Absolutely Its not so black and white. Bradley is my dude (for now) even though I firmly believe that Hiddink (or another elite coach) could do better. You have to inject some pragmatism into this. I absolutely believe that a more elite coach might be able to squeeze a little more out of our player pool. The problems with this are several: 1. Money- The USSF can't afford to pay someone 5 million per year. 2. Availability - when you are hiring, most great coaches are under contract. The best fit may not be readily available, even if you can afford him. 3. Learning curve - A non-US coach needs to learn the pool, learn the starters, learn MLS etc. Hiring someone at the start of the cycle shouldn't be a problem but just prior to the WC, this could be a huge problem. 4. Risk - look at Mexico and SGE. Not every "world class coach" is a good fit.
And that's where my main critique of Bradley comes from, he seems to get so attached to his meticulously-thought-out plan that he's slow to abandon or alter it when it's obvious it isn't working, or when the opposing coach/team has effectively countered it.
you give a plan a shot, you just don't change things like you're running around with your head cut off... there's always variation in performance, and a plan usually is conceived with enough foresight to weigh most options... it's when things are presented, which a plan, hasn't adequately accounted for, then that's when you adapt, but it's more minor, not scrap the entire plan.. talent level is more the problem, a coach doesn't make winners out of losing talent.... if hiddink wants to be usmnt coach august 2010, fine with me..
For better or for worse, Bradley has built his system around the strengths of Landon Donovan. When Landon doesn't play, or has an off day, we almost invariably look bad. And there's no one else in the player pool who can play the Donovan role in Bradley's system. Even Dempsey, who is playing at close to as high a level as Donovan, doesn't have the same combination of skills and speed. In this Honduras match, Bradley could have gone with other formations and tried to adapt his system to the players he had on hand. That might be a fair critique under some circumstances, but it doesn't take into account Bradley's likely most important goal for this match, which was to audition players for those last 2-3 spots in South Africa. So playing a different system from the one we were going to use wouldn't make sense. I do fault BB on some things -- his teams do sometimes seem to have major Jekyll and Hyde moments, and he's too slow to sub in my book -- but when we've had Landon on board, and we've been playing meaningful matches to win, not just to audition players, BB's record is pretty good.
Of course you give it a shot, but I've noticed a trend of it seeming fairly obvious that a plan is not working (both from my perspective and the perspective of others on here or elsewhere whose opinions I value) and Bradley waits longer than he should to make changes; or when he does make changes, particularly subbing decisions, they're often bizarre. He just strikes me as a guy who's not that skilled at thinking on his feet. And while I agree that usually you should just tweak a plan, there are times when it's obvious your plan is just ass, and/or that the players involved aren't executing it well, and in those cases you should just scrap it and go with something else. Our starting formation in Costa Rica is the best example I can think of, but can't recall right now what Bradley did to adjust or when he did it.
Definitely agree. I remember thinking last cycle that Bruce was still building the team around Reyna, JOB, McBride and Pope (i.e., players that were his guys the previous cycle). I wished then that Bruce would build around different (younger) players instead. This time around, I think Bradley is building around the right players and he's shown a refreshing willingness at times to move on from certain veterans. He got a lot of flak for playing his son so much, but he did it anyway and I think most have come around to the idea that MB is gold for this team - well integrated into the team, performing well, with nothing but upside for years to come. Same with Bornstein, who's rewarding his investment and showing Bob's skill at talent identification. He'll drop Beasley and Kljestan and Pearce when they're not performing well, and pick up Davies, Holden, give looks to Torres and Bedoya. He's doing pretty well - not working magic and performing miracles, but certainly not undermining the team in obvious ways.
Conceded. BS -- you're cherry-picking results you say matter. I could just as easily say "The alternative elite coach" would have to have done better than Bradley at the 2007 Copa America to be meaningful -- i.e., coach a B team to a A performance, rather than a B team to a C performance. The 2009 Confederations Cup, though nice, meant about the same as Copa America (yeah, yeah -- practice for WC and all that, so it was a nice set of friendlies). And plenty of mediocre coaches can get the US talent pool to a Gold Cup victory and first place in CONCACAF qualifying. But aside from that, you're only focusing on results. There are plenty examples where Bradley's teams have looked painfully lost -- 80 minutes in San Salvador, for example -- which betray actual results that somehow turned out, but wouldn't have against decent teams. I took out a whole USSF tangent in my thread, so I agree to some degree: the USSF CAN do it, they just WILL NOT do it. The federation has plenty of money, won't spend it until the US fails to qualify for a Cup, IMO. I'll let SFS weigh in on the myriad European and South American coaches who could do better. I imagine some of them are getting paid by African or Eastern European federations about what Bradley makes.
