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| I am underwhelmed |
USA FC, if nothing else, is good for business. I absolutely eviscerated this team after they lost to Trinidad & Tobago and were knocked out of the World Cup. The U.S. Mens National Team were co-winners, with those chokin’ dirty birds the Atlanta Falcons, of the coveted 2017 Lose of The Year award, and with good reason.
Seeking to put the past behind them, USA FC moved to name Columbus Crew chief Gregg Berhalter in Dec. 2017, just two months after Bruce Arena resigned in disgrace …
Oh, wait, that’s not right.
Berhalter was, in fact, named head coach in Dec. 2018, some 14 months after the debacle in the Caribbean. During that 14-month interlude, the team was coached by, well, no one really. (Although someone probably should have told that to interim coach Dave Sarachan, who sure did coach a lot of the time like he thought he might get the job, basically ignoring large swaths of his young roster during a series of completely meaningless friendlies.)
Yes, it took U.S. Soccer 14 months to hire a head coach, and their super-duper-über wide search produced a guy they could have hired a year ago, which makes the whole thing seem farcical and a waste of time.
Which, frankly, it was. Sigh. Excuse me here for a moment:
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| Damn you, U.S. Soccer, my liver hates you! |
Now, to be fair here, I have no idea how Berhalter will do as the head coach. I don’t watch that much MLS – Sounders games mostly, a few others here and there – but I can’t honestly say that his Columbus Crew teams were even the least bit distinctive or memorable to me, save for the one which blew the MLS Cup final a few years ago against the Portland Timbers. (And as a Sounders fan, I believe that losing to Portland in the MLS Cup final should be Strike One, Strike Two, Strikes Three, Four, and Five against this hire, since Portland are scum. But I digress.) He has a so-so record coaching a so-so team in a so-so league. It is said that his teams will be organized and have an identity, which is the exact same two footballing clichés used to describe every single new hire in every single position. He may turn out to be just what they need. He may be great at the job. I hope that he is. I truly have no idea.
But the process with which Berhalter came to be the head coach of USA FC is so utterly ridiculous that I cannot help but be skeptical. He’s definitely a safe choice, at best. It’s a bland and beige hire. And taking 14 months to make a bland and beige hire who they could have hired a year ago speaks to the state of confusion and dysfunctionality in the organization. I can assure you there were plenty of people out there, some of them really good, who interested in the job. (It pays really well, for starters.) This feels akin to scrolling on your phone through Yelp reviews of 200 really good restaurants and then deciding to eat the grey and grumpy leftovers in the back of the fridge. It doesn’t taste good, and it doesn’t look very appealing.
Now, I can understand why there were some delays in the process. First off, the federation rightly blew itself up in the aftermath of the T&T debacle and needed a new boss. The USSF election was ultimately won by Carlos Cordeiro, who somehow managed to position himself as a champion of reform while being the organization’s Vice President – a skillful act of political positioning that’s usually reserved for Absurdistans and Banana Republics, but one which usually winds up with an authoritarian who is worse than the original. Cordeiro wound up winning the vote when enough of the self-interested people in this most insular of organizations decided that it was in their own self-interest to vote for him. Cordeiro’s first act upon taking over the USSF was to appoint Earnie Stewart as “General Manager” of the Men’s national team. (Probably to the dismay of a few of the “Players Council” members who voted for Cordeiro in the first place, some of whom are now football management types.) A nice guy, Stewart, a smart guy and a decorated American player. But from the moment he took over this position, Stewart’s never exuded any sense that he actually knows what it is that he’s supposed to be doing. He’s not alone in that, mind you. None of us know what it is that he’s supposed to be doing.
And it’s certainly wise, during a World Cup year, to wait until after the tournament is over to make this sort of hires. There is always a great deal of turnover in coaching staffs after a World Cup, coaching USA FC is certainly an appealing job, and so waiting until the French had finished running all over the Croatians in the final would allow Stewart to cast a wide net. So I was down with this, I understood the rationale of waiting until mid-July to make a big hire.
