The issue I have w/this sort of thing is that it's hard to evaluate and a moving target. I'd argue the culture by fall of '19 was totally imploding and Berhalter nearly lost the team. I'd argue by Summer '21 the culture thing was beautifully put together. By fall '21 you had McKennie getting suspended for a second time in 6 months for covid quarantine stupidity on his part, and JAB being trebuchet'd out of the team permanantley after he begged off window 2, so kinda bad again. That got straightened out by window 2-3 and I'd argue chemistry and culture were great from there until we had Reyna gate a year later. By summer '23 things were awesome again. Then the roof caved in from fall '23 to fall '24. It looks more like a roller coaster ride with certain big --- drops in '19, '21, and '23/'24, and a lot of quality ups in '21, '22, and the first half of '23 w/o him. So I don't really know the answer, this feels like it was mostly about the players themselves other than '19 when Berhalter's decisions seemed to play a central role in things. I'm not trying to get him "off" on this, but it really does seem like both Berhalter and the players were basically collectively dog ---- at their jobs in '23-'24, like all of them, and Berhalter deserved getting fired for it, and the players deserved getting a Lombardi sized kick in the --- after his canning.
Yep, it was probably the best thing that could have happened post WC '22, but man does it suck to flush the Copa America down the toilet to get where we are now. We've only played in 4 of those in the past 30 years, and to totally ---- the bed w/the best team we ever took to one due to such gross stupidity, if understandable stupidity is beyond frustrating. But I'll take the win. We dumped Berhalter and that was/is HUGE for us. The hire makes it Huge x100 and honestly solidifies Crocker as a monster stud.
In every sport, the vibes and chemistry inside a clubhouse can be productive or destructive season to season. Confidence, in particular, is notoriously fickle. I don't know why we expect anything to sustain 5-6 years. I've watched the Padres' culture flip flop year to year; I watched the Warriors' culture slowly degrade as key pieces left and other key players had their priorities and comfort levels change. We had a very good culture for a long time, built up by a number of things. One of the key components is that coaching staff was pumping up these guys' confidence and getting them to constantly put out aspirational comments or say they could play with anyone. And that worked until it didn't. The team looks like they lack confidence compared, to say, November 2022. And now we seemingly have kind of the worst of all possible worlds ... a team that doesn't really believe it anymore but also doesn't seem to have the chip on their shoulder to change that. I think ANY reset will be good. I think this is something Poch has been good at. I think it's a delicate thing -- I don't think tearing them down is probably the right move but you've got to kill the unearned parts. I'm probably more worried about other elements long term, though. This stuff seems in Poch's wheelhouse.
Its always a roller coaster ride during every tenure though. It was a roller coaster under Bradley and Klinsmann before that too. Both of whom had really good results at times, but both of whom were also fired by the USSF mid-cycle like Berhalter. Its a roller coaster because we're dealing with human beings and the gap between success and failure at times is razor thin. Its always a roller coaster so.................people should be enjoy8ing the good times. I think too many people missed that we actually did have a lot of good times under Berhalter. And yes, it will be a roller coaster under Pochettino too. Good times and bad times. We're not France or Argentina. We don't have that kind of player pool. Chile won multiple Copa Americas in a row in one generation, and now are really struggling. Only 5 points from their first 8 WCQers. Chile isn't St. Lucia. its just how these things work. There's no divine right to anything.
I’m most curious if he’s going to be able to use his contacts in Europe to help find guys better club situations. The biggest problem we have right now is the number of players who don’t play consistently for their club but do for us.
Not just the USMNT, but every national team. I mean, most international tenures don't actually last that long. International soccer is hard. The line between success and failure is razor thin. More and more and more and more nations are improving to the point that there are very few cupcake games. As a program, we still haven't learned our lesson about 2nd cycles. That was the issue with all of Bradley, Klinsmann, and Berhalter. Arena's second cycle also wasn't as successful as the first. You know? If Crocker is such a stud now for hiring Pochettino, and he that kind of appointment and finance was available to him by various means.....................................then why did we rehire Berhalter post-WC22? And I'm sure we had some other possibilities lined up other than Pochettino. For all this time on the boards we've all been saying "the USSF doesn't have the finances to hire a big name." I've been saying it too. I've been in that chorus. BUT CLEARLY THEY DID. They figured it out when desperate.
