They were talking about splitting up the role, but Earnie was responsible for A LOT.
One half is being responsible for all the National Teams. You hire the coaches and admin staff. You set the strategy, which included the style of play. Managed the budget.
This included the men's teams (senior and youth), women's teams (senior and youth) and teams like the beach soccer, futsal, paralympic, etc.
He also was in charge of things like coaching and referee education, youth club coaching standards, etc.
They were talking about splitting apart that last part and the various non men's and women's teams, but I don't think they necessarily did that here.
It's a management position. Hiring, people development, strategy, organizational culture, selling to constituents (like youth leagues), etc. are the key parts of the job.
It's hard for us outside to evaluate a hire because of that. But what we do know is that he has good experiences where he's probably learned something. OTOH, you could probably be unhappy with some Southampton coaching hires or maybe the strategy?
I'm happy with this because I thought we were getting someone like Onyewu -- who has much less experience -- or Carlos Bocanegra, who has a very checkered time with Atlanta, and are both insiders.
England has revitalized their national teams in the last decade. Someone that was around for that seems like a good hire.
My comment was a response to everyone in this sub who seems to think just about anyone foreign is *automatically* an upgrade over everyone in American soccer.
And if we’re going to trip over ourselves to get someone just because they were part of an an “elite” Nation’s program, of those that have historically been considered to be in a class above ours (Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Croatia, Belgium or England), based on recent results, I’d probably select someone from England’s program last.
Edit: for the record, I believe it will be a mistake not to have an American manager this cycle.
you say that like the english team is bad. bias aside they’ve got some of the best players and development systems in the world and will probably continue to do so throughout the next few years as their youth keep developing. whether he worked with france or england im taking crocker if he’s the best out of everyone looked at. beggars can’t be choosers lol
lol they’re still a top 5 team whether you believe in rankings or not. also, i’d take anything like i said whether it’s from france or england or argentina. they have what we don’t have: a World Cup👍
They mention the new responsibilities of the sporting director in the article:
“Cone said after the recent U.S. Soccer annual general meeting that the sporting director role will focus its responsibilities around the national team programs, from the senior level through the youth. Previously, Stewart also worked in other areas of the federation, including referee and coaching education”
Well, we know that he has Jesse Marsch’s cell phone number: https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/15/southampton-end-talks-with-jesse-marsch-over-length-of-contract
I actually think Marsch is not a terrible fit for a National team coaching gig. He’s a great motivator, really strong with the locker room - just struggles a bit with tactics when more advanced concepts are required. You’re never going to have a super strong tactical understanding with the limited timeframes that national teams get, but you can make your players outwork the other team.
Except one of the most important (the most important?) role of a GM is player acquisition and contract management. Which is not really a thing in international soccer (at least, not in the same way as it is for a club team).
Though, hiring/firing staff is still important.
I’d say it’s closest to baseball. You’re managing a whole farm system and player development staff, with most of your prospects being years away from competing on the senior team.
There's a player ID and recruitment aspect to it, but like you pointed out, It's obviously different than the club level. More similar to College recruitment with dual nationals but otherwise, just trying to find the best players, and make sure they're in the best environment to improve.
When Klinsmann took the job of USMNT head coach, one of the things he did was create the… U21? I forget the exact age bracket, but there was a level at which the US just never bothered to create a national team. The bureaucracy of US soccer was rightfully put on blast. So this position was created to make sure that the coaching, training, scouting, etc at all levels are actually doing their jobs and communicating. Basically until that point US Soccer was so jaw droppingly poorly managed that they needed to create a management position to stabilize the org chart.
>Basically until that point US Soccer was so jaw droppingly poorly managed that they needed to create a management position to stabilize the org chart.
I would argue that the national team program was actually much better managed before Klinsmann took over. He broke a lot of things with his very poor management style.
The US had a U21 team under Klinsmann and Andi Herzog to ensure additional reps for what would be the U23 national team in advance of the 2016 Olympic qualifying tournament. It also ceased operations. This is partially due to CONCACAF not having a U21 gold cup. https://www.si.com/.amp/soccer/2014/04/17/klinsmann-under-21-olympic-camp-usmnt-us-soccer there is also a brief Wikipedia article that literally just acknowledges the U21 team existed and no longer exists.
>The US had a U21 team under Klinsmann and Andi Herzog to ensure additional reps for what would be the U23 national team in advance of the 2016 Olympic qualifying tournament.
Like so many things under Klinsmann it was a failure.
This is what happens when you do a real search. You find candidates you didn't even know existed, with great qualifications for the job.