And the obvious candidate, in the aftermath of the World Cup, was Juan-Carlos Osorio, who stepped down from El Tri. Osorio is a Colombian but his roots in the game actually run deep in the U.S. He has coached at a high level all over the world, he knows the region, he knows the dynamics of American footballing culture, and he’s known as a tinkerer who is willing to experiment, which would be ideal for dealing with a young and uncertain talent pool. This was the guy that seemed to make sense, and he was certain to be available after El Tri once again failed to advance past the Round of 16 in Russia – an annoyance to the Mexican fan base, which had never fully forgiven Osorio to begin with for El Tri losing 0:7 to Chile in Santa Clara at the Copa América Centenario in 2016. (And understandably so. I was at that game. El Tri were a disgrace.) And, if you saw El Tri run the Germans off the pitch in the World Cup – and basically provide a blueprint for beating the Germans that every team thereafter copied – it’s clear the guy has some chops.
So Osorio just seemed like the most bloody obvious candidate ever for the U.S. job, and then he left El Tri and I figured it was only a matter of time before he was hired to coach the Stars & Stripes, and then he took the job … in Paraguay. Wait, what? I mean, I know that he’s a South American, and there are good jobs in South America – demanding jobs, but good jobs – but coaching Paraguay ain’t one of them. This is a step-down, which would indicate that, for one reason or another, U.S. Soccer wasn’t interested. Or, more to the point, U.S. Soccer had not even really bothered to start looking at all at the time Osorio was available. As Cordeiro said himself about the Berhalter hire during the introductory press conference: “We anticipated way back in August when the search began that with Gregg being a likely contender ...”
What the actual fuck? What are we doing here? Apparently we are doing nothing, at least not for the entire first half of 2018.
So Osorio rides off to Asuncíon and the American position stays open throughout the summer, and my best guess, at this point, is that the reason the job isn’t being filled is because U.S. Soccer wants an MLS guy to coach the national team, and is waiting to make a hire until after the season is over. An idea which is, quite frankly, stupid.
MLS is fine. It’s fine. I enjoy MLS. There are some good coaches in MLS, to be sure. But we’re looking for a guy here who is capable of preparing an international side to take on the Brazils and the Englands and the Colombias and the Italys of the world. (Which Sarachan wasn’t doing all that well, mind you, since the U.S. got blasted by all four of those nations in friendlies this fall.) As we’ve seen before, there is this annoying and, frankly, disturbing propensity among U.S. soccer types to think far too highly of MLS and its players and think far too little of the American guys playing overseas – guys who are far better players but also whose lives are complicated by the fact that they’re being rather handsomely paid by European clubs and are understandably reticent to want to play in some ridiculous USA FC friendly and risk injuring themselves, since doing so seriously will likely ruin their careers. But there is also the fact that U.S. Soccer is beholden to MLS and SUM, its marketing arm, to bankroll its budget. It’s an organization which has always known which side of the bread is buttered, and constantly winds up kowtowing to MLS even though far too many MLS clubs can’t be bothered to put young American players on the field – which is shouldn’t feel beholden to do, mind you, since those clubs have to look out for themselves, but it speaks to the silly nature of this dynamic. In Berhalter’s introductory press conference, Cordeiro spoke of how USA FC will be “uniquely and fiercely American.” What the hell does that mean? Given that MLS has spent much of its existence patting itself on the back while being a glorified retirement league, one can only guess that this “uniquely and fiercely American” side will puff out its chest and gloat when it manages to scrape out a goalless draw with Honduras.
But, as I say, there are actually some really good coaches in MLS who were capable of taking over this position – but if you’d asked me to name them, I can’t say that the steady eddie skipper of the Columbus Crew would have been one of them. Two come immediately to mind, in fact: Oscar Pereja, who not only coached like hell in Dallas but also produced a lot of the sorts of nice young talented players that USA FC needs, and Tata Martino, an Argentine with an extensive résumé who has now built Atlanta United into a dynamo and one of the most exciting teams the league has ever seen in a matter of a couple of years. Pereja apparently got a final interview but what passed over for Berhalter, and has now taken his talents to Liga MX. Martino, meanwhile, was apparently passed over because of his lack of proficiency in English – which is also dumb. It’s a global game. Talent travels all over the world and it figures out how to communicate. Hell, the Belgians have a Spaniard coaching Flemings and Francophones, and most likely doing so in English. Guys figure it out and get through it. The language of football is universal.