I think failure helps with raising money. And also with a home World Cup coming. Just a comparison, Michigan has beat Ohio State three years in a row and won the national title. In response Ohio State went to its donors and was able to raise 20 million+ in NIL to buy one of the best rosters in college football. And they were very motivated to fork over that money because of the failure of the last three years.
It's a combination of urgency and circumstances. I think they clearly had more internal will to find a way to fund it with the loss at Copa. But I also think, despite the other reported interest, that Pochettino might be more of a unicorn than we think. For one, the two year time period makes it more palatable for both the coach and USSF's finances. For two, both Crocker's and Hayes' personal relationship played a role -- I think Poch's trust that Crocker won't be a pain in the ass and Hayes' assurance on how things are going for her were likely big. And, of course, the Chelsea contract and Poch being unemployed are good timing. Other coaches reached out, but how many would have been interested in 3-4 years? How many would have been interested in $6M/year if they didn't have the Chelsea money sitting there? How much did the personal dynamic get it over the line? People were taking their calls, but we don't know how many would have made it past the very clear barriers.
Looking at it's from the grass roots perspective, it's an extra $4.5 million a year to hopefully go an extra round at the World Cup every 4 years. Imagine how many new pitches, new coaches and new referees you could fund for that. Poch would be the 9th highest paid manager in the Premier League and will coach around 20 competitive matches a year, mainly against CONCACAF competition.
My tin hat theory is that the initial plan from USSF was to have Crocker help develop the youth programs and let Jesse Marsch be the manager. When the team was anti Jesse they figured things would be fine with Gregg. I also have a tin hat theory that Gregg was so taken aback by the negativity from even the media that he got extra conservative.
New USMNT boss Mauricio Pochettino gets in front of the cameras 📸 pic.twitter.com/4a2bItZtT3— B/R Football (@brfootball) September 12, 2024
A 2 year contract isn't going to be enough to persuade the likes of Noel Buck and Chris McFarlane to switch never mind Europe based players.
Im giving him the "stud" grade for having hired Hayes, a top flight, seemingly out of our league option for the Womens team last year, and now landing Poch for the senior team. They're elite hires. Why did he stick with a no schlub for the womens team in summer '23, and the mens team in summer '23? Probably because he was just hired, and got the green light to not mess w/things a few months before the olympics, and the fact that the fed had intended to retain Berhalter before Reynagate, and players cosigned on him helped probably get him to sign off on Berhalter. Do I disagree w/those decisions? 1000%, but I'm not gonna let that annoyance get in the way of the good, that we replaced both those coaches with far more talented options.
There's zero evidence the team was anti-Jesse. There's a decent amount of evidence that the team was pro-Gregg/pro-keeping on the direction they were going. I'm not sure where the anti-Jesse stuff got manufactured, but somehow people leaped from "the team expressed support for Berhalter" to "the team didn't want Jesse."
I think Pochettino can succeed with the motivational elements. My concern is that Pochettino has succeeded as a club coach by: Having a team more fit than anyone else and outrunning them Being extremely focused tactically on detailed positioning and specific patterns off of reads Working to develop player skillsets over time That's his formula. The dude is intense. The dude measured people's saliva daily to gauge their fitness. He's all up in your business. Can he convince our players whose club coaches don't require that level of fitness and work rate to get there on their own? Because you can't get there in camp. Can he better distill positional play details and patterns of play to our team than Berhalter did in the same limited time? I'm sure he's better at tactical planning ... but can he find that balance and is it even possible for his shit to work with our players on this timeline? Will players be amenable to him giving them longer term developmental work and will they do it? If Mauricio Pochettino can't counterpress or get his players to play effective positional play ... what did we buy? I'm not questioning Pochettino so much as the way he wins is a very club centric way. It's the same thing as if we had gotten Pep -- can he teach it in less time? Does a watered down version work? Even if he can do with Argentinians, can he do it with players who aren't immersed in tactics from age 4? If our players won't get in great shape for the national team, can the counterpress be effective? If he can't do that ... what did we buy? It's such a vital part of what he's done before -- the counterpress is a big part of what allows him to be so aggressive offensively. Sure, he's done without it with PSG, but he had a Neymar-Mbappe-Messi-DiMaria attack there. I have no doubt he's a better coach than Berhalter. But if the team was mechanical because they simply couldn't pick up the reads and positional play elements well enough to be second nature ... it may not have been the coaching so much as the idea or the personnel. And if the team doesn't want to work on their fitness and game out of the camps ... that's 2 elements of his winning formula at risk. It's 100% a worthwhile hire and I'm super excited. But there's folks here who have posited that we simply do not have the players to do much more than sit back and counter ... and if that's true (and I don't agree, but if it is) .... we hired the wrong coach, I think. I don't know that he'll do poorly, but he won't fulfill the potential that's there.
