Next manager after Poch

Would be really hard for me to support the team if Marsch is the coach. He’s a douche of the highest order that badmouthed the U.S. because the federation didn’t hire him. He failed at Leeds and didn’t do anything special with a similarly talented Canada squad. We should stay far far away.

 

I've always been torn about it, I 1000% wanted him out after March and through that South Korea game 10 months ago. Then of course we had that fantastic October/November, and June, and I swung back to keeping him lol, and now I'm just not sure.

My three main issues at this point are:
#1 I want him gone because it was at best a totally erratic term as HC with a terrible record against teams of quality other than a handful of friendlies (Senegal, Germany, October/November).

#2 I absolutely do not want a knuckle dragging delusional idiot with entitlement ideas about what it means to be a USMNT that he's importing from Argentina but simply doesn't match our situation when it comes to dual nats. He wants dual nats to basically come on bended knee, but he's Argentina, so of course, w/the USMNT, were one of many third tier teams in that 13th-25th in the world area in quality. We need to actively recruit Dual Nats to make up for gaps in development, and to Mexican Poaching. We cannot afford to sit on a high horse and pretend we're too good for dual nat recruiting but we absolutely will be on a high horse, and lose dual nats, if he sticks around for another 4 years (unless the WC experience suddenly wakes him up to this reality which I doubt, because it doesn't match his philosophy).

#3: I want him back because I don't think there's any hope in hell that we could draw a coach of his quality to the program. It really feels like we'd settle for some crap MLS coach, or some fake quality international coach like Roberto Martinez which is a known fraud to people with sense, but would be perceived as a win, by many of the clowns that run the fed. The reality seems to be that we have a bunch of idiots in the fed that just want an American coach because he's an American, and a bunch of idiots that just want a name because they can't be bothered to dig underneath the actual caliber of coaching they bring and how well they match our current and likely future pool.

So yeah, I don't know what the hell I want, I'm terrified they'd be idiots and go after Martinez, I'm worried they'd go cheap and dumb domestic after spending so much and only getting half of what they wanted (the quality of play was radically improved, but the overall results ended up largely identical at least in terms of crash out), I'm worried that like Martinez they'd just be attracted to names, rather than fits of quality, and I'm worried about Poch because we cannot afford to essentially have no-one at the wheel in terms of dual nat recruiting for 6 ----ing years. That's insane and would really, really hurt our program, especially if we end up missing on some of our best young prospects (many of which are actually dual nats themselves).

It's no easy thing at all.

Are there any rumors bouncing around from half decent or better sources?

 

That really became clear during the tournament. He trusted Gio and Berhalter. That was it.

 

The thing that kind of worries me about Pochettino coming back is that he might quit halfway through in order to take a club job.

 

It would set up for Cheruldolo to take over after the summer of 2028.

 

I disagree that the players played incredibly poorly. In fact Tillman's performance was very good and Freeman's was good. Despite the US losing 1-4, Tillman was the 3rd highest rated player on the pitch per FootMob.

Player for player Belgium was better than us and anyone who watched their match v Spain should have seen that. Their roster changes took away ATM and our high pressure system. They bypassed ATM and went straight to our backline to get their money and it worked.

Pulisic and Dest who we rely on for 1v1 attacks had nothing; With ATM bypassed and our wide attackers neutralized we would have required superb goalkeeping and defense to stay in the match.

Alas Ream was never a good 1v1 defender and always been very poor in the air. Richards was not the aggressive duelist he had been in the prior match and the less said about Freese the better for my mental health.

Poch got the system and the player choices right; I saw a USMNT I had never seen at the WC. In the end, we went about as far as we could with the talent in our pool.

 

I think the biggest issue with Jesse is that after four years of him, where are we going to be? Even if we win another game or two, the game model will regress.

And the next step will be to find someone to expand our game model to more phases of play. And that's where we are already.

 

Totally agree. Poch had the USA team playing some beautiful soccer. That’s down to coaching.

 

This has been said a few times, but we’d never started our starting World Cup 11 ever in a game before the tournament, at least as far as I remember. I think we came out as a bit of mystery as to how we’d play.

And I think we surprised Paraguay and Australia to an extent. Belgium watched the tape on those games. They really scrutinized our ball movement and the tendencies of each of our players. Watching the game, it sometimes seemed the Belgians knew where we were going to go before our players.

It was uncanny.

I could see it immediately unbalanced some of our players. Dest and Jedi seemed to me to be immediately off balance because of it.