But more to the point, waiting to hire an MLS coach as the head of USA FC means waiting forever, because the season drags out into December. Where is the sense of urgency in all of this? While U.S. Soccer dragged its feet on filling the position, the team was out there playing 10 friendlies in 2018, looking not particularly good in any of them, and looking not the least bit coherent in all of them. Some of this was to be expected, of course, since the player pool was primarily made up of youngsters. Talented youngsters, mind you. There is definitely some talent there, assuming they know where on the field they’re even supposed to be. Young players screw up, they make all sorts of mistakes, but they’re the right kind of mistakes that you want them to make and learn from. But some of that incoherence on the pitch is attributable to the post-Trinidad malaise which has engulfed everyone involved with the program. There is confusion, there is upheaval, no one knows what the hell is going on and, with a lame duck coach whose strategic plan doesn’t matter, the on-field product is a mess. It’s a waste of time, it’s a wasted opportunity to actually start assembling the kind of squad that U.S. soccer wants, and very much needs. It’s no wonder that the players are fed up with the whole process:
That’s a quote from Michael Parkhurst, who plays for Atlanta United and has 25 caps for the national team. That is a really damning statement about the current state of the program.
And of course, there are the obligatory flag wavers out there whose response to this is full of patriotic jingoism about how you should be proud to put on the red, white and blue and to represent your country and all that bullshit. Hey, guess what? We ran a whole lot of our MLS retreads out there last fall and left our European pros back in their posh European homes, and we got our asses kicked by fuckin’ Trinidad & Tobago. The bigger issue here is that if you are a legit, high-calibre player – even if you’re in MLS, mind you, and have visions of doing better things in your career – why do you want to put up with this mess on your off-time? Why go out there and be put in positions to fail?
If I sound skeptical, it’s because I don’t trust anyone involved in U.S. Soccer to make a smart decision. We’ve reached a point, as it pertains to this organization, where all of the trust and the good faith engendered over the past 30 years has been thrown out the window. You’re going to have to prove me that you know what you’re doing.
And there’s another aspect of this hire of Gregg Berhalter as the coach of the national team which just cannot be overlooked, as much as U.S. Soccer would like us to do so: his brother, Jay Berhalter, is the CCO of the organization. Nepotism, anyone? And that’s not fair to Gregg, of course. It’s not fair at all. U.S. Soccer made a point of outlining (albeit in rather vague generalities) how Earnie Stewart assembled a list of 33 really good candidates for the position, whittled it down to 11, then five, and settled on two final interviews of Berhalter and Pereja. Okay, fine, you can tell us all of that, but it’s also been reported that the brother of the guy who wound up getting the job was one of the people who helped originally assemble the list of criteria necessary for getting the job, even though he is a business and finance guy who has nothing to do with the technical side. That whole thing just reeks of nepotism and conflict of interest. And again, that’s unfair – but it’s also unavoidable. Every time the U.S. loses, people are going to say that Gregg Berhalter sucks as a coach and only got the job because his brother is one of the bigwigs at the top of the food chain. That’s going to rear it’s ugly head every single goddamn time this team doesn’t get a victory, and even if it does win, that belief will never fully go away unless this team wins a damn World Cup, which ain’t gonna happen any time soon. Why would you willingly subject yourself to that scrutiny?
Sigh, I need another drink.
Look, the optics of all of this are bad. They are terrible. Taking 14 months to hire the brother of an exec, who you could have hired a year ago, to be the head coach ultimately looks like a dumb and lazy hire. What the point of any of that? What was the point? And that’s not fair to Gregg Berhalter, and it’s not fair to anyone involved on the actual field. But U.S. Soccer has always been an insular and incestuous sort of organization in its days on the margins, in keeping with the premise of Sayre’s Law that in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. They were all small-time players who were fighting over scraps.
But this isn’t some marginal sport anymore. We’re talking about a $1b business here. Hell, this organization is still full of clownshoes, and we’re supposed to host a damn World Cup in 2026. (And thank god for that, otherwise we might not be able to qualify.) I truly have no idea whether this is a good hire or not, but my spidy senses tell me that my distrust in U.S. Soccer is not misguided. They’ve done nothing of late to earn my trust. We’ll see where all of this goes in 2019, but until further notice, U.S. Soccer still sucks. Prove me wrong.
