New U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker is still over three months away from beginning his new role within the federation, but his first task will be a crucial one regarding the future of the U.S. men’s national team.
Crocker was hired on Tuesday as the federation’s new sporting director and will be tasked with leading the search for the USMNT’s next head coach. The 48-year-old takes over for Earnie Stewart, who moved to Dutch side PSV in February after serving in the sporting director role for over three years.
Interim head coach Anthony Hudson currently remains in charge of the USMNT after taking over for former manager Gregg Berhalter in January. Berhalter led the Americans to a 2022 FIFA World Cup Round of 16 berth, as well as 2021 CONCACAF Nations League and Gold Cup titles.
The former USMNT defender won 37 of his 60 matches in charge as head coach, before being investigated by U.S. Soccer in January for a past domestic abuse issue involving his current wife, Rosalind. Berhalter remains a candidate for the permanent position after the investigation concluded in March, but Crocker did not single out him or anyone in specific for the role.
“It would be unprofessional of me right now to talk about individual names,” Crocker said in a press conference. “[Berhalter] has done a fantastic job and I intend to follow up with a number of candidates, both internally within the organization, and externally to begin to understand more and to assist my learning as well. And I’ll be doing that as quickly as I possibly can.
“We clearly want a head coach that is a role model and a cultural leader as well and can inspire the next generation,” he said. “So the legacy piece around the future is as important, if not more important, than the build-up to the next World Cup.”
Hudson has led the USMNT to a 2-2-1 record across all competitions in 2023, leading the Americans into June’s Nations League semifinals as well as the Gold Cup group stage against Jamaica, Nicaragua, and a preliminary round winner. After serving as an assistant coach under Berhalter, Hudson has continued to keep the players focused on the team’s long-term goals for this year and beyond.
Crocker’s decision won’t be easy, but he already has several key traits identified for what he wants the next USMNT head coach to bring to the table.
“I’m really, really keen to make sure that we produce a coach that can replicate and continue to drive forward some of those behaviors in terms of creating that aggressive, forward-thinking team,” Crocker said. “Secondly, the style of play is going to be really important. Clearly, there’s been some great foundations put in place by Gregg and by [interim head coach Anthony Hudson] around the style of play, and we want to continue to evolve that style of play. So to bring a coach in that can deliver that is also going to be fundamental to the process.
“The third, and for me the most important thing, is around leadership. We need the right leader. We need the right head coach to come in and give the players ownership and responsibility to build a really, really strong culture or to continue to develop that really, really strong culture.”
Crocker will remain with Southampton for the remainder of the EPL season before officially starting his new role on August 2.
Here is my 2 23 man rosters for this summer with a few players overlapping.
Nations league roster:
GK: Steffen, Horvath, Turner
D: Scally, Dest, Reynolds, Robinson, Richards, Ream, McKenzie, A. Robinson
M: McKennie, Musah, De La Torre, Morris, M. Tillman, Acosta
A: Reyna, Pulisic, Aaronson, Weah, Pepi, Wright
Gold Cup:
GK: Brady, Celentano, Sean John
D: Fossey, Yedlin, Neal, Rogers, Long, Z-Man, Isais, Tolkin
M: Tessmann, Morris, Atencio, Ledezma, T. Tillman, Mihailovich
A: Morris, P. Aaronson, Vasquez, Sargent, Cowell, Ferreira
Tessmann while yes playing in Serie B has been really really good for Venezia. Has been garnering Serie A interest.
I’m not sure any of those U20 guys will do double duty, but maybe none of them will get released for WC. I think maybe you forgot Zendajas and Booth. I sure would rather see Brooks than Long.
Gioacchini another guy with a shout for GC. 3g 1a in 9 matches still only 22 years old.
Since Crocker doesn’t leave Southampton until Aug 2 will he really be able to spend much time on a coaching search?
