So does "some people" refer to me now or are you talking to other some people who "delight in sowing misery"? If not, who the heck are you referring to? When you speak in such generalizations, don't be surprised if people are unclear who you are talking about.
None? It's Grenada. They are ranked 175th in World ELO. The difference in ELO between Grenada and T&T is the same as the difference between the US and T&T -- they are twice as worse in both ELO points and rank. We always blow out those teams. That's Cuba, Martinique, not T&T territory. Hudson coaches exactly two games and everything about those games that can be measured objectively is exactly like matches under Berhalter. Even if you like how they played (and that's pretty questionable given the similarities in shots, xG, etc.), it's such a ridiculous stretch to call it an "overperformance." That 1-0 win over El Salvador at home with the A team is only an "overperformance" if you want to use it as a bludgeon. At this point, I can't figure out if Poch is guaranteed to beat El Salvador 5-0 or whether he will simply do 1-0 and we'll all pretend it was amazing?
Needless to say. I did not. Coach criticism, like player criticism can be and should be a fact of life, period. People are always going to disagree w/decision making and they should. We are not automatons. IF anything falls away, it will simply be arguments based on pedigree. He clearly has an impressive CV in the club game, the best of any to coach the USMNT ever. No disagreement here. All that being said, it doesn't mean I will "never" find fault with his decisions or the fed for that matter. Why on earth would it mean that?
Living in the US and co-locating with the rest of US Soccer would yield benefits. The scouting thing is odd to me -- given the size of the pool, the largest percent is always going to mostly be on tape. Face to face with the player and other coaching staffs are great, but that's what planes are for. But if that's the price, then you can pay it, especially for a couple of years. I'd love for the youth coaches to soak up Poch, but you don't always get what you want. As for his level of commitment, we will see. He's saying a big part of this is the time he has for his family, and I do think someone poaching him is a risk, but not everyone is Klinsmann.
I agree we should temper expectations. This hire is about perception in large part )domestically and globally) more than anything, and my thought has been change for change sake is appropriate and necessary. I am excited for a manager of this caliber to take a fresh, unencumbered look at our player pool and check every mid-twenties ego, bring along young players, etc. It’s a short term hire, appropriately. We still need long term growth. If he fails to a degree, we can take a renewed look at domestic options like Cherundolo etc. I would have loved Nancy. I think on a surface level this hire does silence a part of the discourse and places a lot of the responsibility back on individual players to perform at their highest level. I think we really needed that.
Well yeah, and so what? That being said, I agree, there's not really a scenario one can imagine where a canning could be possible, especially considering the financial outlay. I think I still like Emma Hayes better, but I'm open to being wrong about that. I'm not someone who finds a lot of fault w/this guy. Anyone know his background as an assistant?
Fair points, and admittedly I have some personal biases here. 20+ years ago, I worked in Europe while my boss worked in the Midwest. This was before Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, etc. We made it work with good old-fashioned email and company specific landline-based tielines. But I don't think anyone's commitment should be questioned for something like this, all else equal. I'd assume as mentioned earlier by someone else that there will be staff assigned to keeping up on the US-based players in the pool. I would also say that Europe has more options for really inexpensive flights and train travel. Now would Mauricio Pochettino hop on the next RyanAir flight from London to where he needs to go? Doubtful. But I can absolutely see the merits of the senior team manager being based in Europe with more of the team based there. We all had a healthy diet of Gareth Southgate crowd shots on Premier League broadcasts over the last eight years, and I'm sure we will see Lee Carsley shots this season. I think having Pochettino easily able to attend European matches is a bigger benefit, as it also will be to not have to factor the 6-7 hour time difference for discussions with club personnel.
I am actually fascinated to see how folks react to his decisions. He's got a rep of way too late of subs -- which Berhalter often shared (though not always). Will the same people who hated it with Berhalter hate it here? Or will Poch's credibility make them view it differently? Personally, things like subs and rotations always seem to be "six of one, half dozen of the other" decisions that are almost always evaluated on result. It's not that there isn't a right answer; it's that there are often very good arguments on both sides, and the game to game result is highly variable. Berhalter was crucified for not rotating in Qatar; Hayes rotated even less and won Olympic Gold. Arena is criticized for not rotating in Trinidad, but if we had lost with key players on the bench, that'd been the issue. A star offensive player is clearly tired; if he comes off and his sub scores, it's genius; if he comes off and they don't, we took our best player off the pitch. There's rarely non-sensical choices here. Some people like to trust their players and their plan; some people mix it up quick. I've never seen anything even attempting to point out one is better than the other, either in short term or long term.
The player identification aspect will be interesting. At club level, managers aren't responsible for player identification and squad building. At international level, they are.
