11 months into his second spell as U.S. men’s national team head coach, Gregg Berhalter is out from his position.
Berhalter will not continue as USMNT head coach, U.S Soccer announced Wednesday. The news comes just over one week after the USMNT suffered group stage elimination from the 2024 Copa America.
Fox Soccer originally broke the news earlier on Wednesday. USSF Sporting Director Matt Crocker will lead and has launched a search for Berhalter’s replacement.
“We are deeply grateful to Gregg for his commitment the past five years to the Men’s National Team and to U.S. Soccer,” said Crocker. “Gregg has earned the respect of everyone within our organization and has played a pivotal role in bringing together a young team and moving the program forward. We wish Gregg all the best in his future endeavors, and we know he will find success in his next coaching position.”
“Our immediate focus is on finding a coach who can maximize our potential as we continue to prepare for the 2026 World Cup, and we have already begun our search process,” added Crocker.
Berhalter, 50, was rehired by U.S. Soccer in June 2023 after the federation conducted a full investigation on him following a past domestic violence incident involving him and his wife, Rosalind.
A former USMNT player, Berhalter’s first spell as head coach began in 2018. He led the Americans back to the FIFA World Cup in 2022 before reaching the Round of 16 in that tournament.
Berhalter also led the USMNT to a pair of CONCACAF Nations League titles and one CONCACAF Gold Cup. Several dual-nationals also committed to the USMNT during Berhalter’s two spells as head coach including Yunus Musah, Sergino Dest, Folarin Balogun, and Malik Tillman.
“I want to thank Gregg for his hard work and dedication to U.S. Soccer and our Men’s National Team,” said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. “We are now focused on working with our Sporting Director Matt Crocker and leveraging his experience at the highest levels of the sport to ensure we find the right person to lead the USMNT into a new era of on-field success.”
Both Anthony Hudson and B.J. Callaghan served as interim head coaches during Berhalter’s absence in 2023.
The USMNT will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup on home soil, alongside Mexico and Canada.
Either Klopp or Low, and if neither are possible, consider Michael Laudrup.
Why? Hasn’t managed in 6 years. Won Danish league 20 years ago Leagues Cup with Swansea 12 years ago (sacked a year later) and Qatar League 10 years ago.
Forget tactics, forget player selection for the moment. This team needs a complete mentality overhaul. That is the #1 issue. There is zero passion. All I’ve seen the last 5 years is whining and loss of self control when playing decent opponents. It’s a cultural indictment. We’re immature and phycologically weak. With only 2 years left until the WC only a coach can change that. The players are going to magically grow up.
If he’s committed Klopp can light the fire. I don’t know who else.
Jurgen Klopp just walked away from the most prestigious job in football to spend time with is family in a villa he renovated in Mallorca.
Of course any manager would give all that up for the privilege of rubbing elbows with such world football luminaries as Pepi, Reyna, Pulisic etc. not to mention coming to a country with the shittiest fields in the world and the most delude fan base.
All that for one tenth of his previous wages.
Somebody better get his Airbnb reddy.
LOL!
CV wish list:
At least one trophy season from a top five league as a manager. UCL group stage success and at least one UCL knockout round win. And/or international level semifinal run in WC or Euro as a manager.
…
Because we don’t have to negotiate the slug fest of concacaf cow pasture brawls this is an excellent opportunity to bring in the type of high brow manager who can organize this roster to finally play the beautiful game. Explaining to a Klopp type manager he has to negotiate a cow pasture brawl with a hostile referee isn’t easy. Instead, go for broke, we’re already qualified. Yeah, no cow pastures, yes to more friendly matches in Europe snd SA.
…
Pay the man, whoever it ends up as.
And if hear any of you fools mention BA again like I’m reading below I’m
gonna flip.
Arena!
“Because we don’t have to negotiate the slug fest of concacaf cow pasture brawls this is an excellent opportunity to bring in the type of high brow manager who can organize this roster to finally play the beautiful game. Explaining to a Klopp type manager he has to negotiate a cow pasture brawl with a hostile referee isn’t easy. Instead, go for broke, we’re already qualified.”
yeah baby
come to America and be the one who brought us into the big time
We need Klinsmann!!!! Just so we can have him bench Weston and Adams and then he won’t ever bring Pulisic in, just to show America that there can’t be any sacred players. Then he can bring some players from USL to the world cup. And the coup de grace Julian Green gets to start all 3 World Cup games.
