Not sure that will make them worse. In tournaments defensive teams do well. Biggest problem may be the fan base that seems to value oles more than ugly wins.
Interesting that Brazil does not see themselves above hiring a foreign coach if he's the best man for the job yet the US just might.
We have no idea what the new sporting director is going to do. We also don't know if he/she is going to have a larger salary to offer. Brazil has an issue. That issue is that they haven't won a World Cup in 20 years. An outrage!
I’m certain that if Ancelotti said he wanted to coach the US, he’d be on the top of the list. And hiring a foreign coach would be a new development for Brazil. It’s only happened three times and briefly in each case (1925, 1944, and 1965), https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/dec/22/brazil-appoint-foreign-manager-european-world-cup
They were already totally unwatchable and to be fair to them, it probably makes sense considering the attacking potential of Canada and the US, but not so much with the World Cup expanding. I know nothing of him, and just view El Tri as a mess now and clearly 3rd in the region despite still developing plenty of interesting U17/U20 talent, it's not transitioning to internationally relevant except for the prospects they're poaching off of other countries. I expect Canada and the US to be better this cycle, but I will add there is no reason whatsoever that Mexico shouldn't be able to turn this around at any time, I do not really fully understand why they're pipeline is completely plugged up, though I think Gogo and others theory is as good as any I've seen.
YEAH GUYS! WE'RE GONNA GO RIGHT AND AND GET US A TOP SPORTING DIRECTOR! YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW FAST AND HOW AWESOME WE'LL DO THIS! GO TEAM! It shouldn't take six months, but good lord, I have no idea what people want out of a press conference. Positive spin would be that they are setting a longer timeline so they can beat expectations.
Mexico's fanbase still very much believes that they are a vastly superior footballing nation to everyone else in CONCACAF. They belong in CONMEBOL, not CONCACAF, with the dregs like the US and Canada. Never mind that this hasn't been true for decades, the idea that they might not be able to simply waltz in, score some goals and waltz out but rather would have to play defensive is unthinkable.
Yes, of course we would like Ancelotti. The point is the gap between Ancelotti and any American manger is large and logic would dictate the future coach coming from somewhere within that gap. And if far better soccer nations than the US are open to a foreign coach if that's what the situation calls for, we should be too. Honesty, I think whoever we get will most likely have largely similar results n 2026 as the player pool will be more responsible than the coach for any successes or failures. But, if you want to get the best coach you can, that coach is unlikely to be American. If you want to hire an American coach to develop the coaching pool or some such reason, say that. The idea we keep seeing thrown around that an American coach somehow brings some sort of special skills or knowledge other coaches don't have gets silly.
I'm torn over it. The '18 cycle was a total ---- show, in part because of firings and an election, but finding Earnie took literally 7 months from Couva to his official hiring which is pretty freaking incredible. Even worse, after that we had to wait another 7 months for the coaching hire or 14 months from Couva. This one looks less stupid but similar in scale: Likely hire is going to be a good 6.5 months after Stewart left, and another month or two before we get a HC. I'm not sure how to feel about it because if I recall correctly, Arena was hired in late '98, and Bradl3y was hired, I think, in late '06. Sampson was a temp to hire, and I simply can't recall how long it took to go from Gansler to Bora, or from whomever to Gansler. Needless to say though, in this day and age, having no official HC for more than half a dozen international matches minimum is pretty freaking stupid, and having no TD aint great either. Of course we may wish they waited longer when we hear the hires (I'm not confident at all we get someone anywhere near as accomplished as Earnie as TD and we've been brain dead in terms of creativity at HC for decades, w/it being largely an incestuous ---- fest of New York/New Jersey connected guys for decades except for Klinsy which was basically just a Sunil love affair/side piece kind of hiring.