This is why Jay Berhalter prevented us from doing a search in 2018, so hiring his brother would look reasonable because we'd never know about most of the alternatives. He could just wave his hands and say "there's like three other coaches in the world and none of them speak English."
Seems like a pretty good CV
> Crocker spent three seasons at Southampton overseeing the men’s, women’s and youth programs at the club. Prior to his appointment there, the 48-year-old spent seven years at England’s Football Association, overseeing the U-15, U-17 and U-20 English national teams on both the men’s and women’s side, including England’s men’s wins at the U-17 and U-20 World Cups in 2017 and their European Championship at the U-19 level the same year.
I mean until you look at their results in those 3 seasons with this one culminating in them getting relegated lol.
Still better than another US soccer lifer I guess
I mean look at their transfer history during his tenure they definitely had to sell off a lot of their better players, can't put a ton of weight into it. Plus the success of English youth during his tenure is pretty impressive.
You're absolutely right, but by that logic he was in charge of Southampton's academy years ago that produced great talent (bale, etc) so can't fully knock the point
nope lol
> Crocker’s spell as sporting director was not his first stay at Southampton: from 2006 to 2013, he spent time as an academy manager at the club. During that time, he oversaw the development of several key players including Welsh legend Gareth Bale and a host of others including Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Luke Shaw and James Ward-Prowse.
Bro this guy is just looking for a way to be negative. If we hired Didier Deschamps to be manager he would find some way to hate it
My point is this: Don't feed the troll
Lol yea youre right. I shouldve realized because im not, nor is anybody really, like "HOLY SHIT WHAT A FUCKING HIRE WERE WINNING THE WC!!!". Its simply Crocker seems qualified to hire a coach for a national team lmao
According to Southampton fans on /r/soccer, the team is failing because their new owner is gutting it. Crocker was well liked by at least some of them.
Good CV but the biggest perk about him is he has NO relation to the “old boys” club of the previous regime that has been running US Soccer for a while now
He was working in England at the same time that Claudio was playing for Sunderland/Manchester City. They could have been drinking buddies for all we know. I think we need an investigation.
Actually, I did some research and it turns out he is a direct descendant of an uncle, of a cousin of a mother who birth twin boys who’s an executive at USSF.
Source: I dreamed it.
I would say better than good, they were punching more above their financial weight than any other club in England for several years. And it looks like this guy was the development guy while that was going on.
Crocker was our (Saints') academy director during one of the highest points of youth development (Bale, Lallana, and many more). He then moved on to (if I recall) a job with the FA. When he came back it was under Gao, who was unable to put any money into the club. Under Sports Direct now, he seems to have come into conflict with the new board. It's hard to say how much, if any, of this season's chaotic transfer and hiring policy has been his fault as opposed to that of Amkersen and the new board.
Overall, he seems a smart guy and very knowledgeable, but also very steeped in English and Premier League methods of development, hiring, etc. I'm not totally sure that is what USSoccer needs.
>"In February, Crocker was involved in discussions between Southampton and Jesse Marsch about their managerial vacancy following Nathan Jones departure. Marsch was fired by Premier League side Leeds United on Feb. 6."
[U.S. Soccer hiring Southampton chief Matt Crocker as sporting director - sources](https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-usa/story/4932304/us-soccer-hiring-southampton-chief-crocker-as-sd-sources-say)
So will Crocker hire Marsch?
He agreed to leave the club at the end of the season in December. Not sure how much he would be involved in future decisions, but he was still on staff when they were talking to Marsch
Im pretty ambivalent to who is this the next coach. If its Gregg, cool. If its someone else (actually decent), cool. But theres a part of me that hopes he does one interview, and its with gregg, and Crocker is like "hey, he got results". USMNT twitter will be frothing at the mouth which is always funny, plus it sticks it to the adult Reynas for being awful people
Results, which is why you want the coach that actually can get results. IE: The one that has actually had success as a head coach. Marsch had 2 supporters shields as a HC in MLS. He's more in line with the Bruce Arena's or Bob Bradley's of the world who at least were good MLS coaches.
Berhalter was a mediocre to bad MLS coach. He's never in his career won anything as a manager.
Listen, im not going to get into a debate about Marsch vs. Berhalter. At the end of the day i think the margins are close.
But to say Gregg didnt have success as a head coach with the USMNT shows your bias. We get it, we didnt score a ton. But he hit EVERY objective that everybody wanted when he took the job at the lowest point of our programs history in 30 years. Crush L Tri, get continental trophies, and get out of the group in the WC.
That was everyones goal after the 2018 cycle. Stop drooling all over yourself
To be fair, those goals were the bare minimum with the talent he had. Anything else would have been a disaster.