But a coach can correct a lot of the mental and organizational mistakes we consistently make. The number of times this team has given up multiple goals is a real worry for me and BB seems unable to get a handle on the concentration issues that cause the problem. The Honduras match was a good example of that: it was a sloppy mess. No excuse for that, regardless of who lines up. That's on BB. Trappatoni with Ireland is a good example of a what a great coach can achieve with mediocre talent. The Irish squad is very pedestrian apart from Keane, Duff and Given, yet they came within a Thierry Henry handball of qualifying and were actually undefeated in their group. Ireland was without fail hardworking, highly organized and mentally focused. Now, the team also lacked spontaneity and Trap (perversely, some would say) kept Andy Reid out of the squad, but he got consistent results and did not give up many goals. I don't think US fans would like a Trappatoni-coached team very much, but they might prefer not losing to Mexico by a zillion goals in the Gold Cup or getting to the second round of the WC on balance.
Perhaps I'm viewing the past through sepia-tones, but in the Arena-era the US seemed to be a pedestrian, defense-first, foosball-esque team. Although opposing teams had the offensive run of play, the opportunities tended to be challenged shots, away from goal and half chances at that. We didn't often give up 3 goals a game. Now, the US seems open, almost dangerously swash-buckling, and opponents find several good goal-scoring opportunities every match, be it free shots from distance or contested shots from 4 - 12 yards out where our GKs aren't much help. The '01 Honduras match in RFK comes to mind as an Arena exception. Now half the Bradley-era matches seem like that. Maybe I'm just old and cranky.
Yes, I accept full responsibility for "cherry picking" meaningful results from the only 3 meaningful events the US National Team participated in. Those three events MATTERED. 1) The 2007 Gold Cup in order to qualify for the Confed Cup. 2) The Confed Cup to get a trial run of matches in South Africa in a Tournament that FIFA considers it's 2nd most important event. 3) World Cup qualifiers, for the most obvious of all reasons -- getting to the World Cup. None of the other events the US particpated in mattered. I have no difficulty distinguishing between events that matter and those that don't. The Copa didn't matter -- no club was obligated to release US players for the Copa. The US took a B-team, making it clear as day that the event was low priority. The 2009 Gold Cup didn't matter, as the US was committed to taking the A-team to the Confed Cup instead. The Honduras friendly didn't matter. The distinction is obvious. Simple. Basic. I accept blame for understanding the obvious. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1301742 Stan Collins started an interesting thread recently (linked) that shows the USSF had a fund balance of about $60 million in Dec 2007, and annual expenses of about $44 million. I do think they can afford $1-$2 million per year for a coach, but that's about it. I hope they are able to make a good choice for the next cycle, as I don't believe any coach should run things for 2 cycles. But I don't have a lot of confidence in their ability to attract the "right" guy, as opposed to their equally good chance of attracting the "wrong" guy and wasting $2 million per year. Maybe they get a Hodgson (who I think would be a good fit), but maybe they get an Eriksson who could be a bad fit. Not every foreign coach will be well-suited to the unique strangeness that is the USSF. The US Nat's job is very far from a glamour job, still a backwater compared to the dozens and dozens of attractive club and national jobs in the world. There are no guarantees, yet folks who call for replacing BB with a foreign coach always assume the foreigner will be the right one, ignoring the possibility that he will be a poor choice. And the USSF simply won't sink $10 million per year ($40 million over a 4-year cycle) on any elite coach, be it Hiddink or not. That would be the hight of irresponsible folly, blowing 2/3ds of what amounts to the USSF's endowment. (Hiddink made over $10 million last year for Russia and Chelsea, thanks to Mr. Moneybags Abramovich, who underwrote the Russian Fed's contract with Hiddink. Capello makes the same ballpark for England.)
Donovan was as big a factor in 2006 as he is now. That team was built to play to the speed of DMB and Landon Donovan. It was not built around Reyna and JOB. McBride was playing one striker most of the time. Do you remember the depth behind Pope? Boca, Conrad and Berhalter. Pope may have burned Bruce, but were any of those three really better options? I'm in the mood to ask, what younger players were beating down the door in 2006? And don't give me the crap that Bruce didn't let any of them play. We left home the likes of Noonan and Twellman. There wasn't a whole lot more to offer.
