Some people have "alternative facts"...amazingly enough.
Words to live by from comic Ron White..."you can't fix stupid."
OT: Berhalter…OUT!!!
- Thread starter AreYouNUTS
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Words to live by from comic Ron White..."you can't fix stupid."
I’m guessing he’s already made a bunch of money in his life. Desire and want for the job, whatever job, is probably a bigger motivating factor. Not that money doesn’t matter but at a point it matters less than other things. It’s like Texas thinking they could hire Saban from Alabama at one time just by throwing money at him or even Hurley and the Lakers. If you’re going to get someone like that it has to be some other angle that floats his boat other than money alone and it might not exist for a particular job.
Here's a dumb question... Who hires/fires the people who makes the head coach hiring/firing decisions?
Is this yet another case of some committee being filled with incompetents through some bureaucratic/political system?
When Rutgers has a bad coach.. the AD gets grief and could lose their job as well. Why doesn't that happen here?
Here they are...
Is this yet another case of some committee being filled with incompetents through some bureaucratic/political system?
When Rutgers has a bad coach.. the AD gets grief and could lose their job as well. Why doesn't that happen here?
Here they are...
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In his career as USMNT Coach Berhalter lost to Canada twice, Panama twice, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Trinidad. He finished behind Canada and the worst Mexico team in decades in 2022 WC qualifying. Those losses to Concacaf teams would likely be pretty bad over 15 years rather than just 5.
The best case to be made for him is he took a young demoralized team after the disaster in '18 and brought back some semblance of pride. He also brought enough respectability back to the USMNT that he was able to convince a bunch of kids with dual citizenship to play for the US (Dest, Boyd, A. Robinson, Balogun, Musah). But (imo) I never found him to be even a decent tactical Coach and (imo) the way he tried to play was very wrong for this US team.
Just my $0.02
The best case to be made for him is he took a young demoralized team after the disaster in '18 and brought back some semblance of pride. He also brought enough respectability back to the USMNT that he was able to convince a bunch of kids with dual citizenship to play for the US (Dest, Boyd, A. Robinson, Balogun, Musah). But (imo) I never found him to be even a decent tactical Coach and (imo) the way he tried to play was very wrong for this US team.
Just my $0.02
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Can't really determine very much about the board members from short bios like those on the website. One thing I noticed is there's only 1 member who's a coach w/an A license, 1 w/a B license, and 1 w/a D license. I think it would be wise to have more board members with advanced coaching licenses and plenty of head coaching experience than there are at the moment.
In any event, while I'm not 100% positive, my understanding is that Matt Crocker, the recently hired Sporting Director of the USSF, is responsible for the hiring of the next coach. He was responsible for retaining GB after the WC and is the person who fired GB. Presumably the USSF board has to approve the hires/fires, but that's just a guess.
Anyway, there is this, FWIW: https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...rocess-in-the-search-for-the-usmnt-head-coach.
GB has a UEFA A license and a US Soccer Pro license. You can't get those without being very well versed in soccer tactics and also demonstrating the ability to coach those tactics. Put another way, you have to be more than just decent with understanding and coaching soccer tactics or you will fail those licensing courses (and also fail several courses leading up to the "A" and "Pro" courses).
So what did you think GB did that was tactically incorrect for the USMNT and how would you have the USMNT play differently? And why do you think your approach would be better?
I know the question was not for me.. but these threads on the topic turn up all sorts of questions about player selection and usage... and then there was the discipline angle brought up as well.
Though, I suppose, one explanation of USA poor performance that seems reasonable to me was that we just don't have the skilled players who are also top athletes. That the USA just does not produce them. And some then said we should play that defensive-minded strategy with the long ball and have some tall players for corners. I don't see anyone in the finals of Euro or Conca that match that.. not even England... so is that suggestion just to maximize results, but with realistic limits in mind? Sounds reasonable to me... but I don't know anything.
I was only asking specifically about why @RutgHoops thinks GB wasn't even a decent tactical coach and how he thinks it could've been done better. It's a pretty strong statement and I'm curious about the answer. As I said, just to obtain the licenses he held, GB would have to have demonstrated tactical knowledge and ability well beyond "decent" level.
As for player/roster selection, I'm not sure how that works on the USMNT. I don't know the degree to which the coach can choose whomever he wishes whenever he wishes. I also don't know what kinds of constraints are imposed by various player's clubs. I'd like to know those things, but I can't find any credible and complete information about it.
