U.S. Soccer’s search for a new sporting director has come to an end.
Matt Crocker has been hired by U.S. Soccer, replacing Earnie Stewart who departed the federation for PSV earlier this year. Crocker, who is currently Director of Football Operations for English Premier League club Southampton, will officially begin his role on August 2.
Crocker will immediately begin the process of hiring the next U.S. men’s national team head coach while also supporting USWNT general manager Kate Markgraf and USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski.
“I am honored and excited to join U.S. Soccer as the new Sporting Director,” said Crocker. “This is a tremendous opportunity to build an elite program and to help raise the level of soccer in the United States. As Sporting Director, my immediate focus will be on supporting the Women’s National Team as they prepare for the upcoming World Cup and on hiring a head coach for the Men’s National Team.
“These are critical priorities, and I am committed to ensuring that both have my immediate focus,” he added. “I am also looking forward to working with the entire U.S. Soccer community, including coaches, clubs, and players at all levels, to develop a clear and consistent playing philosophy and to identify and advance talent across the country. U.S. Soccer has tremendous potential, and I am excited to be a part of its future.”
The 48-year-old spent three seasons with Southampton in the EPL after previously serving seven years with England’s Football Association. Crocker oversaw the England Under-15, U-17, and U-20 national teams on both the men’s and women’s sides.
England’s U-17 and U-20 Men’s squads won World Cups titles in 2017, and the Under-19 team won the European Championship also in that year.
Crocker also previously served as Southampton’s Academy Director from 2007-13, helping groom several Saints players including Gareth Bale, James Ward-Prowse, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Luke Shaw.
“During the interview process, we identified several key characteristics and experiences that set Matt apart,” said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. “He is an experienced leader and has had success at the professional and National Team level. He is a great communicator and team builder. Matt brings a wealth of experience in player development and has a clear strategy. As we continue to build and strengthen U.S. Soccer, we are confident that Matt’s leadership will be instrumental in helping us achieve our goals. We are thrilled to welcome him to the U.S. Soccer family and look forward to working together to continue the growth of the sport.”
The Wales native holds a UEFA Pro License, the FA Technical Directors License, the FA Academy Manager’s license and has an Honours Bachelor of Science in Sport Pedagogy.
Why do we even have this position? The SD as well as the Men’s and Women’s GM positions came about due to the failure of the 2018 qualification campaign. Apparently the federation decided that it had a plethora of money and a dearth of executive level bureaucrats so they created three new positions to meet that “need.”
After Sunil, I got the impression they didn’t want any one person to have too much power.
The new positions allegedly spread the wealth around, a two heads are better than one sort of thing. They supposedly gave you a greater variety of scapegoats that can readily be blamed for failures and easily disposed of.
It’s hard to say how this worked for the men since neither Earnie, nor Brian were ever very forthcoming on what they did that was different from what Gregg did. Whether he actually did the work or not Gregg was the “face of the program” and often took either most of the blame or most of the credit.
This kind of “specialization” makes sense for NFL teams where the transparency , compared to the USMNT, is much greater, the stakes are much higher and the commitment is now 24/7/365.
But the USMNT is a much more sedate operation, a few levels up from the mom and pop store they used to be.
Wouldn’t he have been there as Balogun came through the England National Team ranks? Could be interesting………
can we quit pretending crocker was the coach at the english YNT responsible for identifying and training their youth players? he was “Strategic & Cultural Lead” over the system, a suit. he wouldn’t have been out there scouting balogun, running or evaluating pool camps, or picking teams. the YNT coach would have. he was the one above the coaches going around abstractly twisting arms to standardize across teams.
as i said below, the question remains whether we have landed on some sort of genius inspiration that merits standardization across the system on down to U15. maybe win something with the MNT using a new idea before saying everyone on down to some “region 2 U15” should be training and playing that way.