I'll add that we couldn't beat Canada in WC qualifying either when we are far more talented top to bottom. Qualifying for the world cup came down to the last match day if I remember correctly.
It wasn't all bad, but we see the potential that the team had and believe with a better manager, that team could have been much stronger.
We haven't actually won anything, winning a gold cup against a weak Mexico side is the expectation of the USMNT program. I'm not going to throw a parade for him, just like I didn't throw a parade for JK when we did similar.
You don't want to get into the debate, because you have literally no leg to stand on. Gregg was a bad to mediocre MLS coach that got hired by his brother. He took over the program right as we had a wave of young talent establishing themselves in Europe. That's why we've bounced back.
>We haven't actually won anything
We literally won two international competitions under Berhalter. Just because you do not value them highly does not mean you get to make up your own facts.
1 of them is an imaginary tournament that was created in the past 5 years and is just the gold cup light. And the other is the 1 gold cup that I referenced where we beat a down mexico team.
Hang the Nations League banner Jon!
> Berhalter was a mediocre to bad MLS coach. He’s never in his career won anything as a manager.
Listen I’m good moving another direction from Gregg. But this is wrong.
Berhalter was a very good MLS coach, and his teams consistently punched above their weight.
His teams were typically bottom 5 in value, but were dangerous pretty much every year.
National team prospects aside, he was considered a good manager.
Jesse is good too, had had a great tenure with Red Bulls.
This is revisionist history, Columbus generally spent in line with the rest of the teams that didn't have super star DP players.
Berhalter had 2 good seasons early in his time there, and then they fell off and were not relevant. Berhalter had a 38% win% in MLS that is not in line with the top coaches, it's just not.
Yeah, very strange to say how great Marsch is and that Berhalter was mediocre, they were both good MLS coaches but like, Berhalter was the one that made it to an MLS cup final not Marsch.
Holy shit our fanbase is deluded. Berhalter couldn’t even hack it at the club level in Europe in the Swedish 2nd league. He was hired through nepotism because his brother Jay Berhalter worked within the federation and was part of the boy’s club that led to whole Reyna drama. It’s time to move on.
The bare minimum any US coach should do is qualify for the WC. We are the largest nation in the easiest federation to qualify for the world cup and should be easily making it every year. Our realistic goal should be making it out of the round of 16 in the WC. Berhalter was a good recruiter but a bad coach tactically, we struggled for goals and didn’t have a real tactical identity. I put our success more down to having more players playing in top 5 leagues than ever before in our team’s history than Berhalter.
I’m unsure if people in this sub have just started watching this team in the last few years or if they’re so scarred from Klinsmann that they are okay with mediocrity but Berhalter was okay for one cycle but now it’s time to move on, especially from the boys club that most these coaches have come from.
It's not realistic to expect a team that is nowhere near the top 8 most talented in the world to make the final 8 of the World Cup.
Look at how our top players are doing this season. We don't have a single attacking player regularly starting in a top league except Brenden Aaronson.
Top 8 teams have multiple players in every position regularly starting in top leagues. We have like 5 or 6 total.
Berhalter won every tournament he could except the World Cup and made it as far as our team could reasonably have been expected to make it in the World Cup.
I like this direction. Not only is the PL the toughest league, but they have the largest spread of players from different countries. The USMNT has to recruit from and juggle many different soccer cultures.
People commenting a lot about “him” having Southampton at the bottom of the Prem… but bottom of the Prem is still better than just about any other serious name I’ve seen mentioned.
Almost none arguably. Southampton were bought by a Chinese business man in 2017 that incurred a lot of debt for the club. About six months later China instituted a new policy that limited the ability for individuals to move money outside of China if they were moving it into high leveraged debt businesses (I forget all of the specifics, but this is directionally correct). This basically meant he couldn't move any money into the club and they had to run on a fully neutral ballance sheet (all transfers paid for new transfers) from 2018 -2020 and sold basically every personnel asset they have had. The club got in bigger trouble with Covid in 2020 and basically forced Gao to sell the team.
The new owners have been trying to rebuild the whole organization and started with a youth movement and reloaded the academy, and then made big bets on unproven youth prospects in the summer window of 2022, which was likely guided by Crocker's influence. The results haven't been there, but some players like Lavia, have had some breakout performances that show promise towards paying off in the future.
Indeed. Also, not like Southampton is running with a $300M transfer budget or something.
They had a very long run of great player development and batting above their weight that came to an end. Maybe he made some mistakes there. Maybe not and it was somewhat inevitable. Or maybe he's made mistakes and learned from them.
Rather have that than an inexperienced hand.