But for sure, the coach is responsible for whom, from the roster, to play at any given time. And where they play within the system. And for the most part, I was fine with the players GB chose in the WC and other games. We can all argue hypotheticals with it, but I saw no choices that weren't reasonably defensible.
The one issue I had w/GB's choice of where to play players within his system was putting Gio on the wing in that last game. I said before the match I thought it would be unwise. And as I watched the game unfold, it seemed Gio was burning a ton of energy and not getting on the ball as often as I would have wished. IMO, that was an indefensible choice by GB, a misuse of Reyna given the larger context of the game.
I also don't understand why M Robinson didn't play in the Copa America tournament. Presumably, there's a valid reason and that reason just wasn't widely shared. Or if it was shared, I couldn't find it with several web searches. M Rob was a huge component of the improved play in the back for the USMNT prior to the WC. And his loss was an equally huge factor in our performance in that WC, IMO.
Anyway, GB is gone, so now I'm mostly curious to see what changes with his replacement. I think that, without improving the roster at the back, whoever it is will have a pretty huge challenge.
Related to who USSF. They had an opportunity several years ago to elect a reform candidate who would buck the status quo…and didn’t.
We haven’t even hired the new coach yet and already we’re criticizing him? 🙂
Well, you know fans... and message social media. But as an outsider to all this.. it does seem to me there is a problem somewhere in the process.. unless they all want to admit we don't have the talent and we cannot attract get elite soccer players to become Americans like we do elite criminals 🙂
I haven't seen anything positive from GB's replacement yet. He or she needs to do something at some point.
Good test taker I guess. 😉
I know many people that know theory but are awful at application. Many a PHD have no idea how the real world works. Just ask Thorton
As a nation with such a large population, and with so much effort put into youth soccer, we should be doing better on the international stage. The argument about other sports being more popular is not statistically correct. Nor is the argument about getting rich playing other sports because players can and do make a ton of money playing in Europe.
I'd like to see the USSF ramp up efforts to (a) continue making progress on evolving the state of the art in youth soccer development, (b) improve the outreach to kids whose families can't afford to spend thousands per year on so-called premiere soccer clubs, and (c) improve the process for identifying talent at younger ages and take a larger role in their development, or at least get them in touch with European clubs and into some of their development systems.
I don't believe that we don't have the talent within our borders. I believe we aren't propagandizing soccer enough for young people, and we aren't identifying and developing that talent well enough. We're doing better than we were. But it's clearly not yet good enough.
We should write up a contract that, once they sign it, says they're fired for failure to achieve stated goals quickly enough!
We're looking for leaders, dammit. And leaders would've already led.
I just knew someone would make that argument. I'd have been disappointed if nobody did.
The Thorton Melon reference was a bonus. 🙂
My 2 cents. There's currently a lot of money and effort in youth soccer in this country. However much of it has been money grabs by various local and national soccer clubs with uneven / spotty coaching and training. In other countries they have had boarding school academies for years - some tied to professional clubs that train and cultivate future talent.
Was going to post same. Have said as much in many of the soccer threads here.
Most parents like the idea of their kid on an “elite” club but don’t actually care if the kid is actually an elite player because soccer is viewed as an extra-curricular activity rather than future employment (rightfully so, I think).
There was no issue between the families until GB started calling out Reyna for his immaturity. GB is not good, but the Reyna thing is on the Reyna's 100%.
I've essentially written off the next coach at this point since IF they were that great they'd ALREADY be the coach. And having already been the coach, they'd already have some pretty decent wins. But I see absolutely nothing so far from this coach that hasn't been named yet. Zilch!
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Way I read this is he would come if he has total control of operations. Otherwise he doesn’t want to deal with the political bullshit that kept him from being hired last go round.
But he wants to be coach of us soccer.
Serious question what other sport forces you to be licensed for anything beyond youth sports?
And this was more of a background check and safety/medical guidelines versus license on tactical experience and knowledge. Coached CYO, AAU basketball, trained and never needed a license to advance.
This - USA is still about a generation behind. My kids - even at the rec level - are being trained by coaches who played at a high level club and/or college or semi-pro/pro level.
I was coached by guys who just played rec or learned from a book.
Definitely. In fact, logically, if the next coach was truly good at the job, the team would've already won the world cup.
I don't know much about other coaching in other sports, so I can't answer that.
With soccer, I know NJ Youth Soccer requires coaches participating in their league to obtain an F license. Not sure if that's a nationwide US Soccer thing, or not.