This is in line with what Parlow Cone said hire coach by end of summer. She made that statement sometime ago makes me think Crocker was the man all along they were just negotiating his contract and or details. How much of a search was done for him as sporting director? Just reading the tea leaves as the imperative voice said it certainly looks like Marsh would be in line for this job. And if they are going to hire him why fucking wait? Oh that’s right they have to put on the charade directly going through an extensive and exhaustive search. Look I’m not completely against marsh and the new sporting Director if it really is marsh but cut out the bullshit and just get the higher done in the long term it’s better for the USMNT. If he doesn’t produce results well then shit you can find another coach come next summer that still gives you two years to prepare for the World Cup dragging your feet means if there is a problem you’re kind of hip tied to your solution or should I say so-called solution
Why would they hire Crocker to get Marsch when Marsch has already publicly said he wants to coach the NT? Nevermind that Crocker never hired Marsch and in the EPL it’s often the ownership that hires the coaches not the technical director. Perhaps he really was just the best person out of the seven finalists that interviewed. And that Parlow Cone isn’t a pathological liar and really does believe that the candidate pool will be better in May and June when managers leave their clubs and/or contracts expire. It could be that IV has uncovered a vast conspiracy to undermine the success of USSF and therefore their own livelihoods but why would they do that? There’s no past connection between soccer execs and Crocker. Marsch has been available for sometime they could have hired him at anytime and placed someone from RB that Marsch has actually worked for or even given the SD job to a Marsch underling like Chris Armas. You don’t need a conspiracy to hire the highest achieving US club manager ever. I think Marsch would be a terrible hire but 75% of US fans would love it so why all the smoke and mirrors? Conspiracies are really hard to hide so why would you go to the trouble to hire a guy most of your fan base and players would already support.
For what it’s worth, this has been reported: “Crocker will start the job on Aug. 2 but will begin the coach search process immediately, the USSF said.”
Marsch might still be a candidate to take over at Southampton on a permanent basis, assuming they stay up (which looks unlikely right now). He might prefer to give the EPL another shot, so he may want to wait to see what happens with Southampton before speaking with the USSF.
Given Crocker’s Southampton connection, is it possible that R. Hassenhutl might be in the mix for USMNT coach? Currently unemployed, and his resume is comparable to Marsch’s.
From Crocker’s comments I don’t think he’s looking for someone without international experience. He’s talked in several interviews about the special challenges of NT schedules. Hassenhuttl wouldn’t have any NT managing experience and Marsch only a year as an assistant. Hassenhuttl I think was in place when Crocker arrived at Southampton too. IV is assuming he wants a pressing coach because he said the current team is “aggressive and forward thinking”. However, Crocker also said he’s not looking for someone with a complex system that would hard to install in limited windows.
sorry but the argument we can’t spend due to buyouts is absurd and only leads to more buyouts. hire better coaches and you don’t have to buy out the next guy.
i also don’t buy factually we owe anyone that much/anymore. klinsi lost his job 7 years ago. he was being paid $4m a year but that would have ended 2018. it’s a fib to suggest that still owns our finances. those costs were sunk ages ago. arena was only signed through 2018 and he got like $300k to fire him a few months early — not years early. sarachan and hudson were probably low dollar month to month or one year deals. paid in full presumably. likewise, GB served out his term which ended with the world cup — he just was not renewed. we don’t owe him anything going forward. and i am sure part of the reason we let him go to term and then issued a report saying he can apply again if he wants, is to avoid a lawsuit and owing him anything else.
no, i don’t buy 5-7 years later klinsi and arena’s buyouts dictate USSF finances.
again, the cheapest approach is actually measure twice hire once. hire better and you’ll be thinking about winning instead of how to afford to carry two deals.
also, i feel like the cute math theories are wrong and also very passive. the US just signed a $25-27m turner english rights deal. they also extended with telemundo in spanish. i don’t buy for a second we are hurting for money. and this is what a college team or olympic sports foundation does if money ever does get tight. go get a sponsor, sell some rights, hit up the alumni, seek donations from corporations or rich folks. they don’t just sit there and pout about we’re gonna have to tighten belts — and not over something that happened more than half a decade ago. the last three coaches are paid in full.
When you “poach” as you suggest you have to pay their current employer to break their contract. That is one version of a buyout. The other version that contributed to the US spending it’s surplus was paying 3 NT coaches at one time Arena, Klinsmann, and Bradley (the buyouts were paid out over time). So let’s take your 27 million from Turner. Now buying out an employed technical director probably isn’t that expensive maybe $1-3 million to their club for their release plus 500,000 to 1,000,000 per year. So now your at 25. Now you want to rip a “title winning coach” let’s take Carlo Ancelotti and say Real Madrid let’s him go for the 20,000,000 Chelsea paid for unproven Potter. Now you’re at 5 million, Ancelotti gives us a deal and takes under his 12 million a year salary and agrees to a paycut to 10 million we’re still already 5 million in the hole and we haven’t even talked that that 27 million is for both men and women. USSF obviously has more income than just TV but they also have many other expenses than just Sporting director and men’s manager. And no US soccer alumni aren’t donating to the federation it’s not college. USSF has their budgets online you can go and look and see where their money comes in from and how they spend it.