They gonna go big with this hire if they can get him, they desperate. World cup coming up and this disappointment, give whoever whatever they want.. we definitely not gonna win it but let’s be respectable
You all want an experienced international coach that doesn’t take poop from the players….. well that’s Bruce Arena. Might as well sign him up. Last I looked he made it to the QF’s of a men’s WC. Renard has not. Nancy has zero international experience, and Henry has little international experience as a head coach.
Not many choices for an experienced international coach. Low, Van Gaal, Arena, That’s pretty much the list
And fans are saying no to Arena. So for my money Low makes the most sense. He ticks the box for experience and toughness with players, he moves that coaching needle for people to get excited about and he has won a WC and has tactical flexibility. That’s the German coach I would go after not Klopp.
I’d 100% take those two over Arena. Honestly if I had a choice of Bradley, Klinsmann, and Arena, Bruce would be my third choice. Bruce also is the last manager to not get out of his WC group and is the only manager since Alkis Panagoulis lost to Costa Rica at home in 1985 to not qualify for the WC.
@JR, give Kilnsi his credit in that failure too 😉
😏
“You all want an experienced international coach that doesn’t take poop from the players….. well that’s Bruce Arena. Might as well sign him up.”
2002 was 22 years ago. A lot of things change in 22 years. In 2002 everyone did well and everything went right.
In 2006, the job Bruce did was not an improvement. And he butchered Couva in 2017. I love how the USSF keeps giving chances to fuckups. That’s why Gregg lasted for nearly six years. Now you want to see how well Bruce has aged?
Normally, for a disaster like Couva there is plenty of blame to go around. But in this case, it is very hard to think of anything Bruce did right, starting with his sheer arrogance in assuming the game was already won and transmitting that attitude to the players.
All the players involved paid a heavy price for that game and Bruce should as well.
It remains the worst and most embarrassing loss in USMNT history.
It’s a very bad idea to reward that c++ksucker in any way for what he did that day.
the tension on arena is i think 02 was best because it was the young front end of the careers of beasley and donovan matching up with some good veterans. but arena’s general problem is the same as his protege GB, which is having favorites and being slow to incorporate youth, tending to err on the end of old fart teams that blow up under pressure. he made the reyna/lewis mistake in 06. most of that 17 team retired from international soccer or should have. arena even did well in gold cup 17 then ignored those players to freshen the october roster after losing to costa rica. and played the same guys 2 games straight for panama and TnT.
i hope the folks suggesting bradley arena klinsi are trolling. that’s basically running out of ideas.
A quick search showed Klopp’s base contract was around $24 million per year, outside of guaranteed advertising/endorsements income. Note that is equivalent to the sum amount the USSF paid to settle the dispute with the USWNT. Since both Hayes and Berhalter were paid under $2 million annually, expectations of him coming on board are unrealistic.
International managers don’t bring in the salaries that club managers do. The workload is just so different. Nagelsman is making 3 or 4 million less for Germany than at Bayern (after Bayern paid 25 million transfer fee to hire him). Klopp’s a long shot for sure but it probably wouldn’t take 24 million.
@Johnnyrazor, The German federation did reportedly approach Klopp for the HC job, and realized they couldn’t meet his compensation requirements, and Nagelsman got the job. Nagelsman is young, understands how this gig would enhance his resume, and could use this current position as a springboard to a bigger paycheck. If Klopp is looking for a less demanding position, and $$ is not a major factor, then it’s worth a call.
It seemed once Callahan took the MLS job that Berhalter was on a short leash. Callahan realized he was not on the USMNT HC short list and bailed out. It would seem Crocker probably has a few names on that list already before today.