i am not a fan of how this SD job is structured. i think youth should be a separate job than senior. i don’t like the idea of enforcing a single system concept top to bottom because we have not organically found that money tree nor does this country naturally all play “one way.” i think this is obnoxious empire building before the ideas have even proven themselves. did how GB played ever earn being xeroxed down to U15? and it’s funny people point back to JK for this idea because he played two very different styles over time.
i think this empire building stuff aggrandizes the leadership over the players who earn the success. what i tend to see is talent overcoming tactics. until that pattern reverses, why should we have a universal approach.
last, my guess is this saints guy wouldn’t have taken the job to just handle the youth system — which is what i think he’s qualified for. he would see himself as past that with saints. but saints has only gotten worse in his tenure to the point they are being relegated. expanding his portfolio that little bit more to the senior team might entice him over but i don’t think he’s proven he can run an adult system one bit. our response? “sign here.”
to me US soccer needs to get back to what makes the talent on hand look good. i don’t think it’s the system we play now. and i don’t think we’re so brilliant we should be xeroxing on down to the lowest age group ODP teams. this was more competitive relative to the rest of the world in the 2000s.
Ownership instability 3 owners in six years and the trickle down effects of the pandemic on small market clubs had as much to do with the Saints struggles as the sporting director. That’s not to say there aren’t questions about Crocker but compared to Ramos and Onyewu (the other named candidates) the decision seems straightforward. This job is not that high profile and USSF can’t pay what top clubs or federations would pay so you’ve got to pick the best available. Crocker has experience with youth and adult, men and women. The manager search should give us insight into his leadership.
which is when i ask is what we needed poaching anyone in the world or working from some corporate application pile? in recent years with the GM concept this is what seems to happen. controlled, small pile of people who send in a resume. instead of, let’s go get the best GM we can find and offer his team a buyout. a la when we waved a check in front of klinsi.
i fear the same crap for the coach hire. post the job on USSF. review resumes. great coaches don’t send in resumes. you cut out all the serious elite candidates who work on more of a “call my agent” basis. you start getting all the mediocre, out of work people who mail in resumes to openings. second rate candidates. this is how we end up hiring berhalter last time. tell yourself you are clever from a mediocre app pile run through some strange checklist. we deserve — we need — someone elite if this is actually going to be a golden generation and not less than we hoped. we aren’t even better than canada or mexico yet…..
it’s also kind of how houston’s coach hiring has been done for years. flatter yourself that you can detect value from a resume pile instead of chasing proven winners with a checkbook in hand.
USSF doesn’t have that money anymore. I’ve tried to explain this to you several times. It’s not there. Certainly not enough to hire a big name sporting director and big time manager. A NT director job is not that enticing either, not like a club job with transfer budgets and wining and dining players. Also it’s so cute that you think USSF soccer looked through a bunch of resumes.
I disagree with a lot of this, but mainly this idea that principles and a style of play shouldn’t be trickled down from the senior team(men and women), down to the youth teams. Plenty of National Teams have adopted this policy and it has worked for them(Spain and Netherlands come to mind).
Now, we don’t have to talent that those nations have but we also don’t have what many in our fanbase deem as a “golden generation” being influential, and are barely playing consistently enough to be difference makers for their clubs, yet you want management to just let overhyped players, who are still trying to realize their potential as professionals to be free to just play? We need structure until we become a NT that has players that are key cogs within their clubs, and then we can talk about letting our players freelance around the field
this is not france with clairefontaine. we do not centralize the elite of the next generation where we can enforce these ideas. bradenton is gone. FCD trains some, philly some, etc. they all train them to play their way. how are you going to make them play some other way for the nats?
i think part of this relates to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the youth system works. ODP, regional teams, eventually the YNT, they meet a few times a year for tryouts , practices, and games. even fewer times than the USMNT plays. they have limited time with the kids to implement a system. they are also usually coming in cherry picking pre developed players in their teens.
if you want to change how US youth players play go back to U5. if you want to push teens in a common direction, you need “bradenton” or “clairefontaine” where they live, play, and are trained in a direction together year round. otherwise this whole idea is nonsense. most of the year they will do what FCD or philly union or FC Delco wants. a few weekends or weeks a year the USYNT will try and teach something else.