Hire the best coach you can, but not every foreign coach is going to be the right fit culturally or for a variety of other reasons. Thomas Tuchel for instance is head and shoulders above any American coach. But does anyone think he'd be the right pick to coach the USMNT? Fit is important and you just need to do your due diligence with any foreign coach to make sure it's there. The reason that its easier to speculate about American coaches is because we know they'd take the gig.
It took four months really to hire Stewart because it was Cordeiro who had the idea of hiring a GM and he didn't get elected till February 2018. And then Stewart was hired in June 2018. Now we can say that it shouldn't have taken four months because Stewart was such an obvious candidate. But I don't really count the time after Couva when Gulati was clearly on his way out and USSF wasn't going to move on anything. Bruce Arena was hired in October 1998. So roughly 4 months after we went out of the World Cup. By that same time scale we would be hiring a new coach sometime in March/April. Bob Bradley was named interim coach in December 2006. So roughly 6 months after we went out of the World Cup. And he was only named interim because Gulati still really wanted Klinsmann. By the same time scale we'd be hiring someone in May/June. I'd of course wish we could move faster on the decision. But these things have no traditionally happened overnight as it is. And because it was a winter World Cup we didn't have the time we usually do before the cycle really starts up again. For now my hope is that we can find a sporting director by the time we get to the March window. Which would make getting a coach in place by the Nations League finals doable.
That's actually interesting as he is quite good in tournaments and has a time period when he first coaches a team where they get better dramatically before teams tire of him. So if we could hire him for 1 1/2 or 2 years before the WC he might be good especially if our defense has issues. be prepared for a lot of low scoring but winning games until the wheels fall off. Pulisic might quit though.
I think its complicated. I definitely think they're fan base is a bit delusional at times but I will say that when talking about their own teams performance, most were horrified at how ---- they played throughout '21 and '22 and most were afraid they wouldn't make it out of the group stage considering how little cutting edge there was to the attack. Now many people understood that part of the problem is the pipeline has stalled out and the fact that they're poaching players from the US and Canada etc is a sign of how bad development has become is something many aren't honest with themselves about. Otoh, there's no reason the team can't turn it around if it faces some hard truths and reboots a bit, cleans up liga mx etc, gets a system in place that promotes effective development rather than hoarding talent etc, and maybe they're okay. But right now they need to own some things: Namely, at the U17 and U20 level they've fallen off badly, particularly the U20, I've never seen them as bad at the U20 level as they are now in my watching and I've been watching for 20 years. They haven't won an U20 qualifying championship in what, a decade or nearly a decade? They've been knocked out early or against the US like 4 consecutive times I think and the U20's are far more relevant to talent than the u17's. It's not great, at all. The US put out a moribund, horror of a team in '21 U23 qualifying and if not for an utterly brain dead backpass from Soto, Mexico ties that ---- team of ours. In '23 they failed to qualify for the U20's or the U23's due to crashing out in the freaking quarterfinals. I am a believer in their talent and upside long term, but in the short term it is a gargantuan mess. Most understand the obvious (things are down, this aint your '98/'02/'06/'10/'14/'18 El Tri etc), but many don't understand that there are real bad signs just like with the US circa 2007-2013 in terms of development of that '90-;96 cohort, and that the performance in qualifying in '13 might have predicted some of these problems in advance as now they've been horrible for 2 of the past 3 cycles, and horrible at the important youth level age cohort since at least 2015 (U20's).
I don't disagree, after I heard the news about how long the process would take (and who was running much of it) I was irate, but I also had to own that previous hiring processes always took at least 4-6 months from what I could recall this century so it's not really that odd. The only one that's super odd is the post couva thing and as you mention, because of the election everything was delayed, and because Stewarts man was an idiot determined to play out an MLS season, we postponed developing the team under him for another 6 or 7 months which was insane in my view (considering his CV), but the fact that they're taking till the summer is very miuch in keeping with previous cycles where the WC took place in the summer and the change over then occured during the following winter or very late fall. Can't remember w/Bora, can you?