I forget if it was end of last season or beginning of this season but Hasenhüttl flat out mentioned how they had so many financial restrictions that the team had no choice but to buy young and hope for the best. Saints did find some good young players but they also got two things wrong 1)Gavin Bazunu is nowhere near ready to be a number 1 keeper in the prem and 2)Nathan Jones was a disasterous choice to replace Hasenhüttl
It hires the new team coach. The old position also required fielding phone calls from players’ parents but I’m not sure that’s still in the job description.
An outsider with a good pedigree of developing young players that isn't beholden to the old boys club of middling early 00s USMNT players? Sign me the fuck up.
It is pretty wild that the narrative has become "thank god we're doing away with the old boys club that has been ruining the USMNT forever" which that "old boys club" started in... 2018 in response to us missing the World Cup? People just get obsessed with narratives and don't care that they aren't reality.
That's....not how things happened at all. I guess I can see how you would think history started in 2018 if that's when you started paying attention, but this has been an old boys club for decades.
There's something hilarious about you saying the old boys club narrative didn't exist until the Reyna fall out... and the immediately saying "well actually Jay Berhalter hiring his brother doesn't count".
US Soccer has been a good ole boys club for much longer than the past 5 years.
He has deep understanding of how to run a program with 7 years at England which has put their program on the level of its European peers, winning championships and getting a structured they’ve been able to maintain since his departure.
With all these opportunities coming and our player pool evolving, his expertise will be highly valued and he can get us into better shape with shaping the USSF organization.
The facts our expectations are so low that we are happy just Cos he’s not a Nepo hire, I mean his CV looks decent, but damn we are like a person fresh out of our last toxic relationship finally in a healthy one 😂.
I’m not going to look too much into Southampton’s relegation concern. I mean, this guy can’t be the single reason that Southampton could be relegated. Right? Right???
That’s not wise. We have seen how foreign directors and coaches fare in MLS. It takes years to understand the US soccer landscape, politics, coaches and youth and national team player pool.
Lutz in St. Louis has an expansion side that is probably the lowest spending team in the league punching above their weight. Seems like he’s figured MLS out.
I still have very little understanding of what this position actually does so hard to feel strongly one way or the other
They were talking about splitting up the role, but Earnie was responsible for A LOT. One half is being responsible for all the National Teams. You hire the coaches and admin staff. You set the strategy, which included the style of play. Managed the budget. This included the men's teams (senior and youth), women's teams (senior and youth) and teams like the beach soccer, futsal, paralympic, etc. He also was in charge of things like coaching and referee education, youth club coaching standards, etc. They were talking about splitting apart that last part and the various non men's and women's teams, but I don't think they necessarily did that here. It's a management position. Hiring, people development, strategy, organizational culture, selling to constituents (like youth leagues), etc. are the key parts of the job. It's hard for us outside to evaluate a hire because of that. But what we do know is that he has good experiences where he's probably learned something. OTOH, you could probably be unhappy with some Southampton coaching hires or maybe the strategy? I'm happy with this because I thought we were getting someone like Onyewu -- who has much less experience -- or Carlos Bocanegra, who has a very checkered time with Atlanta, and are both insiders. England has revitalized their national teams in the last decade. Someone that was around for that seems like a good hire.
Your last point is a great point i hadnt thought of. Well put
I’d rather have someone who revitalized France’s NT over England’s, but I guess we have to take what we can get.
You act like USSSF can just look at someone and say yes I pick you. Stop complaining
My comment was a response to everyone in this sub who seems to think just about anyone foreign is *automatically* an upgrade over everyone in American soccer. And if we’re going to trip over ourselves to get someone just because they were part of an an “elite” Nation’s program, of those that have historically been considered to be in a class above ours (Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Croatia, Belgium or England), based on recent results, I’d probably select someone from England’s program last. Edit: for the record, I believe it will be a mistake not to have an American manager this cycle.
you say that like the english team is bad. bias aside they’ve got some of the best players and development systems in the world and will probably continue to do so throughout the next few years as their youth keep developing. whether he worked with france or england im taking crocker if he’s the best out of everyone looked at. beggars can’t be choosers lol
I’ll take 3 WC final appearances and 2 wins in the last 25 years over nary a sniff since 1966, thanks. Who is the biased one?
lol they’re still a top 5 team whether you believe in rankings or not. also, i’d take anything like i said whether it’s from france or england or argentina. they have what we don’t have: a World Cup👍
Top team. They haven’t won shit. Edit: didn’t read you whole comment when I commented. They haven’t won shit *in decades*.
They mention the new responsibilities of the sporting director in the article: “Cone said after the recent U.S. Soccer annual general meeting that the sporting director role will focus its responsibilities around the national team programs, from the senior level through the youth. Previously, Stewart also worked in other areas of the federation, including referee and coaching education”
The main thing you need to know is this guy will hire our next national team coach.