if this is headed towards marsch being hired in the second round, doesn’t it say something that he signed an approximation of a USMNT starting midfield and can’t do anything with it? that and as i said below, this is not an overdog job and he’s only had success with dominant rosters and resources relative to his league. he tends to get abused when sent into EPL or B.1 under his own power with just another team. that and i think high pressing is passe and when i was coming up was considered naive diving in and being pulled out of shape. i don’t even like what he’s selling and think it only worked well when he started out with more than everyone else day 1.
People at Southampton thought Marsch was a good option with what they had available. USMNT will have a different pool of candidates. Not sure Crocker’s hire is especially meaningful to Marsch’s potential hire. The whole reasoning Parlow-Cone gave for slowing the process was to have more available candidates as the club season ended.
because we are the only team chasing the people available this summer, right? as opposed to now when it’s in fact just a few.
to me it’s abstract bull hockey. which specific people do you expect to open up in a few weeks? if you don’t have a good idea of someone specific you’re wasting our time. cause right now there is a known list of available people and most teams are in season ie not coach shopping. way this works we back our efforts into when many teams are off season and shopping.
last, if you watch something like EPL they will poach coaches in-season all the time. heck, we’re poaching this guy during his season. it’s a contradictory argument.
Far more fish to choose from in May than January. Much easier to poach in May as well. People are happy in January half a season to play, we just upset Team X we’re in the cup quarterfinals. By May we’re stuck in 6th and my owner who promised to buy me a midfielder and CB, signed 3 striker’s because he golfs with the CEO of their agency. Why did Marsch get multiple offers in Feb and Mar because supply was low. US Soccer doesn’t have buyout money like EPL teams. Chelsea reportedly paid Brighton 20 million dollars for Potter! USSF can’t dream of that type of money just to sign him from his old job not even including the 12 million a year they were paying Potter himself. Soccer House doesn’t have Todd Boley bankrolling it. USSF can afford people out of contract or we’re both parties are ready to move on.
did you read crocker’s comments? surely you can read between his lines. marsch will be a leading candidate though we will see if he is handed the job. bears noting that by narrowly channeling the team’s direction someplace specific, you again use the checklist to get rid of other good — likely better — candidates who either want coaching freedom or don’t play the designated style. as such the fix is in.
JR
“Sporting director has a lot of roles outside the senior team”
Absolutely. And those roles are not necessarily tied to the Gold Cup.
I’m pleasantly surprised that they have gotten this done so soon. I thought it would take them longer, meaning after the end of the Euro season.
So from my POV Crocker is month ahead of schedule.
V: if Southampton let him go early. I’m saying he has more responsibilities with them. If they still want him fulfilling all his duties in the UK he’s not going to be able to be working on securing U20 releases or looking thru manager candidate resumes.
JR
I guess we’ll find out.
Regardless, now we can get more serious about who will be the next Gregg.
Makes you wonder if they previously offered Crocker’s role to Vermes.
it would be sooooo typical if we hired someone who isn’t actually currently available, who isn’t actually that good, but we have to wait to find that out. how long did we have to wait on earnie and berhalter? about a year, together? after several months of this interview crap?
Mr. Voice,
“it would be sooooo typical if we hired someone who isn’t actually currently available, who isn’t actually that good, but we have to wait to find that out.”
??? Any time you hire someone, for any position, you have to wait to see if they are any good, especially for the jobs in question.
The reason it takes so long to be really sure about the USMNT manager is that they play very, very few games that are not a fucking joke.
If you’re a halfway reasonable type you tend to give the person the benefit of the doubt, I knew the Berhalter hiring was horseshit after Gold Cup 2019 and wanted him fired immediately but everyone said he needed more time and no one agreed with me.
After the World Cup I thought he had improved but not by enough to justify the whole excruciating ordeal in the first place. They should have fired him after the 2019 Gold Cup.
