Top Stories

Caleb Porter believes he should be considered for USMNT head coach

1 Shares

After declining a deal to become Orlando City’s head man and being away from soccer for a season, Caleb Porter is looking to get back into the coaching picture.

One of the coaching positions Porter is looking to go after is the U.S. Men’s National Team job if the Federation is interested in his services.

That is, after they look into current Sporting Kansas City boss Peter Vermes.

“Peter Vermes, in my opinion, based on what he’s done in our league, he’s proven it as an American coach,” Porter told The Athletic. “If you don’t go with Peter Vermes, I think, based on what I’ve proven, I’m in the mix with another two or three guys who deserve consideration and I’d be open to talking.”

With a head coaching job in sight, Porter doesn’t know what his next job will be as he patiently waits for an opportunity.

There is history between Porter and the U.S. Soccer Federation. Before taking the Portland job, he managed the U.S. U-23s as he failed to lead them into the Olympics.

While the USMNT opening is very intriguing to him, he still feels more fitted to a club job. In fact, the only team he wouldn’t coach is his former club’s rival, the Seattle Sounders.

“I’ll never coach the Seattle Sounders,” he said. “Because that’d be s****** in Portland’s bed.” Although he is open to the idea of coaching an expansion team with a blank slate and solid long-term vision.

Comments

  1. I too would like to see someone with international head-coach experience take over the USMNT, but I also don’t see a lot of people in that category lining up to interview, though there are obviously several MLS coaches who would like the job.
    .
    It seems to me that coach of any national team except the really top ones is a relatively uphill and thankless job. They get so little practice time together and have such long down times in between, when other coaches are working with players week in and week out, and the fans spend the whole time criticizing them.
    .
    One of the only ones obviously available at the moment is Osorio. As critical as US fans can be, they might not be quite so unrelentingly negative and ungrateful as the Mexican fans and press were, so I could picture him taking the job if asked. But would he have the charisma needed to inspire players, and would he be willing to let the same core group play together often enough for them to get comfortable with each other? What do you all think? Who else with international experience would be interested?
    .
    .
    .
    P.S. Have the posts here always been shown in reverse chronological order after the main article, but in chronological order after another post? Am I just imagining that? It seems confusing.
    .

    Reply
  2. i am especially grateful that people have shared their views about porter. we need the right man to coach our usmnt. now is the time to talk about this.

    Reply
  3. Virtually everyone knows the USA is looking for a coach. Where is the long line of top coaches champing at the bit for the job? The US fans are in the position of rejecting anyone who might actually want the job.

    Reply
    • dennis, you sound like a guy who is familiar with world football. but are you familiar with american football? the reason that i ask is because our collective arse is still burning from the last time that we let a foreigner coach our american guys. a lot of us here want an american coach like berhalter or marsch who will continue the youth movement that is so exciting to us as a soccer nation.

      Reply
  4. He’s clueless, just another American coach of the “kick hard and run fast, give me your best, boys” mantra; the guy’s got a negative football IQ…I wouldn’t let him coach U-8s at this point, as he will be doing disservice to those kids…

    Reply
  5. No way jose. This Porter was a complete failure with U-23 and somehow with the Portland Timbers. BTW I Believe that he needs to be in prozac , to relax a little bit. Porter : Please go back to college or the USL III..

    Reply
  6. I have seen firsthand his coaching shadow of influence in action and it is woeful, path-of-least-resistance management. Its 50% physical; 30% Game IQ/Tactical; and 20% technical. Its exactly the style that wins in Div 1 and lower leagues, but will never lift a National Team program or a better club, for that matter, to the next level. Even MLS is moving, albeit slowly, to a more comprehensive style of play than mere long-ball and crosses (see the influx of South/Latin American playmakers the last few years).He can thank Diego V. in Portland for pulling his bacon out of the fryer in Portland, and believe me, if the USMNT ever stumbles upon that kind of player, we really need a high level coach to get the best out of them.

    Reply
  7. Porter is high on himself. I am not sure why anyone else should be. He did a good enough job at Akron, mostly by successfully recruiting good players. With the U-23s, well.. At Portland he did OK, but it was pretty short-term, he has hardly proved to be better than any of Arena, Bradley, Schmidt, Vermes, Marsch, Vanney, Kreis or even Petke consistently

    Reply
  8. If this hire happens here’s how this blows up in several years:

    Its three years from now and players like Weah, Pulisic, McKennie, and Sargent are ballers and regulars at Champions League level clubs with big roles. Porter asks these players to try something unorthodox or different in training or something out of the ordinary strategically or even something that the player doesn’t think his skills are best suited to. Managers ask their players do make these changes all the time. However, its different if the manager asking this to the player played at a high level or managed at a high level. When our young pups are playing real minutes and in real roles with perennial UCL squads why would they listen to a coach who never played anywhere and his best coaching experience was NCAA or MLS?

    That’s the problem with hiring an MLS talent level coach. If our players actually do make it to the big time they will be seeing far more tactically and technically aware coaching at their clubs and have to dumb down their play to make what some nobody MLS and former NCAA NT coach is telling them otherwise they won’t get called in. Don’t believe it just look at FJ and Timmy Chandler.

    The only MLS coach I could live with would be Berhalter or Freidel because both had long European playing careers. And, I don’t really consider Martino an MLS coach given his past experience. As an ATL fan I don’t see him going if he’s offered, although as a NT diehard I would love it. I’ll hold my nose on Berhalter and Freidel but if its Vermes or Porter I’m flipping out.