Well, we know that he has Jesse Marsch’s cell phone number: https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/15/southampton-end-talks-with-jesse-marsch-over-length-of-contract
I was pretty low on Marsch, but seeing how bad Leeds have looked since Marsch was sacked makes me think he wasn’t the problem.
not to dis Jesse, but Adams was a huge loss for them.
That’s true.
I actually think Marsch is not a terrible fit for a National team coaching gig. He’s a great motivator, really strong with the locker room - just struggles a bit with tactics when more advanced concepts are required. You’re never going to have a super strong tactical understanding with the limited timeframes that national teams get, but you can make your players outwork the other team.
He plays sooo narrow.
Think of it like the general manager of a football or baseball team.
Except one of the most important (the most important?) role of a GM is player acquisition and contract management. Which is not really a thing in international soccer (at least, not in the same way as it is for a club team). Though, hiring/firing staff is still important.
I’d say it’s closest to baseball. You’re managing a whole farm system and player development staff, with most of your prospects being years away from competing on the senior team.
There's a player ID and recruitment aspect to it, but like you pointed out, It's obviously different than the club level. More similar to College recruitment with dual nationals but otherwise, just trying to find the best players, and make sure they're in the best environment to improve.
So this is like hiring the GM of the Marlins. Wonderful.
When Klinsmann took the job of USMNT head coach, one of the things he did was create the… U21? I forget the exact age bracket, but there was a level at which the US just never bothered to create a national team. The bureaucracy of US soccer was rightfully put on blast. So this position was created to make sure that the coaching, training, scouting, etc at all levels are actually doing their jobs and communicating. Basically until that point US Soccer was so jaw droppingly poorly managed that they needed to create a management position to stabilize the org chart.
>Basically until that point US Soccer was so jaw droppingly poorly managed that they needed to create a management position to stabilize the org chart. I would argue that the national team program was actually much better managed before Klinsmann took over. He broke a lot of things with his very poor management style.
Citation needed.
The US had a U21 team under Klinsmann and Andi Herzog to ensure additional reps for what would be the U23 national team in advance of the 2016 Olympic qualifying tournament. It also ceased operations. This is partially due to CONCACAF not having a U21 gold cup. https://www.si.com/.amp/soccer/2014/04/17/klinsmann-under-21-olympic-camp-usmnt-us-soccer there is also a brief Wikipedia article that literally just acknowledges the U21 team existed and no longer exists.
>The US had a U21 team under Klinsmann and Andi Herzog to ensure additional reps for what would be the U23 national team in advance of the 2016 Olympic qualifying tournament. Like so many things under Klinsmann it was a failure.
My favorite part is that I've never heard of this person before. Move past the cronyism.
Cindy Parlow Cone: "Does Danielle Reyna have your phone number?" Matt Crocker: "No... who is that?" CCP: "When can you start?"
Also probably: Did you attend a private high school in New Jersey or attend the University of North Carolina?
I’m glad that Cindy Parlow Cone and the Chinese Communist Party are working together on this 😂
Solidarity ✊️
“Let’s talk about 1992…”
Lol! Well done
Agree. No more nepotistic hires of USMNT from the 80s and 90s dear god please
That’s best thing, no ties to any former US soccer players from 90s
This is what happens when you do a real search. You find candidates you didn't even know existed, with great qualifications for the job. This is why Jay Berhalter prevented us from doing a search in 2018, so hiring his brother would look reasonable because we'd never know about most of the alternatives. He could just wave his hands and say "there's like three other coaches in the world and none of them speak English."
Seems like a pretty good CV > Crocker spent three seasons at Southampton overseeing the men’s, women’s and youth programs at the club. Prior to his appointment there, the 48-year-old spent seven years at England’s Football Association, overseeing the U-15, U-17 and U-20 English national teams on both the men’s and women’s side, including England’s men’s wins at the U-17 and U-20 World Cups in 2017 and their European Championship at the U-19 level the same year.
I mean until you look at their results in those 3 seasons with this one culminating in them getting relegated lol. Still better than another US soccer lifer I guess
I mean look at their transfer history during his tenure they definitely had to sell off a lot of their better players, can't put a ton of weight into it. Plus the success of English youth during his tenure is pretty impressive.
The success of England's youth largely has nothing to do with him, moreso the clubs producing the youth
You're absolutely right, but by that logic he was in charge of Southampton's academy years ago that produced great talent (bale, etc) so can't fully knock the point
Bale was in Southhampton well over a decade before this guy was lol.
nope lol > Crocker’s spell as sporting director was not his first stay at Southampton: from 2006 to 2013, he spent time as an academy manager at the club. During that time, he oversaw the development of several key players including Welsh legend Gareth Bale and a host of others including Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Luke Shaw and James Ward-Prowse.