I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t someone else out there at the time who might have been a better manager Gregg but we’ll never know. Taken as a whole he was an embarrassment.
So maybe they give him a chance to come back and set the record straight.
Being at the right price point is a very powerful thing for these cheap clowns.
Crocker might not be the best person humanly possible for the job but we’re about to find out just how good he will be.
V: you don’t know what you’re talking about. we went from firing bradley to hiring klinsi in about 1-2 weeks. the idea we have to go through some belabored corporate resumes-and-interviews process is unnecessary. you can pick the one you really want and offer his agent a number. that can be done in a week. he could have been coaching january camp or at least march. this is a joke and the year long process that led to stewart and mcbride and berhalter did not get some great coach or place the hires above fed politics — the reyna phone calls. to me we spent all that time last time to hire an executive’s brother. who was a second rate coach. wow, real ad for doing this again….
Mr. Voice,
“V: you don’t know what you’re talking about. we went from firing bradley to hiring klinsi in about 1-2 weeks.”
JK was Sunil’s choice to replace he who shall not be named. Sunil chased him for years. But JK drove a very hard bargain because, surprise, surprise he had a good idea of what kind of “people” he was going to be dealing with. So your narrative on that issue is poppycock.
“the idea we have to go through some belabored corporate resumes-and-interviews process is unnecessary. you can pick the one you really want and offer his agent a number. that can be done in a week.”
You’re confusing “possible ” with “probable”. If you wanted to re-sign Gregg , sign up Jason Kreis, or maybe elevate Aaron Long to player manager, yes, maybe a week to get it done.
But if your target did not have that same familiarity with the Clowns, then maybe the Clowns should take their time.
If your ideal target had half a brain, if they were interested, they would try to figure out right away how much leverage they had.
In negotiations if you know you got something that they want then time is your friend.
You don’t seem to understand that in a job interview a non-idiot is also interviewing the USSF.
There’s talk of hiring some furriner like for example Zidane. It’s possible Zidane might not actually know a lot about the US in general and the USSF in particular.
Maybe he’d like to come over here and look around and meet some of these Clowns he would be working with, all that minor stuff.
Based on what I’ve seen the USMNT does not have a mountain of cash to throw at the candidate which is one way to overcome doubt and grease the wheels.
” he could have been coaching january camp or at least march. this is a joke and the year long process that led to stewart and mcbride and berhalter did not get some great coach or place the hires above fed politics — the reyna phone calls. to me we spent all that time last time to hire an executive’s brother. who was a second rate coach. wow, real ad for doing this again….”
Forget the whole Gregg hiring process, the reason they wanted the Sporting Director to do the hiring this time is that it needs to be done right.
And that makes it a time and labor intensive process but most of all a focused process. Maybe you think you can just hand it off to one of your interns to do. There is no more Earnie or Brian around. Cone is apparently smart enough to hire someone how knows how to do this probably better than her, so good for her. That’s what good leaders do, delegate properly.
You wanted the same morons who hired Gregg to hire this guy.
V: sorry, no, the coaches are never “interviewing USSF,” i find that malarkey, and crocker’s thumb-on-scales of “we will play x way” is designed to disempower those candidates who either are adaptable in tactics or do not use x tactics. i don’t think that can fairly be characterized as empowering the candidates vis a vis the USSF. to the contrary, i am concerned this style has GMs making coaching decisions before the coach is hired — regardless if they ever coached a team at all. “we will play x way” is coaching. we are letting some suit tell the coach how to play. i think that’s backwards. i wish this was set up to have the coaches inform where this goes or control it completely. i wish they had the power to interrogate us. the whole point to crocker is the suits have decided the stylistic stuff themselves.
to me this is absurd. even in mere select or college ball i would have to deal with first minute tactics not working and how do we win this game now. one thing i dislike about this new scheme fetishization is some days schemes don’t work. i want someone who can game manage and adapt, not some scheme salesman. particularly when recent experience is the scheme is massively overrated and malfunctioning.