    We need a coach who can tell a high level player something and the players has the respect for the coach and his experience to think, “Okay coach you’ve been there done that I’ll give it my 100%.” What we don’t need is former NCAA coaches (Arena, Schmid, Bradley, Porter asking top players to do something and having the players questioning the coaches reasoning in the back of their heads.

    And as far as having those top players, I do believe that of those guys (Pulisic, McKennie, Weah, Sargent) at least two and probably three go on to be regulars starters at UCL level. I mean CP already is so that’s not far fetched.

    Reply
    • what is your opinion of dave sarachan? he seems to have a good way with the kids/players, the team is “together” and drama-free. sarachan did not play in europe, BUT HE IS HUMBLE so i think when the kids’ experiences and understanding of the game exceeds his it won’t be a problem. he doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder. he would let the players advise him, i think. i think that under sarachan, there is no problem now and there would continue to be no problem long into the future. what is your opinion, joe dirt? and what do other guys think about this?

      Reply
      • also sarachan can have assistants on his staff with euro experience to help strengthen the coaching decisions on these matters.

      • Two Cents, you asked so I’ll answer…

        NO. Sarachan has very little professional head coaching experience(5 years at Chicago,he got fired). His resume and the same resume with Porter are the type of coach we should be running away from not moving towards.

        NCAA is an amateur level league, its like English fans saying something like, “Well he did pretty good job managing Such and Such club in the Conference Premier so that could be good if he takes the NT job.” I’m like WTF, none of the players are on pro contracts its on par with European rec leagues.

        We have to get away from equating both MLS and NCAA coaching experience and success and playing success with international success there’s not much correlation between success in MLS and success internationally. There is a far greater correlation between having success in UCL and success international at both the player, manager, and even league level when it come to countries who’ve won WCs.

        Also, Sarachan was the head assistant for the team that failed to make the WC, no thanks I’ll pass.

        The US’s draw in France will be the feather in his managerial hat. Its a great result no doubt, but his resume is choked full of assistant work and there’s not enough of a sample to really see what he’ll do as a head coach so we’d just be guessing on how good he could or won’t be. The USMNT managerial job should be at a level where we’re giving guys with little head coaching experience a shot at being the head coach. The candidates should have not just experience but success preferably in top leagues and/or on the international level already.

        Even if we miss on top level managers we should at least be trying to hire a top manager.

        Sarachan’s done a decent if not even admirable job as the interim manager but that does not qualify him to be full time manager.

    • Berhalter seems like the only logical choice. Tactically he seems far more savvy than any of the other MLSers being considered, possibly because of his time training in Europe as a player. Vermes is a dirty coach as is Marsch. Porter should be DQed for his failure to qualify for the Olympics with a totally loaded roster.

      Reply
      • In fairness, it did get dumped on him right before the competition. It’s not like he had been working with these kids for two years before the Olympics and had a chance to fully vet his squad.

    • I don’t like Porter but having played a long career in Europe does not necessarily make a coach more tactically aware or astute. Vieira had about as good a career as you could have in Europe and coached at Man City’academy and he was regulary out coached by Jessie Marsch. Vieira often had a tough time coming up with something tactically to stop the RBs, even though he knew exactly what they were going to do.

      Reply
  9. sbi is turning into a clickbait overflow site for good journalism at the Athletic. read the article (if you subscribe) and the intent was clearly that Porter is stating how he is ready for another HC shot in MLS. He goes on about his admiration for Vermes and his support for him to move up to the USMNT job *read between the lines* so Porter can take over at SKC. if that never happens he looks like he is throwing his name in for Nashville or Cincinnati or the other next MLS job that pops up.

    his quote about being in the top two or three US-only coaches that should be considered is way off, try top 10 imo, in an otherwise great article.

    Reply
  10. I generally like Porter as a coach but I’d really like to see him prove himself once more at the club level before I’d consider him for the senior USMNT job.

    Reply
  11. he’s kidding right? He flamed out with the u23’s, had a constantly underperforming timbers team and showed no ability to change his style of play. He’s a poor man’s Jason Kreiss

    Reply
    • Admittedly, I am a Porter supporter. It would be interesting to see Porter as the MNT coach. he coaches a fun, possession based, attacking style.

      He took an expansion team and won an MLS cup in a couple years. He may have won a more, but for injuries.

      He was very successful as a college coach at Akron, developing a fairly unknown school into a perennial top runner while he was there.

      He was with the U-23’s for about 6 weeks as part of the qualifying tournament and bought into the JK plan of playing a certain way. My recollection is that the team, who has not qualified for more than just this WC, lost or tied the final game on a crazy bounce that went through Sean Johnson or Bill Hamid. This wasn’t a situation where he had been the coach for the age group for a few years and then just wet the bed. That age group had struggled before and as we have now seen at the MNT level, the US can’t just show up and expect to win.

      Reply
  12. He will be lugging around that U23 debacle for a long time. On his current CV with that sore thumb sticking out, no. Though I do think with the MLS title he is more worthwhile than some of the fashionable names heard instead. Just saying in terms of the pecking order of people if you ranked. Not that I think he should.

    Vermes in theory works but in practice knowing we were shopping he gave up on the opening, extended with SKC, and gave a critical interview re USSF to the press. That sounded to me like someone who could be interested but not at the moment. At the moment he has cast his lot with SKC for a while, perhaps until USSF further evolves where he finds it worth his time.

    Reply

Leave a Comment