I was too young during the 94 cycle to remember anything about the Bora hiring but this seems to indicate that it was at some point in 1991 that he was hired. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/62994127
I think it's hard to speculate on foreign coaches for that reason. And the job pays well but it doesn't come close to what top club coaches get paid.
Do people believe Cone and the timeline? Will take close to half a year to hire a new sporting director. But that sporting director will then hire a new coach by end of summer, so about two months after getting hired. Then remember it took these same folks a year to hire G. I mean, whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen but I put zero stock in what Cone says. If people actually think it takes close to 6 months to hire a sporting director, and will take a fraction of that time for the newly hired sporting director to do a search and hire our next coach, and the search for the coach won't even start until the sporting director is in place....then I have a bridge to sell you.
No, but that's why I think it is important to remember the rather large gap between our best and the best out there. Lots of guys are in that space. We've had two guys who got first division jobs in top leagues, and both were pretty poor and did not last long. They're probably the best we've come up with so far. Lots of guys a level above that aren't getting mega bucks at massive clubs. The Ancelotti type or we hire American is a bit weird if we're really talking about getting the best candidate. It's kind of like saying if you can't get LeBron for your team you may as well go grab a solid college prospect. Again, I do think there are legit arguments to hire American but they're not about getting the best coach if we're being honest.
Well, it's not the same folks. Like, completely different people. I have no idea how long it will take, but I find it so odd that people constantly act like there's been no turnover at USSF for decades or something.
In the end the Arena/Bradley/Klinnsman/Arena again searches were run by one person, the Berhalter search was run by a different person, and this next hire will be run by a different person. And none of us have any idea in terms of how that person will operate.
Well, there are 5 leagues often referred to as big 5. That means at any given time you're talking about around 100 coaches working at a higher level than any current American now that Marsch was let go. Who fills those spots? There are a decent number of guys who come in and out of those jobs. I guess I might define it as guys capable of competing for a job in one of the top 5 leagues or with some international success to point to. That's not a tiny pool of guys and only a handful of them are household names making mega bucks. I get that we're not ready to hire and he may have preferred to stay in Germany, but a guy like Pellegrino Matarazzo with moderate success at multiple Bundesliga clubs would be the level of guy I would consider gettable and likely competent. Those guys aren't out there in the thousands but there's more than a handful of them as well. I think if we just didn't focus so much on all the preferring an American, speaks perfect English, knows all about college soccer and MLS developmental squads or some such and just let the guys searching go find the top coaching possibilities out there, we'd be fine. It's all the extra caveats we add on that make it seem like there are no options unless we spend 20 million and convince Pep to come take charge. It becomes a very false augment very quickly.
I'd also like to point out that while the shine has come off a bit with some less than impressive results once he hit the big time, Marsh took the type of path more of our guys need to explore. I think we need our coaches to work on getting more involved in better teams at higher levels even if it means being an assistant for a time and working their way up. Marsch's example of learning from other top-level coaches and getting better opportunities as he moved up was what we need to see more of our American coaches do if we want them to get to the top positions and become more successful. I hope he gets back on the horse and gets there because his example is a good one. Our coaches need to develop as much if not more than our players. Our payers have actually seemed to make more and better progress thus far.
Pellegrino Matarazzo though was gettable because he's American and because he didn't have a job. I don't think he's leaving Hoffenheim for the USMNT though. It's not just the money either. I don't think any sitting top 5 coach is leaving for the USMNT unless they are on the verge of getting fired or just burned out. Look at the EPL for instance. There is not one sitting EPL coach who would leave their current job to coach the USMNT. The pool of options is guys who don't currently have jobs and not all of them are realistic either. I don't think Tuchel and Pochettino. Here's your list of currently available coaches https://www.transfermarkt.us/trainer/verfuegbaretrainer/statistik You might be able to get a Luis Enrique, but Brazil are also interested and there's also talk that he's being lined up to take over for Simeone this summer. He's also very similar to Berhalter stylistically and in trying to install a complex system with a national team.