Mr. Voice,
If you are at least somewhat responsible, when you hire a Person A for a position where they will hire other people, then you should have a pretty good idea of what kind of approach Person A will take when hiring people.
If you’re doing the hiring , you have your own biases and it would be worthwhile to have Person A debate your biases vs their biases with you.
You can learn a lot that way.
If I were handling hiring the Sporting Director position, one of my questions for Crocker would have been about the new manager.
I would have had a list of people (Gregg?? Hudson?? Dave Sarachan, Tab Ramos, Pep Guardiola, Hugo Perez, Rafa Marquez, Luis Enrique, Bielsa, Jurgen Klopp, Landon Donovan, Marsch etc.) and gone round and round with Crocker.
If they are honest, you can learn a lot about people in those kind of debates.
If Cone and her people knew what they were doing, then they are comfortable with whatever approach Crocker is going to take.
If he’s honest he may do all the research first( on the candidates and on the USMNT) and find that he thinks differently about how the USMNT should be managed than he did before he did his research.
It’s amazing how some honest research and cold hard facts can change your point of view. Especially for the decision that will define his entire US tenure.
Crocker still has a great deal to learn about his Clown car USSF. And his USMNT player pool.
And that really matters because unlike you, he is not all knowing and all seeing.
Managers he might never have considered for Southampton, a team he knew intimately, maybe he finds that they might be good for the USMNT and vice versa.
You’re the one displaying the most bias and prejudice in this since you’ve already decided on how these people, who you know nothing about, are going to perform.
They said in the presser, his first official day is August 2. He will be allowed by Southampton to work on the manager search and help with prep for Women’s WC preparation while still working as SD for them.
saints are toast. why does he need to finish that up? this is a joke like waiting on GB to finish a season missing the playoffs. and when you are waiting on someone to leave their old job of sucking this is perhaps a hint you are hiring the wrong one anyway.
sorry but the normal way this is done — setting aside i don’t like this choice — is you wave $$ in front of the old team to end the contract now. to me if the coach isn’t in place this summer, or has little time to prepare for september, it’s a wasted year. this is not pro soccer, the coach is only for so many years in a cycle. we’re burning one. it’s like the olympics. later defeats the point.
Are you starting a GoFundMe for buyouts? If Graham Potters buyout was 20 million how much do you think Pep, or Klopp is going to cost you? And then you have to come up with salary which no one “whose won titles” is going to come for anywhere near even triple what Berhalter made.
i’m inclined to believe US standards are getting just worse and worse. his adult team resume is worse than earnie’s was. if we hire this guy who hires marsch — that’s two relegation candidates. not sure how that says we’re trying to win something. it shouts “EPL fanboys who will take anything.” i’d hoped we’d learned our lesson from slumming with berhalter but this sounds like we’re back digging around the refuse pile for value, passively taking what an application pile gives us rather than actively headhunting what we really want. it sounds like we’re more concerned with names on a resume than if they won (i mean the people awed by being england’s YNT GM did notice we tied england who then went out in the quarters???? meh.).
i would like to see two big names in the GM and HC jobs. act like we’re trying to win something and not just check boxes. i do not in the slightest see how mr. fired from high pressing and this guy in dead last as his team has gone in free fall since the pandemic are the men to lead this anyplace. i see how the fix seems to be in to hire people to foolishly high press. i thought wales — mediocre wales — showed us this wasn’t the money tree. so let’s plant some more???
Won U20 and U17 World Cups with England as youth director and U19 Euros.
hire him to run the youth program then. adults are different. look at tab ramos. worst manager houston ever had.
my experience when a leader can’t repeat performance A to B he was riding the talent first stop.
“i’d hoped we’d learned our lesson from slumming with berhalter but this sounds like we’re back digging around the refuse pile for value, passively taking what an application pile gives us rather than actively headhunting what we really want.”
Has it occurred to you that maybe they did try and do what you wanted ( they did allegedly offer the managerial post to Zizou), but were told to come back when they grow up?