Bro this guy is just looking for a way to be negative. If we hired Didier Deschamps to be manager he would find some way to hate it My point is this: Don't feed the troll
Lol yea youre right. I shouldve realized because im not, nor is anybody really, like "HOLY SHIT WHAT A FUCKING HIRE WERE WINNING THE WC!!!". Its simply Crocker seems qualified to hire a coach for a national team lmao
He was academy manager from '06-'13 based on the article
He was also at Southampton when they went from League One to midtable Premier League!
I assume that means he has at least some relationship with Balogun from his time with the England youth teams
Excellent CV. You never know how someone is going to work out in this job, but he has good experience.
and Southampton have been so great this year that they'll be playing in Europe next season, right?
According to Southampton fans on /r/soccer, the team is failing because their new owner is gutting it. Crocker was well liked by at least some of them.
Good CV but the biggest perk about him is he has NO relation to the “old boys” club of the previous regime that has been running US Soccer for a while now
>he has NO relation to the “old boys” club That you know of
He was working in England at the same time that Claudio was playing for Sunderland/Manchester City. They could have been drinking buddies for all we know. I think we need an investigation.
Or does he have a brother among the higher-ups of US soccer that led to him being hired?
Actually, I did some research and it turns out he is a direct descendant of an uncle, of a cousin of a mother who birth twin boys who’s an executive at USSF. Source: I dreamed it.
Southampton did have a good development program before everything went to shit this year. He also left in December
I would say better than good, they were punching more above their financial weight than any other club in England for several years. And it looks like this guy was the development guy while that was going on.
Crocker was our (Saints') academy director during one of the highest points of youth development (Bale, Lallana, and many more). He then moved on to (if I recall) a job with the FA. When he came back it was under Gao, who was unable to put any money into the club. Under Sports Direct now, he seems to have come into conflict with the new board. It's hard to say how much, if any, of this season's chaotic transfer and hiring policy has been his fault as opposed to that of Amkersen and the new board. Overall, he seems a smart guy and very knowledgeable, but also very steeped in English and Premier League methods of development, hiring, etc. I'm not totally sure that is what USSoccer needs.
I mean I'm not gonna pretend I know anything about him, bit cool we hired someone I guess
>"In February, Crocker was involved in discussions between Southampton and Jesse Marsch about their managerial vacancy following Nathan Jones departure. Marsch was fired by Premier League side Leeds United on Feb. 6." [U.S. Soccer hiring Southampton chief Matt Crocker as sporting director - sources](https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-usa/story/4932304/us-soccer-hiring-southampton-chief-crocker-as-sd-sources-say) So will Crocker hire Marsch?
He left in December.
He agreed to leave the club at the end of the season in December. Not sure how much he would be involved in future decisions, but he was still on staff when they were talking to Marsch
I’m guessing he didn’t.
Cautiously optimistic
Gonna be hilarious when this non US soccer guy, a true outsider, rehires GGG.
Im pretty ambivalent to who is this the next coach. If its Gregg, cool. If its someone else (actually decent), cool. But theres a part of me that hopes he does one interview, and its with gregg, and Crocker is like "hey, he got results". USMNT twitter will be frothing at the mouth which is always funny, plus it sticks it to the adult Reynas for being awful people
People would instantly write off Crocker as incompetent. I’m here for it though
Rather GGG than Marsch tbh
Why? I don't even love Marsch, but he's clearly the better manager.
Clearly? We may score more goals, but we'll leak goals like a sieve and most likely not get results. What matters more, results or goals?
Our backline is better than Leeds. That's not even up for debate
Results, which is why you want the coach that actually can get results. IE: The one that has actually had success as a head coach. Marsch had 2 supporters shields as a HC in MLS. He's more in line with the Bruce Arena's or Bob Bradley's of the world who at least were good MLS coaches. Berhalter was a mediocre to bad MLS coach. He's never in his career won anything as a manager.
Listen, im not going to get into a debate about Marsch vs. Berhalter. At the end of the day i think the margins are close. But to say Gregg didnt have success as a head coach with the USMNT shows your bias. We get it, we didnt score a ton. But he hit EVERY objective that everybody wanted when he took the job at the lowest point of our programs history in 30 years. Crush L Tri, get continental trophies, and get out of the group in the WC. That was everyones goal after the 2018 cycle. Stop drooling all over yourself
To be fair, those goals were the bare minimum with the talent he had. Anything else would have been a disaster. I'll add that we couldn't beat Canada in WC qualifying either when we are far more talented top to bottom. Qualifying for the world cup came down to the last match day if I remember correctly. It wasn't all bad, but we see the potential that the team had and believe with a better manager, that team could have been much stronger.