The hard part for the USSF is finding the right candidate they can realistically afford, and open to 2 year commitment. The USSF takes in a much smaller revenue percentage now with the latest contracts with the players, and will pull in only about 20% of the earnings from this Copa America when compared to the 2016 edition under the signed agreements. While Klopp is the marquee name in the pool, he would command a hefty pay package, and the USSF just doesn’t have the financial backing of Liverpool’s billionaire ownership. ESPN, among others, had a good article listing several candidates for the USSF to consider. We shall see…
ESPN suggesting houston’s former coach tab ramos is when i basically told myself what on earth is this list. he had houston nearly dead last in MLS then got fired from USL for stinkage, and i personally think if i had weah richards dest etc. i’d think i’d go deeper than losing to colombia after beating france.
worse, he’s kind of like early US-GB. sideways passing and crossing offense meets passive positional defense. it was so easy to create chances on the dynamo and worse his defensive solution of narrowness meant everyone and their grandmother could get open far post on set pieces.
Tab didn’t lose to Colombia he lost to Ecuador.
———————
That Ben Olson came in and immediately turned Houston into a fairly respectable team should be enough to disqualify Tab.
Club coaches aren’t the same as international coaches just like club players aren’t the same as international players. IV which side are you on? Tab Ramos sux as club coach. He’s the business as in youth international coach. Deschamps would suck as a club coach. I don’t care what his club record was before. Yes, he won a WC. What of Les Bleus now? James Rodriguez hasn’t played a meaningful lick of club football, that off the top of your head, you can’t name what club he plays for. He’s competing for a Copa Championship w/ Colombia. He’s been an undoubted starter for Colombia for a decade now. Youth international coaches have a better chance of success because of the player pool of a country. Club coaches are only limited on what the club can afford. Look at the record of the U.S. youth coaches, who have or are coaching in the MLS. If BJ Callahan is successful at club level, he’ll truly be an anomaly.
Easy to forget El Tri was 21-2-3 under Tata coming into 2021 Nations League Final. There were some signs that Mexico were slipping but the NL and GC wins ripped the curtain off an aging roster with injuries in key positions.
That’s in reply to Lost below. Oddly, the qualifier 5 months later at Azteca where despite being the better team couldn’t finish our chances that signaled the limits of the group under Gregg as well.
I thought they should have hired Tata back when they hired Berhalter the first time. He has coached Argentina and Paraguay. At Argentina he lost 2 finals to Chile when they went to penalty kicks after extra time in the Copa America, but he still did better than Brazil in those competitions. At Paraguay he got the best performance in Paraguay’s history in the World Cup and they exceeded everyone’s expectations. And, of course, he did great in Atlanta and now in Miami, which is to be expected with their line-up. He has the benefit of knowing US players well now because of his stint with Mexico and time in MLS.
I remember JR
maybe this time Gary. He would bring instant cred in the region with the powers and so the officiating
Tata got sent off in NL ‘21 the officiating didn’t love Tata. Not like this year when Ivan Barton gave El Tri 12 minutes of extra time to get into NL semis. Tata also failed to integrate any new players into his Mexico. People looking for competition and holding established vets feet to the fire shouldn’t be looking at Tata.
for me, not looking for some coach to light fire under feet of vets necessarily
just enough with the Bartonesque, Otegaesque, Yamashitaesque, Coulibaliesque crap…please
whoever can do that first and foremost for me. big rising tide that one
Na na na na! Hey! Hey! Hey! Goodbye! 👏 Received the email from Us soccer insider and and it was very satisfying to see the great news!
FINALLY!!!!
Hearing Thierry Henry’s name being floated. See how he does with France u23 team.
probably about the 6th french choice of 6 for a HC job i can think of off the top of my head, eg, (no particular order) nancy, vieira, wenger, blanc, zidane. henry won 4 out of 20 (20%) at monaco and 9 out of 29 (31%) at montreal in his 2 adult age jobs. i don’t even know if i would hire him for MLS so of course let’s hire him as USMNT. any reason we’re batting around an olympic age group coach, with even less CV than GB, other than cheapness?
Blanc just got hired in Saudi league or is the front runner. Herve Renard also a better choice Frenchman.
Of those French people Blanc, Wenger and Zidane seem unlikely.
Renard, Nancy and Henry seem to me to be the order of realistic preference.