Getting past specific results and arguments about "what matters," I think we can agree that it's all about the WC. Your "what matters" list is WC-centric -- be it qualifying or getting to ('07 GC) a set of friendlies to practice for the WC (Confed. Cup). I'll grant our national program lives and dies by four year WC cycles, and we won't know until July 2010 about Bradley. But I'll argue that, from what I've seen from BB, the US play doesn't give me a lot of confidence for SA in the style, tactics, friendly results, etc. I think we are too easily out-coached and beaten by equivalent or weaker teams. You may discount all that and say "we got results that are as good a barometer as anything," and I see your point. But to me, the omens aren't so rosy once you look behind a few good results. If you want to argue that's par for the US talent pool, I don't strongly disagree. But it's certainly not much better than it. Yeah, the "who would you hire" part is tricky. I suspect there are good examples that can be got for less than Hiddinck and don't cost $10mm/year. I'll check out the Tax Return thread, but my guess is that if they wanted to prioritize the national team coach, they could find another $1m/year to do it in an annual budget around $50mm/year. And IMO that won't happen until we fail to qualify. Right now, the USSF's priority isn't only the USMNT (unlike other feds), so they're not going to break the bank for it. I get that. But more importantly for this thread, I don't really need to propose a counter-theory to criticize Bob. Just like I can criticize my club team's defensive midfielder without having to say who the GM should go by, draft or trade for. He stinks. Get someone better.
In other words, you have nothing constructive to say, you just want to bitch and whine. BS would be a much more interesting place if posters would just refrain from posting when that is the case.
Analyze mostly the players, and somewhat the coaching choices. I didn't see the game, so I have to refrain from analyzing the specific player's actions, except for Conrad's early double yellow expulsion. That limits my ability to analyze players in this particular match. However, I can look at lineups and analyze personnel differences. The US starting XI totalled 143 Caps and Honduras' starting XI totalled 271 Caps. But that Honduras advantage is boosted by Guevara's total of 131, which is 101 more than the leading US player (Feilhaber) has. Take out Guevara and Feilhaber, and Honduras had 140 Caps vs the US's 113 Caps. Even discounting the huge experience advantage of Guevara, the rest of Honduras' lineup still had an experience advantage. I can also note that the US started only 1 player who started the clinching World Cup Qualifier last fall (Bornstein). Honduras started 6 players who started their clinching Qualifier at El Salvador (Izaguirre, Sabillon, Norales, Johnny Palacios, Pavon, and Guevara). So, Honduras fielded a more experienced lineup, and they fielded a lineup that was much closer to their A-team. A decided personnel advantage for Honduras. The US gets no home field advantage, as usual. Honduras also deserves a motivational advantage, looking for revenge for 2 losses in Qualifiers and 2 more losses in the Gold Cup. They wanted this match, friendly or not. That may explain why they started 6 regular A-teamers. The only individual player critique I can make is about Conrad. He was the second most experienced US starter, with 27 Caps. He was the only starter to have played a World Cup game. He was given the Captain's armband as the veteran leader. And he totally screwed up. Debate the validity of both fouls all you want, but Conrad should have known better. His card gifted Honduras the opening goal for an attacking move that had ended with a missed shot. His red card left the US unnecessarily down a goal and unnecessarily down a man for over 70 minutes. To me the most important aspects of this match are the lineup level and motivation advantages for Honduras, and the huge judgment errors by the US captain. Everything else pales in comparison. As to coaching. BB's lineup was close to what the fan consensus was arguing for prior to the match. However, the fans seemed to prefer starting Casey rather than both speed strikers. I agree with the fan consensus and wanted Casey starting with Cunningham, using Findley off the bench. That's a coaching error on BB from my perspective. Fans were split about starting Conrad or Goodson. BB went with the vet. I preferred Goodson as Marshall's partner prior to the match, because I think Conrad has aged too much to be a serious World Cup option. I thought Goodson has a solid Gold Cup and deserved to start again next to Marshall. A coaching error for BB, that in hindsight looks particularly bad. Fans seem to prefer Feilhaber as a CM. I prefer him as a LM or RM, where he gets more space to use his creative/risky passing. I wanted him and Rogers as the starting attacking mids, with Kljestan or McCarty at CM next to Beckerman. I fault BB for this minor lineup quibble, although I'm probably in the minority here. The rest of the lineup was entirely logical. The players didn't perform. I tend to agree with the general critique that BB makes subs too slowly, not reacting to the game soon enough. But in this match, the logic of sticking with the starters until halftime made sense. I don't agree with the Cunninham+Findley pairing, but BB was obviously interested in testing that, so why mess up the test 19 minutes into the game. The halftime subs were logical. BB made a few minor errors in a low priority match against a more talented and more motivated opponent. The team captain made the biggest errors, changing the flow of the game. There is nothing profound to be taken from this match.