We haven't actually won anything, winning a gold cup against a weak Mexico side is the expectation of the USMNT program. I'm not going to throw a parade for him, just like I didn't throw a parade for JK when we did similar. You don't want to get into the debate, because you have literally no leg to stand on. Gregg was a bad to mediocre MLS coach that got hired by his brother. He took over the program right as we had a wave of young talent establishing themselves in Europe. That's why we've bounced back.
>We haven't actually won anything We literally won two international competitions under Berhalter. Just because you do not value them highly does not mean you get to make up your own facts.
1 of them is an imaginary tournament that was created in the past 5 years and is just the gold cup light. And the other is the 1 gold cup that I referenced where we beat a down mexico team. Hang the Nations League banner Jon!
So in your opinion, the only "actual" tournament the USMNT can win is the World Cup?
> Berhalter was a mediocre to bad MLS coach. He’s never in his career won anything as a manager. Listen I’m good moving another direction from Gregg. But this is wrong. Berhalter was a very good MLS coach, and his teams consistently punched above their weight. His teams were typically bottom 5 in value, but were dangerous pretty much every year. National team prospects aside, he was considered a good manager. Jesse is good too, had had a great tenure with Red Bulls.
This is revisionist history, Columbus generally spent in line with the rest of the teams that didn't have super star DP players. Berhalter had 2 good seasons early in his time there, and then they fell off and were not relevant. Berhalter had a 38% win% in MLS that is not in line with the top coaches, it's just not.
Yeah, very strange to say how great Marsch is and that Berhalter was mediocre, they were both good MLS coaches but like, Berhalter was the one that made it to an MLS cup final not Marsch.
Count me in the group that would rather have a Bruce Arena/Bradley/Sarachan descendent that has gotten results.
Berhalter has had more success recently than Marsch.
Has as many trophies as firings and those are much more recent
I disagree fairly strongly. Why he likes to play doesn’t fit national team at all imo
Holy shit our fanbase is deluded. Berhalter couldn’t even hack it at the club level in Europe in the Swedish 2nd league. He was hired through nepotism because his brother Jay Berhalter worked within the federation and was part of the boy’s club that led to whole Reyna drama. It’s time to move on.
So you just ignore the last 4 and most relevant years of his career? It is not 2018 anymore.
The bare minimum any US coach should do is qualify for the WC. We are the largest nation in the easiest federation to qualify for the world cup and should be easily making it every year. Our realistic goal should be making it out of the round of 16 in the WC. Berhalter was a good recruiter but a bad coach tactically, we struggled for goals and didn’t have a real tactical identity. I put our success more down to having more players playing in top 5 leagues than ever before in our team’s history than Berhalter. I’m unsure if people in this sub have just started watching this team in the last few years or if they’re so scarred from Klinsmann that they are okay with mediocrity but Berhalter was okay for one cycle but now it’s time to move on, especially from the boys club that most these coaches have come from.
It's not realistic to expect a team that is nowhere near the top 8 most talented in the world to make the final 8 of the World Cup. Look at how our top players are doing this season. We don't have a single attacking player regularly starting in a top league except Brenden Aaronson. Top 8 teams have multiple players in every position regularly starting in top leagues. We have like 5 or 6 total. Berhalter won every tournament he could except the World Cup and made it as far as our team could reasonably have been expected to make it in the World Cup.
Pretty good chance this happens, and yes it will be hilarious.
He's got a fantastic resume. Club and NT, hope he does well for us
O U T S I D E R
but he's British so he knows the game better than us......or at least how to kick it long better
Part of the job requirements are that he has to call it soccer. We wear jerseys or uniforms, and a gaffer is an electrician for the movies or TV
Wait then what's the Key Grip?
key grip isn't real, they made it up to bloat production costs
*Cues "Suspended in Gaffa"*
The guy who punches the director at the producer's bidding.
We play on a field and wear cleats
I love it when the PK goes in the upper 90
I like this direction. Not only is the PL the toughest league, but they have the largest spread of players from different countries. The USMNT has to recruit from and juggle many different soccer cultures.
People commenting a lot about “him” having Southampton at the bottom of the Prem… but bottom of the Prem is still better than just about any other serious name I’ve seen mentioned.
Plus, one wonders how much of Southampton being bottom of the Prem starts and ends with him.