But what is really the "potential"? It's the World Cup, a one-off tournament. Crazy stuff happens in tournaments all the time and 'talent' isn't always the reason, good or bad. At most we get 6, maybe 7 games (no idea how the initial rounds will go with the expanded field). He's here for 20 games, barely half a season for a league. I don't see how you can meaningful measure "potential' based off that. Even if you go from 16 to 10 (which is massive improvement) you still lose in the round of 16.
Good points all, and I'd argue, part of what we needed in the past was either more simplicity, or a way to get our players to play less robotically and more instinctively and fluidily, pass and move, receive and move, and far too often things seemed to get bogged down w/players appearing to have fuzzy thinking happening, rather than instinctual, fluid, intuitive decision making (probably the best example I have is how when you're first learning how to drive, building up the whole process of mirrors, blinker, turning the wheel, gas and break, shifting if that's an option is all just a staccato mess, and eventually you reach a point where like probably most of you, half the time I can't even remember 95% of my driving I did w/that highway amnesia effect, but I do know I was fluidly doing all those things on the way from home to work 16 miles away (the mirrors, the wheel, the breaking, the blinkers, the shifting with my newish car etc)....it just kind of magically happens....I tend to think that one of the reasons international soccer is more simplistic to some degree is there simply isn't the time to drill down what to do liteally everywhere situationally etc and be effective, especially with a pool that's constantly evolving and availability an issue....you need to set up a framework that is easily trainable, and allows players to legitamently be fluid in their play and decision making, otherwise you get what we so often saw, which was players slowing down as they seemed to think decisions through, instead of intuiting what to do because its "what to do in this situation" like a blinker, who goes first in a tie at a 4 way stop etc.... But that's just my intuition, I don't know if it was hard to learn this Berhalter ----, if our players are just stupid, if its something inbetween, if it was something just different, but there was clearly a problem with picking up the system, and players seemingly being both predictable, and yet also like slow of mind and play while being predictable while they often seemed slow and confused. It was a mess. How much was youth? How much was it may have been too complex for the international game? How much was injuries? How much was players just being square pegs and round holes....I don't know. And when I hear he's of a similar bent, but even moreso, I can't say I'm not alarmed. Just trying to transplate Chelsea/PSG whatever to here, isn't going to work. He's gonna have to find a different way. He's got basically what, 9 or 10 windows left that are full international, he's gonna need guys on the same page within 6 or 7 windows of now. As an example, that's basically the equivalent of Window 1 of WCQ through the start of WC '22, maybe less? Not exactly a lot of time, and in terms of total windows, not including cupcakes, thats 9/22, 6/22, 3/22, 1/22, 11/21, 10/21, 9/21, 7/21, 6/21, 3/21? Basically the March '21 friendlies against Northern Ireland and Jamaica, going further back to those post covid restart matches including the bizarre Lletget at Striker match.
Including his vacation he missed less NT games in 13 years than our current "stars" are missing in 3-4 years. Donovan was USMNT, that one that wanted to fight in every game, that one that fans wanted to watch.
I'm not defining this solely by World Cup results. What potential is here is the overall level of performance we reach. Look at Colombia right now -- their talent is certainly in the same range as our but their mentality and organization is miles ahead. I do think some of that is in the players, but I also think that Pochettino can bring them together better, can bring elements tactically, and can get the players to simply do more. Will he is another question, but while I thought we were more or less on schedule through WC 2022, it's very clear the team is not performing at all right now. There's definite upside for any new coach, period.
The weird thing about Colombia is all this is true and yet they still failed to even qualify in the '22 cycle. Nuance helps in situations like that. If you dig under the hood you find out that Colombia tied a billion matches, and so dropped so many 3 point opportunities that they finished just outside the qualifying zone. You take a closer look and quickly realize in several key factors Colombia was actually one of the best teams (fewest losses, goal difference etc). It's a nice reminder on how thin the difference is in this game between success and utter failure. They came within a whisker of winning the Copa America and in multiple metrics were the third or fourth best team in South America period, and yet failed to even qualify for the WC. Fumbles here or there can change everything. That's basically what happened to Canada in 2 of 3 WC matches as another example, and Germany as well.