I'm not one to do a lot of second guessing of coaches after the fact, nor do I habitually trumpet total unknowns with no realistic shot at contributing, so please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying Twellman should have been there instead of McBride, for example. I'm talking very specifically about which players Arena chose to build the team around. I recall (and agreed with) posters who were talking at the time about how LD seemed to be deferring to Reyna instead of fully taking over. I also felt that Pope was slipping noticeably, but I'll give you that the options behind him weren't too appealing. I was concerned that Convey might not warrant the role he had, which meant that Beasley was shifted over to the right. Shifting Beasley out of position is sort of the definition of not building the team around him. The best example of what I'm talking about might be Dempsey, whom people were hoping to see integrated earlier in the campaign. Folks might forget that he didn't even feature in the first game. Bruce may have a lot of other advantages over Bob, but this is one area where I feel that Bob is doing better. It might actually have more to do with Bruce being kept over for a second cycle than anything else. And for the record, I love Pope, respect Reyna and admire McBride.
Nope, in reality, nothing profound to be taken from any soccer match. He makes mistakes in evry match. He has little to no understanding of adaptation to space during a game, he's an x's and o's kind of coach - more suited to American football than to soccer - never has understood that formations are only important in the context of that space - and that means interpreting the nuance of that particular game in which he's existing. That's why his "B and C" teams look pathetic in most cases - certainly the level of the player has something to do with it - but, again, imo, his lack of any real intrinsic understanding of what the game is truly about makes him incredibly mediocre, and always has. That's why he must depend on extremely good performances from his chosen 11.
Some people seem to be saying that the result doesn't really matter, and that BB was only looking at the bigger picture....Can I say that I'd rather have an incompetent, completely clueless coach over one who would stand there on the sidelines last Saturday night, watch that mess, know how to fix it, and do nothing "because he's looking at the big picture". Coaches will put out a 'b' team sometimes if they think that matches up with the opponent, but you don't usually see a manager hamstring his own team just to see how they respond to a debacle. So I'm hoping that with the players that he had, and his own ability to make changes on the fly, that BB was just stuck last weekend.
Nice - a bitch and whine post about a post. If you're gonna bitch and whine on BS at least do it about soccer... Pysch! It would be much more interesting if I didn't bitch and whine about your bitch and whine about a bitch and whine, but we'd never get this kind of post count without it.
It's amazing you can get that many words into a analysis of a game you didn't see. The JC + Findley pairing is not a "minor error" and this is where Bob, who for the most part I can tolerate, really makes me twitchy. Hondo has two main attributes - they are a team that moves the ball fast on the ground and very often down the wing only to move inside on the ground not with a tradition byline run and cross and they have a keeper (two actually) who are relatively poor in the air. So, why on earth do you start two fast running forwards? You have to know, or should know, that a team is just going to collapse on itself and absorb JC and Findley's runs like a fourpack of sponge bob's. Not to mention, when in the WC do we expect to go out with two pure speed forwards? Are we really thinking JC/LD or JC/Davies or JC/Findley is going to be part of our WC plans? So either BB started them both hoping that somehow this was going to institute a tactical change that would revolutionize the US line-up - in which case he's tweaking. or he thought that he would learn something about each of them, which is possible, I guess. But it won't tell you much about the team as whole. It seems to me you want to do one of two things with a pre-WC friendly: You either want to recreate the best approximation - albeit in this case a poor, poor imitation, of the kind of squad you think you are going to go out with - in other words try to slot in an "LD type" and a "demps type" and a BB type so you can see how your 2nd, 3rd or 4th choice can adapt to their role if you get a hole in your A team. Or you put out guys in the position you think they can best succeed to see where you might be able to use them should you have a problem. It seems to me that Bob did neither. This was not a side designed to have the best chance of success against Hondo and it was not a side that seemed organized to approximate the way the A-team has been playing.