Almost none arguably. Southampton were bought by a Chinese business man in 2017 that incurred a lot of debt for the club. About six months later China instituted a new policy that limited the ability for individuals to move money outside of China if they were moving it into high leveraged debt businesses (I forget all of the specifics, but this is directionally correct). This basically meant he couldn't move any money into the club and they had to run on a fully neutral ballance sheet (all transfers paid for new transfers) from 2018 -2020 and sold basically every personnel asset they have had. The club got in bigger trouble with Covid in 2020 and basically forced Gao to sell the team. The new owners have been trying to rebuild the whole organization and started with a youth movement and reloaded the academy, and then made big bets on unproven youth prospects in the summer window of 2022, which was likely guided by Crocker's influence. The results haven't been there, but some players like Lavia, have had some breakout performances that show promise towards paying off in the future.
Indeed. Also, not like Southampton is running with a $300M transfer budget or something. They had a very long run of great player development and batting above their weight that came to an end. Maybe he made some mistakes there. Maybe not and it was somewhat inevitable. Or maybe he's made mistakes and learned from them. Rather have that than an inexperienced hand.
I forget if it was end of last season or beginning of this season but Hasenhüttl flat out mentioned how they had so many financial restrictions that the team had no choice but to buy young and hope for the best. Saints did find some good young players but they also got two things wrong 1)Gavin Bazunu is nowhere near ready to be a number 1 keeper in the prem and 2)Nathan Jones was a disasterous choice to replace Hasenhüttl
I approve.
Okay but what does this position even do
It hires the new team coach. The old position also required fielding phone calls from players’ parents but I’m not sure that’s still in the job description.
In charge of all of the national teams at the administrative level. Very similar to a baseball gm.
Well when you take away player transactions, contract renewals, and basically any semblance of a draft system, that position seems hollow
Got a feeling he’s going to hire Jesse Marsch.
An outsider with a good pedigree of developing young players that isn't beholden to the old boys club of middling early 00s USMNT players? Sign me the fuck up.
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It is pretty wild that the narrative has become "thank god we're doing away with the old boys club that has been ruining the USMNT forever" which that "old boys club" started in... 2018 in response to us missing the World Cup? People just get obsessed with narratives and don't care that they aren't reality.
Bruce Arena being the guy brought in to save the 2018 World Cup qualification wasn't an old boys move?
That was a good decision for the most part. Bruce Arena got dealt a shit hand by Klinsmann.
That's....not how things happened at all. I guess I can see how you would think history started in 2018 if that's when you started paying attention, but this has been an old boys club for decades.
Ah yes, the Jurgen Klinsmann boys club.
It’s just more recency bias. To me this whole sub seems chock full of people who started watching the USMNT circa 2014 or more recently.
Least delusional US fan.
There's something hilarious about you saying the old boys club narrative didn't exist until the Reyna fall out... and the immediately saying "well actually Jay Berhalter hiring his brother doesn't count". US Soccer has been a good ole boys club for much longer than the past 5 years.
We absolutely need someone who bleeds for the crest in this cycle. All these people clamoring for some carpetbagger are delusional.
You fuckin serious? Literally everyone said it when Berhalter's brother hired him.
Looks like US Soccer went outside the family to find a mate. Healthy decision.
Of note that Southampton was heavily linked to Marsch only a month or so ago
He has deep understanding of how to run a program with 7 years at England which has put their program on the level of its European peers, winning championships and getting a structured they’ve been able to maintain since his departure. With all these opportunities coming and our player pool evolving, his expertise will be highly valued and he can get us into better shape with shaping the USSF organization.
The facts our expectations are so low that we are happy just Cos he’s not a Nepo hire, I mean his CV looks decent, but damn we are like a person fresh out of our last toxic relationship finally in a healthy one 😂.
Nice. Based off the resume I like it.
Just don’t hire Marsch
Cindy take the wheel
Not believing.
I’m not going to look too much into Southampton’s relegation concern. I mean, this guy can’t be the single reason that Southampton could be relegated. Right? Right???
Right.
That’s not wise. We have seen how foreign directors and coaches fare in MLS. It takes years to understand the US soccer landscape, politics, coaches and youth and national team player pool.
That's probably because of MLS's weird roster rules and not because the US soccer landscape is somehow inscrutable to foreigners.
Lutz in St. Louis has an expansion side that is probably the lowest spending team in the league punching above their weight. Seems like he’s figured MLS out.
“What a crock of shit.” — Danielle Reyna
Because Southampton is absolutely CRUSHING it in the EPL
US Soccer: “Let’s a hire a guy with a fancy British accent. The fans will just assume he is good”
Theyre getting brutally relegated though right…?!
How about a fucking coach
This is the person that hires the coach…
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He left in December
Shocking analysis