Just search US Soccer AGM and it will take you to where you can find the budget reports. They have been losing money almost every year recently, around 60,000,000 the last two years. That doesn’t sound like a group that can go splash 30 million to yank Mourinho away from Roma.
like i said, crocker has been hired to bring in a high press monkey and that favors marsch. scheme is a tool to an end and when you’re hiring losers for a scheme you’re departing from the usual calculus of why one scheme and not another, which is usually does this give me a competitive advantage and make me a winner. if this scheme was a money tree it would be higher up the english table.
more pointedly, i thought wales played our press to a stalemate — 1 point wales — and holland ran us off the field as bad as i have ever seen in a US knockout game. listen to the feedback, please.
Threes years of Crockers career has he been associated with a high press team. That was when the manager was a Red Bull coach. He didn’t implement high pressing with England YT or in the early 2010s with Southampton.
no, you’re right, we should ignore his most recent behavior as well as the several strong hints above, such as, “produce a coach that can replicate and continue to drive forward some of those behaviors in terms of creating that aggressive, forward-thinking team … style of play is going to be really important. Clearly, there’s been some great foundations put in place by Gregg and by [interim head coach Anthony Hudson] around the style of play, and we want to continue to evolve that style of play. So to bring a coach in that can deliver that is also going to be fundamental to the process.”
the irony of your harkening backwards is IMO soccer is ever moving forwards and the path to success is get ahead of what’s trendy right now. high press was cool half a decade ago. tiki taka was cool a decade ago. our tactics right now shouldn’t be mimicking how teams played a decade ago but instead trying to beat argentina and france and those type cutting edge teams to the next big idea.
sorry but at least when the US was a bunker-counter team they were thinking about how to stop the elite and ju-jitsu their risktaking. right now it’s like we want badly to believe we are more clever than the world despite dated tactics and mediocre results. we aren’t. with this talent it should actually be placing higher and lasting longer in tournaments than it is.
hire a winner to win some more and stop patting a mediocre result set for how clever it is. this was more competitive relative to the elite in the 2000s. then we might beat germany or brazil every so often.
Mr. Voice,
Your figures on JK appear to be a little off.
From Sports Illustrated:
“American men’s soccer coach Gregg Berhalter earned nearly as much from the U.S. Soccer Federation in his first four months than women’s counterpart Jill Ellis took home in 12.
Berhalter, hired on Dec. 2, 2018, had compensation of $304,113 from the USSF in the year ending last March 31, according to the tax return released by the federation on Wednesday. That figure included a $200,000 signing bonus…………….Ellis, who became women’s coach in May 2014, had compensation of $390,409 in the fiscal year. She went on to lead the Americans to their second straight World Cup title, was voted FIFA Women’s Coach of the Year, then left in October. Any bonus she earned as a result of the title likely will be listed on the next year’s tax return.
Her base salary was raised to $500,000 in late 2018, a person with knowledge of her contract told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the USSF has not announced that…………….
Tab Ramos, who was the men’s under-20 team coach before leaving in October to become coach of Major League Soccer’s Houston Dynamo, outearned Ellis with compensation of $460,772…..
Ellis did earn more than Earnie Stewart ($291,667), hired as men’s general manager in June 2018, and Dave Sarachan ($241,869), interim men’s national team coach from October 2017 until Berhalter was hired.
Jürgen Klinsmann, fired as men’s coach in November 2016, was paid $1,475,000 on Feb. 1, 2018. He received $3,354,167 in the year ending March 31, 2018.”
None of us really have a clue as to what the USMNT’s current actual finances are but it’s irrelevant.
Whatever their bank balance, they have shown themselves to be still stupid, still cheap and still incompetent.
This Crocker hire is the first outright intelligent looking thing they’ve done for years.
Having the money is not the same as having the willingness to spend it.
Or having the ability to spend it wisely.
And just because you’re filthy rich it doesn’t mean you don’t want to be richer.
You’re right that if the USSF positively, absolutely felt that a Zidane, for example, was the guy to make it all go they could go break their salary structure and find the financing but I see:
1. No evidence that the USSF is willing to make that quantum leap in terms of spending.
2. That any of the big names are a guarantee of s level of success equal to the expenditure.
You want a big name Euro winner type?
It’s one thing to get a Roberto Martinez at 4 million like Portugal did.
It’s another thing to get a Simeone or a Zidane at maybe 5 to 6 times that figure.
Especially when there are no guarantees that it would improve the team an equivalent amount.
In other words , you still need the players. You can pay Paul Ariolla or Aaron Long 5,6,7 times what they’re making now and it won’t make them 5,6 ,7 times better as players.