Or: c) You realize you don't have the players to approximate your first team in any meaningful way, and you concentrate on the one thing possible. Getting more minutes at international game speed for the players that are towards the top of the list of those that might be used to replace injured first teamers. You use the rest of the minutes to reward the practice fodder and maybe blood some people for the next cycle. The biggest fallacy with 'putting players in a position to succeed' is the assumption that there is one, given the available players. If you've got a forward who is best with accurate passes to his feet, and a midfielder who is best crossing the ball, what do you do? Put out a midfielder you won't use in real matches who isn't good enough to get the pass to the forward, but who passes on the ground, so that the forward is 'in a position to succeed'? Put out a target forward who can't get into a position to receive a cross at international level, so the midfielder is 'in a position to succeed'? I think we are seeing the down side to players going overseas. The January camp is going to move more towards a familiarization/development camp for younger players, I suspect. Future USMNT coach's just aren't going to be able to get enough international caliber talent into the camp to really accomplish much. One more step along the progression to a better national team, I think. But it will make it much harder for players to be integrated into the team late in the cycle.
I attribute it to supernatural analytical powers. But seriously, I just stuck with things anyone can analyze without seeing the match. Opening lineups of both squads, Caps and prior 1st team experience, and significant factors like red cards. I didn't analyze things like Wynne's touch, Feilhaber's passing, Cunningham's runs, etc. Why on earth? Hmmm. Why on earth would you prioritize beating Honduras when you are unlikely to play Honduras in a meaningful match for another year or two? (When is the next Gold Cup?) The next two meaningfull US matches are England and Slovenia. Two big, physical defenses against whom a speedy striker might be useful, since you probably won't win a lot of power/air battles inside their penalty boxes. So, with Davies out indefinately, maybe, just maybe, you want to focus your limited match time on testing as many potential speed strikers for as long as possible. Again, I would still have started Casey + one of the speed guys. But the US has limited number of opportunities to test the dubious quality of our remaining speed guys. It is NOT a major error to focus on playing them, even if it harms the irrelevant goal of defeating Honduras in a friendly. As I said above, designing this side to defeat Honduras is irrellevant. A waste of limited match time. You are correct that Saturday's US B/C team was not specifically designed to defeat Honduras. It would have been foolish to do that. The US B/C team already defeated Honduras twice last summer in the Gold Cup. Case closed. Other priorities are more important. This match was about preparing for the opponents the US will face in the World Cup. I agree with you that playing closer to the standard US style, with Casey + a speed striker, would have been logical. I disagreed with BB's starting of two speed strikers. But I rate this as a minor error. I can understand a different logic that says the US really needs to determine which of several speed strikers can best replace Charlie Davies. With only 2 friendlies prior to the only FIFA match date in March, there are a total of 360 minutes available between now and March 3 to distribute among US strikers. Give as many of those minutes as possible to the speed strikers in the hunt. This isn't how I would have done it, but it isn't wacky, either. It's called weighing the pros and cons and making choices with limited resources.
I think we may be seeing the same issue in Bradley's team. Here is what I note: I am struck by the fact that when we regain possession on the flank, the back line of the USMNT is static, essentially forcing the outside back/mid to play square, hoof long, or beat their mark 1 v 1. There is no option to play back and switch the field, ever. Not that I think tactically we should do this everytime because of the way it slows down the attack in transition, but the central defenders need to at least be an option and wouldn't it be great if the weak side outside back once or twice a game made an unmarked run forward ? We rarely have more than one off-the ball runner. We rarely see the two forwards linking up except for a target knocking a long ball back or flicking it on. I like the way Bradley has gotten the mids to look for the wall pass off the checking forward as it has created some danger in the recent games. I'd like to see this alot more between the mids however. We seem to like one touch passes to a static player, not a moving player. Its as if they spend all their time practicing 4 v 2 or 5 v 2 in a box.
my opionion, is the is a slow growth in talent over the years... go back to 1990 and look at the pool, and in 20 years, there are far more decent players... and i think the progress curve has yet to hit its inflection point, when the growth would tend to lessen... i see MORE and MORE decent players emerging, so foreign leagues can soak up more and more american talent, yet camp cupcake overall talent level won't suffer, might continue marginal improvement
And I would say that the growth of coaching in this country has been even slower, and in fact, has had more to do with the lack of growth of players than any other factor. It's compounded by the issue of the same people being charged with overseeing both, player and coaching development and the idiotic notion that athleticism is far more important than pure soccer ability.