It’s ironic. Many here have seen for themselves what a shitshow the USSF has been and continues to be. How often have Kylian Mbappes’s parents yelled at Deschamps?
How many of you would want your companies to behave like the USSF?
Yet when it is suggested that maybe the credible people whose council and approval you crave might have serious reservations working for these amateurs y’all get all patriotic and defensive. We’re US soccer, we deserve the best, fuck the rest of the world.
Why are you shocked that the big name GM and HC people maybe aren’t hot to move to Chicago, when maybe they can get a job at Chelsea , Spurs, Bayern , etc., places that are actually professional?
Money is not everything and besides the USSF is not that flush.
Lookover the list of our former USMNT managers and tell me how many of them would get a serious offer from a serious international team.
One. JK is now the manager of South Korea.
Crocker seems like a reasonably promising person whose most positive CV attribute is his involvement with those young English Youth teams. He’s maybe a C- choice but at least C- is a passing grade.
This is called having champagne taste on a beer ( Weidemann’s or Pabst Blue ribbon) budget.
Coaches no longer have to live in the Chicago area. That has been scrapped.
“no longer have to live in the Chicago area. ”
He could have lived in Kenosha.
That’s close enough
I mean come on Vacqui who wouldn’t leave France or Germany for a team made up of
CF: plays out of position for mid table Championship team at LW
LW: 2nd or 3rd choice for mid table underachieving EPL team
RW: used as utility man for mid table Ligue1 team
CM: regular starter for regulation battle team in LaLiga
CM: regular starter on relagation battle team in EPL
DM: regular starter for relagation battle team in EPL
LB: reg. Starter for mid table EPL
RB: doesn’t play for Milan or Barca
CB: regular starter for mid table EPL
CB: doesn’t play for mid table EPL
GK: back up for top 2 team in EPL
Top reserves: seldom used CM/RW for Bundesliga leaders, CM for relegation battle EPL team, CF for relagation bound Eredivisie team, starting CB for Scottish champs,
Why wouldn’t you leave a CL squad to work with that? Does that not scream WC winner? That might be a better group than we’ve had in the past but a top soccer nation would be screaming about how weak that roster is.
last place ain’t value champagne. value champagne is no resources and you have them 6th to midtable. last place is they do what the talent level is and the talent isn’t good.
i don’t think outside candidates give a hoot about reyna and co. the answer to that is easy. you don’t take phone calls twisting your arm. the parents can’t talk you into anything, they can go to the press and if GB had just let them go to the press and whine he would still have a job.
you’re missing my point. i feel like our standards are eroding from even where they have been. that implies regardless what you think about budget or interference that within the existing resources we are making even dumber choices.
i think paternal interference is easily handled by leaders with even HS or select tenures. you either don’t take the call or you refer issues to the organization. a lot of the problem here is this is so clubby — everyone played together and hires each other — they took the calls. but then berhalter wouldn’t have been hired by an objective GM to start with.
a decade ago we had klinsmann as coach. quit your pity party. you know the difference then to now? they empowered a single person to rapidly deal with performance issues, he lined up JK, and it got done in about a week. that sounds like if we want to, we have resources — at least to some extent — and the ability to head hunt who we really want.
we have instead decided to go down the corporate road of months of applications and interviews. i half think the idea is less to hire a coach to bring fresh ideas than to bring in some buddy who will do what they want. talent or not i don’t think we look that good. i don’t think “corporate” is working. hire some actual brilliance and let them drive the direction of this.
IV: we lost that cash that allowed us to go get Klinsmann. Partly by paying Bradley and Klinsmann to go away. The pandemic, no 2018 WC payday, and lawyer fees to fight the Woman’s team lawsuit ate away much of the rest.
“a decade ago we had klinsmann as coach. quit your pity party. you know the difference then to now? they empowered a single person to rapidly deal with performance issues, he lined up JK, and it got done in about a week. that sounds like if we want to, we have resources — at least to some extent — and the ability to head hunt who we really want.”
