Yeah, that's how I feel at this point. There's been a lot of guys who have been rumored to have gotten offered the gig or at least having been in serious discussions about it. Then the flavor du jour either explicitly denies it, or the hype fizzles after a couple days, and we move on to the next.
To be honest I never saw how the World Cup on home soil thing is some extra special incentive. If the job itself isn’t enough incentive I don’t think playing at home adds that much allure.
🚨 𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟: Hervé Renard has left his position as coach of the French women's team. 👋🇫🇷(📸 @equipedefranceF) pic.twitter.com/3Dl7oZ3NRN— Transfer News Live (@DeadlineDayLive) August 6, 2024
It'd be the least sexy thing to do, but maybe the most effective, if we promoted Mikey Varas from within. Now he has the stain of working under Berhalter, but we saw when he ran the show himself with the u20's, how his player selection & tactics were seldom not logical. It could wind up our version of Scaloni. The worst thing we could do was hire someone simply because of their name while not even being a good coach or fit for us.
Or that an offer never came. Perhaps even that US Soccer had him at #2 and was slowwalking a bit. I don't think we'll hear anything until a few days after the women are finished with the Olympics though.
I'm hopeful (but not confident) that this rejection provides some insight into the actual, practical allure of the US job... even being American and holding the US in some kind of esteem doesn't get these deals done, especially with this tiny window and the EU leagues kicking off so soon. So someone that doesn't have experience in the international game, and/or who can almost surely get work for a "better" team, or in a relatively "top" league... they probably don't want the US job. Many posters don't really get this or don't want to, but names like Rafa, Low, Conceicao, Xavi, etc., unless they're like actually linked somewhere, are not worth bringing up. Interesting to see where they go from here. Guess Renard makes some sense. And there's always Dolo.
I think very good players can end up very good coaches. But they can also flame out pretty badly. And if you look at the best coaches in the world they all played the game at a decent level but it’s a mix of how good their actual playing career is. The key for us is to look at more of the actual track record as a coach and not get distracted by how good the playing career was.
I liked Varas's work with the U-20s a lot, and a similar promotion has worked well for Argentina and arguably England with Southgate too, but man, it feels like a big leap of faith to put that responsibility on a guy with that thin a resume. I do think it's interesting, though, that going by the thread here on BS, some England fans are in favor of promoting Carsley from the U-21s to take over for Southgate. So, they seem to be more comfortable with that sort of internal promotion.
The issue is that it looks like everyone wants to work for their club unless they were a longtime member of the USMNT. Rino was very adamant that he prefers to stay at his club. I think he only went to the club asking about a release because he wasn't sure if he was the next staff member being released. This is a problem for even the biggest MNTs to the point where they just bring up the best YNT coach or assistant MNT coach with no experience.
We're more insecure. The "we need a big name coach and for everybody on the team to be playing in Europe" mantras are mostly our own in the Americas. Meanwhile, look at Colombia's coach & lineups. And right now they're actually as good as we were aspiring to be when this project started.
Assuming you mean Matarrazzo, is there public evidence of this "rejection"? The closest thing I can find to public reporting is this headline and photo caption on a story by Chuck Booth of CBS. Generally speaking headlines often do not meet standards of journalism and are not by themselves reporting; Obviously the same goes for captions. I doubt Booth wrote either the headline or the caption.. BTW at least in the US it's pretty standard in coaching searches for the also rans to "withdraw" from contention and for the hiring entity to let them do so. Or, I could have missed some credible reports somewhere. I agree completely that club coaches tend to want to stay in club ball. There are obviously exceptions but not that many.
If anything, a talented coach is probably going to find it somewhat boring to play two years of friendlies and CONCACAF tournaments. A club coach is going to find it especially annoying to have so little valid feedback on what's working and what's not. It's like coaching one of the Old Firm or any other dominant team in some small league, with < 10 tough games a year. That's another reason I could totally get behind "hire an interim and in mid-2025 throw everything at Pep/Klopp/whomever."