In any event, the F license is trivially easy to get - you just have to show up and you get the license. Like all licensing courses, the quality of the education has a lot to do with who's running the course. In my case, all my courses were run by really good A licensed coaches, some I knew and had played with over the years.
I will say this, though. I started playing soccer in the summer before 3rd grade (IIRC). And played most of my life. I had lots of coaches, some better than others.
When I first started coaching, I knew a lot about playing soccer. And my teams were beating up on most teams, especially those with less knowledgeable coaches. So, you know, I thought, I was a pretty good coach. But I was wrong. I didn't know what I didn't know. And while my teams were winning, my players weren't developing nearly as much as they could've and should've been.
As I said, the F course is very basic and everybody passes just by showing up. The E course was still super easy, but did start to introduce some pretty key soccer coaching concepts I didn't previously know anything about. And still, pretty much everybody who showed up passed.
The D course was an entirely different, very eye-opening, and a bunch of people failed the course. It was during that course that I learned that I wasn't a very good coach yet. And then that I started to really learn a ton about coaching, and started to understand just how much there was to learn and how just playing the game didn't effectively teach much of it (some yes, but a lot no). It was great.
So I pretty much support the idea of requiring licensing for coaching, at least coaching competitively. Recreational soccer or other sports, not a big deal and no licensing required.
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One of the best words of advice ever received from one of my coaching mentors:
“You can learn from a good coach. You can learn a lot from a bad coach. Make sure your team is not learning a lot. “
I also support having a license for sub high school level of coaching. Beyond that I think it’s pointless. Don’t understand why a federation would require someone pass a test to move up the ranks. Either they have it or they don’t. As I said earlier theory is one thing application is another.
Actually, some of the HS coaching I’ve seen has been surprisingly awful. One of the benefits of having all coaches go through the same licensing is that everybody winds up talking the same language, using the same terms to describe the same concepts.
To give an example, even though it’s a popular term, you really don’t want coaches using the term “triangles” when coaching attacking support play. It’s much too static, much too limiting. You want to coach support play in terms of proper angle, distance and timing of the support, all of which is very dynamically determined relative to the other players in the area of the first attacker. Later on, you can introduce depth and width.
At younger ages, you don’t even want to talk about any of that.
Agreed. One of the reasons I gave up soccer was I had better coaching u12 than I did through junior high school. Played with and for first generation Italian Portuguese and Italian. Was instructed in the European style of play.
Concentrated on basketball and started playing football. But I would hope coaching improved in the past 30 years but I don’t think so. Considering how poorly my nephews were coached. Even at PDA.
But still don’t think a person running the national team needs to have a certain license in order to receive consideration. Or even the board positions.
It's not just about licenses. To coach at the highest level of international play, a coach has to have experience coaching at the highest levels. Cherundulo and a bunch of MLS only coaches aren't going to cut it. It's tragic that the USSF is so focused on promoting MLS rather than doing what's right for the USMNT.
Exactly my point. Focus on hiring the right person versus one that has the right perceived licensure and cv
Club, Travel and even Rec teams are slowly getting better coaching. I'm not so sure about scholastic teams. I like to recant the stories of how my son's middle school coach picked players based on how well they foot juggled. In HS tryouts I once heard a coach yelling at the players, telling them to always go forward and never pass the ball backwards. Lulz.
I'm not saying that at all. All of those internationals have the highest level of licenses. Licenses don't necessarily mean you're a good coach. Look at Wayne Rooney...
I’d put it like this…
In any A license course, a bunch of people will pass the course and be awarded an A license. Say it’s 30 people. Obviously, those 30 coaches will not all be equally good. Some will be better than others.
The license just means the coach is knowledgeable and has demonstrated the ability to coach (you run live coaching sessions which are graded). It probably means they’re all pretty good coaches.
But being a good coach doesn’t mean the coach can take team X to a championship. It doesn’t mean the coach will be able to meet the objectives set forth when they’re hired. Plenty of good coaches experience failure.
In Brazil and other countries you see small fields or fenced areas like basketball courts you see in inner cities here. They are everywhere. Even in flavelas.
Until high concentration areas have that level of interest where kids are playing constantly and creating, it doesn’t matter how many youth coaches or licensed coaches you have. You’ll never reach that of success. I know someone on the US Soccer Foundation board. That’s a big focus for them.
Until high concentration areas have that level of interest where kids are playing constantly and creating, it doesn’t matter how many youth coaches or licensed coaches you have. You’ll never reach that of success. I know someone on the US Soccer Foundation board. That’s a big focus for them.