Bullshit.
Sunil chased JK for years. He wanted him before they hired Bob who was that era’s Hudson. Bob’s not a big fan of the USSF in part maybe because he always knew he was the bridesmaid. My guess is they treated him like that his whole tenure. And even though he had a reasonable 2010 WC it became clear that as soon as JK was ready that Sunil was going to axe Bob.
The USMNT gave Sunil that excuse by having a humiliatingly bad 2011 Gold Cup which ended in a humiliating removal of their pants by El Tri at the Rose Bowl.
V, strangely enough, Sampson got hired by Costa Rica after being horrible for the US. Of course, he didn’t last very long.
GM on the men’s side is not being renewed.
Mr. Voice,
“his adult team resume is worse than earnie’s was.”
First of all are you talking about club sides vs. club sides or club sides vs national teams? You are back in your throw it up on the wall and see if it sticks mode.
You love comparing apples with depleted uranium projectiles. Hint: one is a fruit the other is the heavy metal penetrator part of the ammunition for the gun that the A10 is built around. Depleted uranium is almost as hard as tungsten but the majority of the world’s tungsten comes out of China and Russia.
National teams are not club teams. And AZ Alkmar is not comparable to Southampton. Eredivisie as a competition is not as tough as the EPL.
If you’re looking to play that game where you compare the players who came out of the teams that Earnie was sporting director for vs. the same for Crocker, I haven’t done the deep dive research but I’m pretty sure the AZ and Philly Union players did not go on to careers as impressive as the careers that the players on:
“England’s U-17 and U-20 Men’s squads won World Cups titles in 2017, and the Under-19 team won the European Championship also in that year.
Crocker also previously served as Southampton’s Academy Director from 2007-13, helping groom several Saints players including Gareth Bale, James Ward-Prowse, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Luke Shaw. ”
I mean I’ll take Phil Foden over Brenden Aaronson any day.
So tell me again where Earnie has been more impressive?
AZ was punching well above their weight when he was there. vs this guy has a low resource team punching last. even if you wanted to do this dumb “value” stuff — hire someone for making their team actually better.
i already dinged your england argument. he was running the whole program and not coaching the teams. and we tied england last time, whatever you think of shaw or foden or whoever. that’s not the “uphill move” you imagine. you want to hire someone from a good team hire some french or argie executive. this to me is what the EPL fanboys miss, ie, 1966. been a while. we’ve tied them twice and beat them once in world cups. it’s a great league but it’s made so by importing in bulk, owner money and players.
Mr Voice,
“AZ was punching well above their weight when he was there. vs this guy has a low resource team punching last. even if you wanted to do this dumb “value” stuff — hire someone for making their team actually better.
You’re contradicting yourself. Let me help you.
You’re saying Earnie ranks above Crocker, That’s beyond silly.
Earnie did not manage AZ; he was the GM/SD/whatever.
He gave Verbeek or whoever the players. The manager then had them punching “above their weight” or whatever.
If they were punching above their weight, Earnie had little if anything to do with that. If Earnie gave the manager better players, they wouldn’t have to punch so much above their weight.
If you give me , for example, Erling Haaland , well I don’t have to do much ‘
except turn him loose. Earnie gave his guys Jozy.
In the same way, Crocker did not manage England’s teams either. He was part of the setup that provided the England managers with their players.
In that case because Crocker and his people gave them pretty good players the England managers didn’t have to have their guys “punch so much above their weight”.
They just had to turn them loose.
Earnie and Crocker were just the suppliers.
From where I sit Crocker’s operation gave his managers better product.
He can be the USMNT’s Heisenberg.
Whether its’ Hiddink or Hudson managing the USMNT, what they need more than anything is better product and more of it.
If Crocker can replicate his England performance with the USMNT then that will go a long way towards addressing their biggest needs, better players and more of them at the same time.
His work experience seems to be picture perfect for the position. This should be a good hire.