An American doubling down on their club commitment at the first media rumor stages of the approach for what a number of posters here seem to think of as a very valuable opportunity with the US... that is what I mean by "rejection".
There's a risk of assuming facts not in evidence. I've seen a few different versions of PM's statement, and none said "I have decided to stay at Hoffenheim" or any synonym of that. To me this looks very carefully worded to emphasize how excited he is to remain at Hoffenheim while at no point saying he turned down the US. That could just be a courtesy to the federation or it could be threading the needle with the truth but not the whole truth. I've followed a not-small number of US college sports coaching searches, and this is a pretty common pattern when it gets down to a few finalists and the hiring entity is wrapping things up with their #1. (Note especially the timing given Renard's conclusion of his France job.) If the women win gold and a coaching hire is announced middle of next week, apparently everyone is going to read this as "Matarrazzo turned them down and it took a week to hire the next choice." For now, I see no evidence. Please, someone show me what I'm missing.
To reiterate my last point: There's an asymmetry. Candidates, both rejectors and rejected, get to issue statements reaffirming their commitment to wherever they are. US Soccer will probably wait for the women to finish up their current moment of glory before announcing anything. And they obviously should not release statements like "We reaffirm our commitment to hire someone besides Matarrazzo."
I agree there's not really enough to go on from that statement. It could be that there was an offer and Matarazzo turned them down. It could be that there's a process that's winding down and US Soccer informed Matarazzo he wasn't selected. Or it could be that Matarazzo is on a shortlist but couldn't continue to wait for USSF to make a decision at this point in Hoffenhiem's preseason so he decided to commit to Hoffenheim publicly before USSF said yes or no, in order to put an end to the distractions. It's hard to say without knowing more.
@PhilipVU94 the link to Matarazzo by USSF seemed to be very credible, and now all the latest reports which are also credible are that he's not leaving Hoffenheim. That's all I'm talking about. The official media statement may be much more diplomatic, as it often is, but the overall takeaway IMO is we have pretty good reasons to believe USSF started talking to Matarazzo, and he told them no. So an American who was probably not the first choice on anyone's list 2 months ago (certainly not among many here on BS)... even that caliber or level of coach seems to be saying "no" to this opportunity. Seems to me it's a reasonable indication that perhaps we need to re-calibrate what this opportunity might represent, especially to the larger community of managers.
Sorry, I'm really not trying to be lawerly (except in parsing carefully worded statements). I agree that many US fans overrate the job. I don't think we know enough to use this as an example. I agree with the first half of this paragraph, and then the second is a huge unsupported leap: IIRC one German source, maybe Bild?, reported the US had offered him the job. If you're taking that one report as reliable, that's the bridge to get you to "Matarrazzo rejected the US job." A couple more sources indicated that there was definite interest. With that fuzziness, it seems plausible that they had PM on the short list and chose someone else. Or that they chose him and he rejected them in a very non-committal way. Either explanation jibes 100% with his latest Hoffenheim statement. (bold added) Good point. The third option, a sort of mutual termination of interest, is also possible. If we get to about August 20 or so with no coach announced, then it's pretty clear he rejected them. But if we get a coach in the next 7-10 days, it's not clear which side is allowing the other the courtesy of face-saving.
It came off to me like he was on the list but there’s no offer currently and he withdrew after it leaked publicly (and Hoffenheim reassured him his job was safe as they had apparently been looking at a different coach).
It's not exactly the Golden Gate being erected here... we had reasons to believe USSF have reached out, and now we have reasons to believe that Matarazzo told them no. That's it! I'm not claiming anything as the absolute truth, or that "a job was officially offered". That's not the point of my... point. If Matarazzo told them no -- which seems reasonable to assume from here -- it should tell us something about the allure of the job. And this kind of thing is why I've said basically since Gregg was fired that we can dream big at the start... but should be emotionally prepared for Cherundolo.