Just because something is "intuitive" does not mean it's correct. What you're saying makes sense on paper, but there's not much of an observable trend in international soccer to support it. Achieving club coaches do not get brought in to coach national teams (including Poch, who has coached top clubs but not won a lot) and winning national team managers often go off into obscurity. Why isn't anyone clamoring to hire Jogi Low? What I observe instead is what I mentioned a few posts before: the achieving international coaches are not guys with a huge resume of international coaching achievements, necessarily; what most of them have is proximity / familiarity with the pool of players, either from coaching youth teams (Southgate, Scaloni) or coaching almost exclusively in their domestic league (Dalic', Regragui, Deschamps, Scolari, Low, Del Bosque). Same holds true for the US (Arena, Bradley). Pekerman fits closer to my example: he never coached outside of South America and, with due respect, did not have an exceptional resume. But he coached in Argentina, Chile and Mexico where many Colombian players play. (Taking nothing from him, it's also notable Colombia had a small golden generation at that time with James, Falcao, Quadrado and Ospina.) I think what you're saying applies to nascent National Teams, like Japan and the USA circa the early 90s (I wouldn't include Colombia there; it's not like they were nobodies before Pekerman). But we are beyond that now.
Exactly. if coaches were seen as that kind of differentiator in intl football, they'd be paid accordingly. Teams would pay to lure top managers. I mean Spain and Argentina have many world class club managers they could choose from; Spain's current coach (who won the Euro, Olympics and Nations League) is again someone who came up through from the youth teams; de la Fuente has almost no notable club achievements, like Argentina's Scaloni.
Be sure to hit me up when we have an "unexceptional" coach like a guy who won 3 FIFA world campionships, coached Argentina in the Confed cup final v. Brazil and in the WC to the Q's v. Germany while overseeing a team including Crespo, Messi, Saviola, Cambiasso... I mean, I was one of Beerholder's great defenders when he was a player, and I think he's got a strong defensive tactical sense, but you simply can't, with a straight face, suggest he, or Sampson or even Bradley, esp when first hired, have anything close to that kind of experience. And that's without even addressing where Argentina's football culture and program are vs. the US. I mean, what is the evidence that we've done has worked to progress the program? I have argued this since the Bora days. And had we started it back then, perhaps we would no longer need it, but the idea that anyone we've hired, short of Jurgen and pooch are close to even Pekerman's resume is just silly.
Hey, Berhalter coached (Gonzalo) Higuain! (Kidding) I'm not claiming those US coaches had that kind of experience. I've said consistently the experience doesn't matter as much as you're saying. Bob Bradley leading the US to a CC final is a bigger accomplishment than Pekerman doing it with Messi, Cambiasso etc. Argentina are 3-time CC finalist and only defeated Tunisia, Australia and Mexico before being thrashed by Brazil in the final. Could Pekerman have duplicated the achievement with the USA? Who knows? Like, I'm not saying Pekerman is a shmuck or he'd be a bad US hire. But would he be some revolutionary figure for a team like ours? You have to define what "progress the program" means before I can answer that.
I don't care if you answer it. Like, I didn't ax you. But to come out with the "Pekerman was not that impressive" given the real resumes of who we hired is silly. But the basic questions are simple: Do you think who we've hired have taken the program as far as it could have gone? If the answer is "yes" then we're done here. We did what we could with who we had, and coaching would not have made a difference. I disagree. When Pekerman took over Colombia, just to give one example, they had missed, what, 2 WCs? Were like 50th in the world. He helped pull the program back up. Japan, much like the US when we hosted the WC, instituted a professional domestic league and went to foreign coaches, with a mix of domestic coaches as well, and brought their program to where they qualified for every WC. So, we have a basic, simple question: Has the US program advanced as far as it could have, with the players we have, or is it possible a higher level of experienced coach, experienced with top competition and overseeing better players in a more demanding program, could have gotten better marginal results out of the team - and at the time, as a positive knock-on side-effect, increased the expectations and perhaps professional edge of the program. I happen to think the US program has not been, all thing considered, as strong as the sum of its parts, and that a series of more demanding coaches with higher expectations of players and programs might have squeezed a bit more out of the program each cycle, resulting in a bit higher results overall. But, to be sure, absent a new crystal ball, it's just a theory.
You literally did ask me. I'm just having a conversation with you, man. Yes, compared to American coaches Pekerman is very experienced and internationally accomplished. But he's not the best coach Argentina could get, is my point (given they have many world class coaches at their disposal and could choose a foreign coach). To your point, no one can really answer that question. In the last 20 years, I don't think there's a NT or league that has grown as much as the US has. Japan has a similar growth trajectory as the US but has not achieved as much in international tournaments (WC QFs, Confed Cup Final, won a World Cup group, etc.). Could the US have done better with different coaches? With someone like Pekerman specifically? We could only guess. Let me clarify: I'm not establishing a dichotomy between experienced guys with big resumes and insider types: I think the ideal is to have a guy that check both boxes and the strongest national teams have that. But I think proximity / familiarity matters more than "top-level" experience to be honest (provided, at a baseline, the coach is good to begin with).
except, of course, there is (and long has been), in the real world, that exact dichotomy. The US has not had a guy who won multiple FIFA events with the youth teams to draw from. Or even a seasoned top-league "revolving door" coach who was also some sort of "insider." We barely even have a couple of marginal "top level experience" coaches who are also familiar with the program. I even think that familiarity is a negative, in many ways, tbh. Familiarity breeds complacency. The dichotomy is and has been real. We chose Sampson and Bradley and Berhalter, despite hundreds, if not thousands of coaches with stronger resumes (and I would have extended this idea to the U teams as well, tho of course, the viable pool of folks who would take the role looks a bit different.) Anyway, we will not prove hypotheticals here, so we will just have to disagree. Perhaps we will now have 4 or 5 cycles of top-level experienced coaches and get to see if it squeezes better results out of the program. Talk to you in 2040.
