino: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5720499/2024/08/24/mauricio-pochettino-usmnt-when/ Pochettino, 52, was described as being “extremely excited” about the opportunity to coach the U.S. leading up to the 2026 World Cup, which will be co-hosted alongside Canada and Mexico. His previous relationship with U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker and the Welshman’s transparency regarding the state of the program have been important factors in convincing Pochettino to agree to take the job for far less money.
"But we're breaking the deal! We cannot pay him more than we pay Emma!" "No, because what we're paying is not salary but compensation for his breaking the Chelsea contract. As it was stipulated, so far he didn't get another job, he was going to get paid $13.2m/year until the summer of 26. That's $26.4m for the two years left. We sign him for those two years, and to get his agreement we cover the difference as compensation, so we're actually giving the money to Chelsea so they pay him that difference in one single payment now, not as a salary. Since we can only pay him $1.6m/year for those two years, for a total of $3.2m, we have to transfer $23.2m to Chelsea to secure his release. As you see, it's not a salary!"
"U.S. Soccer certainly learned its lessons from the Jürgen Klinsmann era." ✍️As #PochWatch continues, @PaulTenorio breaks down just how much control Mauricio Pochettino will have over the men's program 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/mFCFKbxHn5— Golazo America (@GolazoAmerica) September 10, 2024