This is good to hear, but I also think it indicates that there are plenty of folks in the locker room who have not forgiven Gio yet, and that he needs to be on his best behavior moving forward.
It‘s everyone else‘s fault for not understanding the depth of Gio an his family. Who cares if he made the WC a miserable experience, who cares if he acted horribly. US only fans only see the next savior and everyone should just deal with it. Gio is young and human and we should understand that. The other players aren‘t young or human. They should just accept the messiah blindly and deal with it like we do here. 3, 2, 1…blah, blah, no one is saying Gio didn‘t act poorly, but we will spend 99% of our time accusing and blaming everyone and everything else, but I said he acted poorly so I can treat everyone else terribly in every post and because I said that! I am moderate in my thoughts!!!
It indicates ... Oh well, mind reading is not one of my skills so I will take Ream at his word. Hopefully the plenty of folks in the locker room will all grow a pair and speak up.
I’m not particularly high on Henry, and thought we could do better than Cherundolo or Curtin. But at this point, the way the narratives are flowing, I would take any of them. Or Hudson.
More Ream. Ream said Berhalter and the current leadership group had ended a period when there was a lack of unity between Major League Soccer players and those with European clubs. "First coming into the program, my first few years in MLS, there definitely was that kind of feeling of not quite the togetherness between the two," Ream said. https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-...s-gio-reyna-back-after-world-cupsays-tim-ream Here are the players from Ream's first competitive match, his GC2011 start vs Canada. Ream, Donovan, Agudelo, and Wondo were from MLS. Howard Cherundolo Goodson Ream Bocanegra (capt.) Dempsey-1 Bradley Jones (Edu, 79) Donovan Altidore-1 (Kljestan, 74) Agudelo (Wondolowski, 65)
A year ago, would we have ever begun to believe how important Tim Ream would become for the USMNT? A year ago he was a 35 year old has been who was fully in the twilight of his career.... It is a great story of a man fully seizing the moment when the World could barely see it was a moment at all.
I also think it indicates that there are plenty of folks in the locker room who have not forgiven the person who went to that Symposium and made it all too public. Ream included.
Yeah, when Berhalter was a new manager in 2019, it was a bold call to both bring in a center back about to turn 32 who was involved with the 2016-17 failures, and then give him more minutes than any other player in the entire year. Even if there was a bit of surprise at and acknowledgment of Ream's persistence in England, he could never shake the image of being a bit small/weak and prone to boneheaded mistakes for the US. I don't think making him a member of the so-called Leadership Council or bringing him back in 2021 was exactly popular either. Really, the question is whether any other US manager besides Berhalter would have had the courage to call up Ream for the World Cup.
Once he was starting regularly and excelling in the Premier League? Sure I think plenty of other managers would have called him up for the World Cup, especially since I don't think we had any other CB at the time who was starting regularly at a high level. But I don't think many other managers would have given him as many minutes as Berhalter did earlier in the cycle, and I suppose there's a legitimate question whether Ream would have slotted into the lineup as comfortably as he did in Qatar if he hadn't been so fully integrated earlier in the cycle.
Would Ream have wanted to come out of retirement in November 2022 if he had been dumped in the trash by the US? I'd say it's possible, but it's not guaranteed. His active involvement with the team in recent years certainly smoothed the process. Also, there's the fact that Ream might not have jumped straight into the World Cup lineup if a different US manager didn't favor Miles Robinson or Chris Richards so aggressively beginning in World Cup qualification.
There's also no question that Ream's return to the USMNT was facilitated by injuries to Miles and Richards. When the 2nd half of WCQing started, that seemed to be Berhalter's #1 pairing. There's nothing that Ream has said in his recent interviews that's surprising at all. The Gio part is the way we expected this go. The players and Gio dealt with the issue at the World Cup. And as long as he returned and worked like he should in camps, there wasn't going to be an issue. The issue with his parents, and aftermath, is a completely separate deal We know that during the Klinsmann era there was friction between MLS and the European players. Klinsmann himself was in a pissing contest with MLS. Even calling up USL and NCAA to prove some sort of point [Like Ibarra and Morris]. Nothing Ream said there wasn't already know. Somebody is going to write a book and reveal the terrible chemistry of the squad during that 2018 cycle. Something was totally amiss, and I bet we only know a fraction of it. We need some Wynalda-style douchebag to spill the beans. Maybe Geoff Cameron.
Closest thing we have is the Ringer article https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/5/...ory-jurgen-klinsmann-sunil-gulati-bruce-arena
Indeed. I bet the problems go even beyond that. Folks who have anything to say about the team culture under Berhalter should read that article..................and realize what a miracle Berhalter performed by repairing it. [At least that's what players like Ream and Pulisic are saying he did.] Cuz we were in a terrible place culture-wise. In fact it sure seems like Berhalter created a culture (along with his leaders) that young players wanted to be a part of. So we went on a roll clinching dual-national commitments. A player like Pepi or Slonina would choose to go elsewhere if the training environment was awful. Anway, from a team culture perspective we have a good foundation for the next coach to build upon.
And if not for injuries he’s probably not even at the World Cup. If Richards and Robinson are healthy Berhalter probably never calls Ream back in.
I think when push came to shove Berhalter very much showed a pragmatic streak, which is very much to his credit and the sort of quality you want in a coach.
Another datapoint in favor of Hudson? No more robotic read-progressions! Call me SHOCKED 😂🔥 #USMNT 🇺🇸 https://t.co/nMIPW7NZpA— Daniel Rebain 🇺🇲🇵🇱 (@pvtmcbain) March 22, 2023
And there's also John Brooks. If another US manager than Berhalter had continued to rely on the left-footed John Brooks like so many US fans wanted, then that's another obstacle in front of a Ream return in late 2022.
Though the way Brooks fell off after he left Wolfsburg, I don’t know that any other manager would have taken him to the World Cup either. Notably his most recent game for Hoffenheim was actually pretty solid.
If Gregg was stymying the creativity of attackers, how exactly would he have done that? If he was doing that then he was even worse than I thought.
I would take these comments with a grain of salt. Pepi was left home so perhaps there's some underlying sentiment here. I put WAY more credence in hearing what Pulisic had to say about Berhalter being renamed the coach than this comment. Besides I too would like to know that "creativity" was stymied in the final 3rd by Berhalter's tactics?
Yeah. And it might be helpful to see how the team performs in competitive games without berhalter before clowning him.
That ain‘t happening. I can‘t wait for the next coach to be hired. Then we will see the dozen or so posters who become radical against that coach, and who play the same tune endlessly, maliciously and ignorantly for the next 3 to 4 years. That is the routine. That has always happened. It will happen. That is guaranteed. Will be a great idea for a thread. That is as predictable as it gets.