I think The Guardian summed up an international manager's job as keeping the players happy and picking the team. Obviously there's a bit more to it than that... like making sure they get to the right stadium.
Actually they had a good article on transitioning from club to a national team. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ar-hitzfeld-carlos-alberto-parreira-world-cup
Thanks for sharing a good article. Here's a quote from Littbarski: This illustrates the value of a coach who commands respect.
Bruce is a notable absence from your list. Among American coaches, his resume was and is uniquely strong. Out of curiosity, how would you have felt if we had stuck with him after 2006?
I think there's often, but not always, a shelf-life to national team coaches. One of the problems for Arena in my view is he really did not know much else beyond the USMNT/MLS. One of the advantages of bringing in an internationally experienced top-level coach is they have experienced, observed and done things that few domestic or lower-level coaches get to do. It's not necessarily going to translate into program-shaking adjustments. In fact it rarely does, but I think it's more likely than not that the cumulative effect of an experienced coach to a relatively young program that has increasingly experienced (and well-coached, or at least high-level coached) players, would be to squeeze some marginal level of higher performance over time - and a higher level of internal expectations for the program.
I think there's particularly a shelf life for motivator / executional coaches. The guys whose primary attribute is getting people to play hard and execute a (simpler) gameplan. At some point, the motivational tricks become old. The tactics themselves become tired; it isn't just that opponents begin to figure them out but the players themselves become less focused and feel more going through the motions. It's all part of that comfort level. I don't think Bruce really was the type to be learning new things on the cutting edge and implementing, so at some point, the edge is lost. Once you think you can go through the motions ... you often go through the motions.
I think you are vastly over-estimating the talent pool of available coaches. How do you rationalize that there are HUNDREDS (let alone 1000s!) of coaches better than Bradley or Berhalter, especially at the international level? Observably, those coaches are not as out of their depth as you make it seem. I'm not overrating Bradley, Arena and Berhalter -- I am saying what I have consistently said: resumes don't matter that much. Pekerman as an example reinforces my point, not the one you want to make: Pekerman was a Confederations Cup finalist with Argentina. Bob Bradley did that with a far inferior team and defeated a much stronger opponent (Spain) along the way. Pekerman lead Colombia to their best World Cup finish, a quarterfinals. Arena did that with, again, a much weaker USMNT. There simply isn't that much gap in pedigree and achievement at the international level; that is my point. Despite your speculation of the opposite, familiarity is not a negative; in fact it seems to be a positive. Not only has every World Cup champion had a domestic coach, many of them never coached outside their country. This is not speculation. If we're talking about World Cups it's a relatively small sample size and easy to observe the outcomes.
Ignoring Pekerman's youth record is hilarious - or duplicitous. But this is a completely hypothetical argument and there is no way to replicate what I advocated for - a much more aggressive and earlier "professionalization" of the USMNT head coaching position. We didn't do it, we are doing a bit of it now, but I'm not confident we will go all-in. The irony, of course, being had we started it 3 or 4 or 5 cycles ago, we'd have US coaches who came up through that kind of regime and perhaps would be better prepped. But it's also possible that what we've achieved with Bruce, Sampson, Arena, Jurgen and Gregg is the best we're capable of. It might be that the growth in professional stature of the player pool can't be replicated on the national level. I don't think that's true, but I've been wrong before, so you might be right - we've done as well as we could.
Pekerman took the best team in the 2006 World Cup and found a way to get them to lose a QF against a much weaker German side by absolutely making every wrong sub possible in a single game. That is probably the single biggest bottle job I’ve ever seen a coach do in a World Cup. Arena in 2002 was a great World Cup coach…Pekerman was an all time worst coach. And no…US coaches don’t get magically better because we have a random national team coach. But please…Greg did better in 22 than Pekerman did in 2006. It’s not even a discussion. One disaster doesn’t define a career, but no US coach other than maybe Sampson was as bad as Pekerman 06.
Y Well I look at Poch's resume. He's had 5 jobs. He was fired from 4 and the other lasted 15 months. Just saying.
Wait, you're saying that many longtime coach's best year is better than another longtime coach's worst year? I will agree that is likely true the vast majority of the time. So see, we agree!
Lol ... Why do you think Poch advanced from Espanyol to Southampton to Spurs to PSG? Also, your assertion that he was fired at Chelsea is untrue.
Bruce deserves more credit than this. You don't keep winning all the way into your 70s unless you're continuing to learn along the way. With that being said, I enjoyed and agreed with most of what you and friesland said. After WC06, I felt Bruce needed to go, but he's a much better coach than Bradley or Klinsmann or Berhalter. By no means is he perfect, but there are worse things than having a steady hand at the tiller.
His contract with Espanyol was terminated with them in last place with 9 points from 13 games. Southampton were attracted by his promotion of academy players to the first team and they had a lot of promising academy players. He was fired by Spurs in 14th place for "extremely disappointing" (owner's words) domestic results He was fired by PSG for various reasons but it's a difficult political environment. And he was fired by Chelsea in that it wasn't his decision to leave.