I think it's more a case of this sets a competent floor and serious ambitions and expectations with consequences behind a coach with a legit CV. We hadn't had a coach with a truly exceptional CV with this program since the days of Arena and Bradley and Bora, Arena and Bradley, exceptional in our small pond, Bora exceptional in the world of international soccer. Klinsy was not that, we learned, and Berhalter was as a coach, in club soccer, at best, average to slightly above, maybe. As an international coach, I think most of us will disagree w/how impressive or not he was. With Poch, we know he's got a legit CV in terms of club career. He's turned very good players into very good teams, and great players into very good teams and sometimes great teams. How much is him, how much is the player is open to debate, but we saw with Emma Hayes, that the right kind of coach, can indeed make a difference, though I think the argument that coaches, unless they're really horrible, or really, really brilliant, only move the needle so much, I think that's true, but I also don't think we've had a coach capable of moving the needle a ton since Arena '98-'02. I don't think any of them were that, probably Bradley came the closest. Now we do. So we'll see. I'm open to the idea that maybe all that changes is consistency of performances, rather than ceiling, but time will tell, and some of this may end up just being contingent on health and players aging into their primes from early youth circa '20-'23.
I can only speak to the last 20, but like...last, and not close. He had a few high points, basically all against Mexico, when the team really seemed to be cooking, but for the most part, it was a grinding slog.
Giant pile of bull---- straw manning. There are what, 2-3 guys insane enough to think this was and is a SF caliber team. Nonsense. Pure nonsense. There's a golden mean between: This is all Berhalter's fault and This is on the players for ----ing the bed. Somewhere between those pole's lay the truth. I think most of us could also tell very specifically when performances had more of the Berhalter issue connected and when they did not (the Honduras come back, and the desultory bowing out against Uruguay being classic Berhalter games in different ways). The truth is likely in the middle, like it always is. Part of qualifying was about Berhalter not figuring things out quickly enough, but part was also about health, player youth, and player performances....its the truth in just about everything. It's never just one thing, but it's also not a thing that exculpated Berhalter from blame at any given point either. My chief concern in the moment is that supposedly Berhalter was very involved in the system top down of all the youth teams, and that was a reason why the fed didn't want to can him, will Poch just focus exclusively on the senior side? Will he prioritize the U20 WC in '25, and the U17 WC in '25 too? Not sure, but I tend to imagine this was a hire 1000% about getting the best possible performance+result in WC '26 and everything else is not even secondary, it's way down the list of priorities. I hope he'll be involved, but I tend to doubt it.
re: Crocker and Poch ... interesting to go back 5 years and read this again .... https://thesefootballtimes.co/2019/...ints-become-the-premier-leagues-entertainers/ the big dance is not a 38 game season .... it is setting the team up for success game by game against unique styles and strengths .... high press, high line, direct play .... I actually think this could work out very well for us ... it was always suspect how methodically we could play out of the back and build the offense carefully .... most of our goals have come from counter attacking very direct play .... many of our players in Europe are used to high press and direct attacking play (Pulisic, Weah, Adams, Wes, etc.) .... now how will he set up our D? Would that be Jonny and Yunus .... what keeper makes sense? I am actually very optimistic here .... collective pressing on demand ... less focus on possession for possession's sake alone. press to regain and immediately attack .... this requires three things: 1. time to train and implement 2. outstanding fitness 3. collective team mentality it does NOT require the best technical offensive skills to maintain possession - but relies more on fitness and collective aggressive pressure ... and it relies on young very fit legs (kind of like Bielsa ball) ... question is will Poch get the total training time with them to implement it - or will he select players that play that way at their club squad making the approach straightforward to implement ... if healthy - Wes and Tyler and Weah and players like that do fine ... Pulisic learned this well at Chelsea ....
Oh, calm down, the semis stuff was clearly tongue in cheek. You know damn well I don't think any coach takes this team to the semis based on coaching. (Now luck and a hot streak...) But the reality is, for the amount of blame laid at Berhalter's feet, Poch should be a material and frankly, swift, improvement that is easily measurable in statistics and results. There's simply no way the gap for most people will be limited to aesthetics. If it's that big, then results will follow. I'm seeing inveterate haters in these threads who attributed everything from Weah's red card to Pepi's finishing to Berhalter now say they don't know if the results will be better. C'mon! Most of you spent literal weeks of your life writing about how Berhalter sucked and was actively making the team worse. Why is everyone so hesitant now to put down an increase in goals scored or xG, or games won, ELO rank, etc.? I didn't think Berhalter sucked, and I actually would put my money down that Poch can get us back into the Top 20 in ELO. But I also think we're still going to struggle with bunkers, that our scoring certainly isn't going to get a ton better, and that I'm very wait and see on World Cup expectations still.