In Welsh they say, “Buddugol!” Boo-THoo-gol! = Success, overcome, win out!
So say I.
I love his credentials.
Time will tell.
The proof will be in the pudding.
Everything else at this point is mental masturbation, and conjecture.
He is the hire.
Let’s see who he hires for USMNT Coach.
We are looking for this generation’s Bora Milutinovic.
A tactical and national team coaching genius.
Buddugol!
Interesting. Send like a good hire. Will be interesting who he starts to interview for the coaching gig. I have feeling Vieira, Henry, Marsch will all be looked at. Me personally would like to see a Dutch tactician in charge. LVG or Gus Hiddink
Didn’t Southampton take a run at Jesse Marsch?
i am concerned that’s where this is heading. that as with the previous cycle they are kind of pushing this a direction they want to go with who gets hired to do the hiring.
under a series of managers RBS has won austria (and usually the cup double) every season since like 2014. they are 5 points clear under the current guy. so what. marsch was unable to replicate it outside of austria. that suggests his tactics aren’t the money tree. and they aren’t that dramatically different than how GB played wales, which was a rather meh effort.
i think as with trying baby barca this would be yet another example where we seem obsessed with dated tactics that have been around long enough they lack shock value and no longer have easy effectiveness. let’s hire some people the book isn’t already out there on.
Seems highly qualified, if he’s finishing out with Southampton seems Hudson will still be in place for NL. Maybe we’ll have a new manager by GC. Now rooting for Southampton to be eliminated as soon as possible so they let him go early.
What difference does the fate of Southampton’s senior side make?
There is only a month left and chances are real good their fate will be decided in less than half that time. They have six EPL games left, the last one at Liverpool on May 28 th.
As their Sporting Director, at this point, nothing he does or can do will have any effect on Southampton’s senior team anyway.
Their roster is set until season’s end.
You figure he’s probably already been “cleaning out his desk” and doing whatever transition work he needs to do before leaving.
The Sporting Director will have a lot of work to do in the UK and Europe so he might as well take advantage of the fact that he is already in the area.
If the contract is all set, I’d be surprised if he isn’t already doing all kinds of work now anyway,
He could be talking to our Euros, checking out Hoffenheim games, talking to JAB and Pelligrino, talking to Earnie over at Eindhoven, consulting with Mark and Kelly Pulisic, etc., etc. already.
He could also use the time to get fluent in English.
Sporting director has a lot of roles outside the senior team. How much time you have to devote to your next job would really depend on what your employer expects you to do the next 60 days.
JR
“Sporting director has a lot of roles outside the senior team”
Absolutely. And those roles are not necessarily tied to the Gold Cup.
I’m pleasantly surprised that they have gotten this done so soon. I thought it would take them longer, meaning after the end of the Euro season.
So from my POV Crocker is month ahead of schedule.
V: these people were canned or shoved aside in january. this is april. are you kidding me, ahead of schedule? this should take a month for both jobs. the new GM and coach should have been in place for the march NL games. go headhunt who you want. dangle a check. if you actually watch soccer news they routinely poach each other’s people then do a side deal to get them early. UK teams aren’t shrinking violets, why do we have to kiss up and let them finish their terms? saints are doomed anyway.
sorry but this process is insane and is not producing high quality hires. and it takes forever. and then the guy who gets the job takes reyna family phone calls. which makes it start to sound like a process to hide nepotism as opposed to seriously hiring best on the market.
GB was making >$1m, quit pretending we’re poor.
“sorry but this process is insane and is not producing high quality hires”
You don’t know that. The guy just started
“GB was making >$1m, quit pretending we’re poor.”
“$1,641,398, including $300,000 in bonuses”
You know that Martinez guy who just took the Portugal job?
4 million Euros per.
Southgate? 5 million pounds per year.
Tata Martino for El Tri? 2.2 million /year for a four year contract.
Louie VG the guy who beat us? Somewhere between 2.5 and 3.3 pounds per.