From 2019:
“Zidane’s annual salary of 12 million euros as part of the three-year deal he was this week handed by club president Florentino Pérez, with that wage then topped up by a series of incentivised add-ons.
Such a salary is only half the 24-million-euro, pre-bonus pay packet that Diego Simeone now picks up each year at city rivals Atlético.
Other big-name coaches linked with Madrid would in all likelihood have been significantly more expensive than Zidane.
José Mourinho pocketed 20 million euros after tax at Manchester United, while the lower salaries earned by the likes of Mauricio Pochettino (10), Jürgen Klopp (8.5) and Massimiliano Allegri (8) would have been offset by the fact that they are currently in jobs, meaning that Los Blancos would have had to compensate their respective clubs.”
Go ahead and hire Zidane and tell him his best player and icon will be a starting winger for Aston Villa next year.
A manager that was already in place when he arrived.
Mr. Voice,
“sorry but at least when the US was a bunker-counter team they were thinking about how to stop the elite and ju-jitsu their risktaking..”
We played that way, mostly on the counter, likely because, with our talent level, that was deemed to be the best way for us to get results against contenders.
“ right now it’s like we want badly to believe we are more clever than the world despite dated tactics and mediocre results “
??? You’re playing fast and loose with reality again. That fantasy you just made up fits the narrative that you are pushing in this thread.
At Qatar, we could have lost all three games or won all three games. Either result would not have shocked me. Most of the fan base thought we would get schooled at Qatar. At best, conventional wisdom had Qatar down as a “learning experience.”
Because of these lowered expectations what actually happened was very much a great relief to everyone and actually quite decent.
Revisionist history started depicting Gregg as a miracle worker forgetting what a Clown show the team had been for most of his tenure. Gregg may struggle to get to mediocre but he is lucky. And being a privileged ex-player USMNT frat boy he also got a lot of slack from his boys in the media.
“we aren’t. with this talent it should actually be placing higher and lasting longer in tournaments than it is.”
“hire a winner to win some more and stop patting a mediocre result set for how clever it is. this was more competitive relative to the elite in the 2000s. then we might beat germany or brazil every so often.”
Pure, unadulterated bullshit.
That team was not better than the Netherlands. They went just as far as they deserved to go. The team needs better management but it also won’t go anywhere without better players and lots more of them.
Qatar showed you we had a reasonable starting 11 that could raise it up a notch when necessary but only for so long. By the end of the Group stage they were nearly out of gas and pluck.
When Louie and his boys came calling, we had nothing and it showed.
Quality Depth. We need a lot more of it. Right now, it’s questionable where it will be coming from.
You can hire the best manager in the world. Or you can “hire a winner”. It’s not necessarily the same thing.
Regardless, even if they hire your person, that person still needs the players and right now we don’t have them.
If the USSF wants to better its 2022 performance significantly, it would behoove them to seriously upgrade the management team AND do what it can to upgrade the player pool.
Together, they are not good enough yet.
Welcome aboard Crocker. Now let’s hope you get the head coach hire right.
the two tournaments this summer are not very spaced apart. NL is like 6 weeks off and then GC starts a little over a week later (7-8 weeks). so the coach is likely going from NL camp and tournament to training for GC. heck, if they had a brain they might cross-pollinate some practices between the two selections.
but anyway, that suggests to me if you want more than the HC hiree announced during the even but sitting in the stands watching it needs to be done in a month or less. because way this is set up one event flows into the other and the HC is going to need to have selection and training sorted before the first event begins. now in theory you could hire new guy around the time of NL and have him coach GC, which lasts a while, but i could see conservative USSF saying two different coaches for two events is silly.
i personally don’t want hudson in charge of this any more than he has to be. people were saying he’s not sure how to position ferreira but this was also true of reyna. i don’t think he has a firm grasp what he’s doing, period.
“the two tournaments this summer are not very spaced apart. ”
BFD.
If the new HC is as good as they will need to be, none of this stuff that is twisting your panties will matter all that much.
What matters between now and Copa America is that the players in our pool who might matter get their rest and reflect on what they need to do to improve.
A lot of our players are facing critical points in their careers and need to focus on them. Pulisic has to sort out where he’ll be for the next few years. The Leeds triplets need to stay up and failing that need to figure out where they are going next. Weah has figure out if he’s moving and if he is going to continue being our version of Alphonso Davies, or not. Pepi needs sort out his home address. Richards needs to learn how to stay healthy, the keepers need to all secure where they will be next season………and very little of this if any will have to do with the new HC.
You keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Spoiler alert.. it doesn’t matter. Gregg or Hudson will take care of all of it when Gregg gets back or Hudson gets the job.