 

Obviously it won't happen, but for me the biggest issue that we will have without Jesse is that in four years we will be exactly where we are now while he's building Canadian program.

 

I don't know how much we will progress in the next four years, but Jesse has already taken Canada as far as he can.

His motivational stuff will start to get old. He's already shown his tactical depth. He might recruit a few dual nationals, but he hasn't been a savant there. They won't be at home next time.

And Jesse's record with Canada is the definition of a butterface -- they can crow about making the semis of Copa America or the Round of 16, but there's not a good win in there anywhere. Lots of close wins up a man, lots of incredibly easy roads.

They play hard, but they have the best club player in North America, a good set of strikers, etc. They have no idea what to do if they go down in a game, and won't. Jesse never has.

The US may or may not move forward much, but I thought Jesse was a great hire for this cycle for Canada and I think he's a terrible re-hire.

But even so, he's a better hire for this Canada team than for us, where we'd just walk backwards in anything we can control in the short term.

 

Great point about there being no tape on us . And I totally agree that Belgium knew our tactics better than we did.

 

Netherlands in 2022 same thing. They knew exactly how we would play and we never adjusted.

 

I don’t think there’s anything out there because there haven’t been any decisions yet.

 

The US faced two teams that fielded good attackers. The two hung 7 goals on Poch. The loss against Belgium was the worst US WC performance of this century.

The US have the 17th most valuable national team. Belgium are 10th. Let's not pretend they're France or England.

And against Spain, Belgium had 0.34 xG to Spain's 1.96. 2 shots on target to 8.

 

If he were leaving, it seems like we would have heard something by now. And Cherundolo taking the Olympic job makes Poch's return seem likelier.

 

They “hung seven goals on Poch.” Ok.

 

He was the coach of the team. This thread is about the manager. OK.

 

Don’t think we can take that much from the Turkey game given we played all backups.

 

Given the Poch's record against teams with similarly good attackers, we can.

 

Over 15 coaches have been fired or resigned, following their respective team teams World Cup exit.

Notables include:

• Roberto Martinez (Portugal) – Resigned following a Round of 16 loss to Spain.

• Julian Nagelsmann (Germany) – Stepped down after a Round of 32 elimination against Paraguay.

• Marcelo Bielsa (Uruguai) – Resigned following a group stage exit.

• Ronald Koeman (Netherlands) – Left after a Round of 16 elimination by Morocco.

• Sebastián Beccacece (Ecuador) – Departed after being eliminated in the Round of 32 by Mexico.

• Carlos Queiroz (Ghana) – Stepped down following a Round of 32 exit.

• Steve Clarke (Scotland) and Hong Myung-bo (South Korea) – Departed after group-stage eliminations.

• Sabri Lamouchi (Tunisia) – Fired early in the tournament following a heavy group-stage defeat to Sweden.

• Miroslav Koubek (Czechia) – Left after finishing bottom of their group

• more departures are expected.

• . . .

 

And you don’t think that game would have looked way different if Jedi, Freeman, Adams, Richards, etc played?

We lacked depth defensively and the Turkey game was a good demonstration of that. But it’s meaningless to take anything from it given it was all the backups against their starters.

 

Not expect that the exact same plan and personnel that worked against Paraguay would work against Belgium. Not back us into a corner where Tim Ream is the centerpiece that dictates our entire style.

 

The blaming of the coaching or the game plan doesn't really resonate with me when there's little about the gameplan that seems to have caused our issues.

We came out nervy and uncertain, and we couldn't do basic things like control the ball or clear it effectively. Would a more conservative gameplan have kept us from losing the ball as much?

Probably, but (a) it wouldn't have made us more effective at clearing the ball or playing defense with our men in the box - instead we would have done more of that and (b) we wouldn't have generated enough offense to win anyway, so who cares?

Tim Ream did not dictate our entire style. He was also not a centerpiece, nor was he a particular problem in this game.

He was only really at fault for the second goal, and that had nothing to do with footspeed or getting caught out in space.

We only had one goal against us that had anything do with transition play at all, and that was the third goal, which should have simply been cleared by Freese.

 

How can you say he got the system and player choices right when from the opening whistle to the hydration break we looked like we’d never played together as a team before? He ran out the same plan every match (with subs in the Türkiye match but same setup) regardless of opponent or style. The Belgian coach studied it and stole Poch’s lunch money. This was a beatable team with this player pool playing at home. At the very least it should have been a tight match of fairly even teams. Instead the US got embarrassed.