I don’t think another inexperienced manager is the answer at this point. He’ll have like 65 matches under his belt at the end of the Olympics. Even his former assistant Nancy has almost 100 more matches managed than that and 50+ more wins. Honestly, I think Wilfred is probably too inexperienced.
i kind of agree, i think we need name brand and quit playing the value card. i am sick of struggling with third rate coaching. i see part of the domestic problem as there are few around anymore who do a full apprenticeship with college jobs and then work their way up to MLS and either win several times (while having to evolve a roster over time) or shift jobs where they have to do it for different teams. lot of guys who have had 1 serious job and you either have a value feeling or not that it’s transferable. maybe it’s an age thing, the arena/bradley generation is headed out and the new bunch haven’t yet stacked up trophies. heck, i don’t think it helps there are dozens of MLS teams now and you could be in trouble just because a new team starts spending.
no, go out and hire a CV. ideally not a scheme zealot. someone who can scout with their eyes, game manage, and organically let a pool lead him where it wants to go.
for domestics i like program builders, guys who have built it from scratch over and over, maybe even new teams, and i mean at a title winning clip. they either have had to adapt or they have a good eye for what their concept needs, in a proven sense.
I don’t see Nancy taking the job.
Henry’s record as a coach has hardly been stellar. IMO, it has been less than average. I think he was a better player than coach.
But let’s be honest. Their are issues with our player pool. From.injuries to players really not progressing since the 2022 WC.
first off, was anyone we played just now that successful or loaded where this lame argument explains anything? is panama loaded? uruguay has 2-3 “name brand” players. handful of english players on colombia. conversely brazil kind of shows some names don’t mean squat if it’s a mess. it wasn’t like we were canada and our potential path went through argentina twice. nah, to me on talent it should have been canada-argentina and US-colombia. which, no improvement on klinsi, but that’s kind of the point, is he made semis with a jalopy losing its wheels.
second, i feel like the talent diss is the stealth argument for quiet GB fans or folks so stuck in GB’s mindset they can’t see where the selections and lineups reflect the guy who just got fired. i think GB was routinely getting backs and mids wrong, no keeper competition, and his bench was very meh. scally? LDLT? malik? mckenzie? i expect some change with a fresh face if we can manage to get the job out of the same orbit in terms of coaching tree and ideas.
to me some key tells will be does he use musah and mckennie as starting AM, does the keeper have no compo, do we reconsider the formation, do we still have attacking wingbacks, etc.
no, i expect fresh faces at keeper, a reconsideration of the wingback concept, more emphasis on CBs who can mark, a different mid formation and some shuffling, team defense, some attacking concept other than whack it in without a target striker. without 10,000 reads before you just play soccer.
Not an excuse it’s quuye the truth. Most of the 2022 starting 11 has regressed.
The talent argument is bogus. When I look at teams from so many other countries, I see teams that play so much better as teams. They are more fluid, combine better, and get so much more out of the players they have. There are teams that made the knockout rounds of the Euros that don’t have players with the pedigree of a lot of US players, yet managed to extend a lot of top European teams.
Now it’s about finding the right hire. Berhalter had some good moments with the team. I’m sure he will find a good MLS coaching gig.
He may have had some good moments, but the vast majority of his “moments” were “meh” or Bad.
I will give the man his due. He had some good moments and won 3 trophies with this team. The 4th trophy I give to Callahan.
dude, what people always miss is the discrepancy between “regional tournaments at home” and “everything else.” imagine if england hosted the euros every time. you look at WCQ for a similar time period and we fall back to T-3rd advancing on tiebreakers. we struggle to win away or against good teams. hint: those sorts of contests are an optimality test. if you have a good game plan and the right people picked, you can beat anyone any given sunday. if you slap some guys out there and perseverate about a meh concept your talent might power you through home games but you won’t travel well or punch up at all. and for a few years now we’ve been a little too excited about home efforts and punching down.
Agreed with IV, I think Mexico was worse than.we thought and gave us a bit of an artificially inflated opinion of ourselves.
I disagree with those comments about our players, I just think we rarely saw a “team” performance.
I really really really want to see this group in an actual 4231 with Gio in the hole. (Don’t think I’m comparing the two) but watching how James has been so free to go find the game because he’s smart and has the right pieces around him, I’m itching to see us play that style with Gio.. I don’t care what his club form looked like the last year, he’s grown in the USA jersey. It would require sacrificing the MMA but other than that England game, they haven’t consistently dominated. It deepens our bench by 1 player, and I think Balo would benefit more by not finding himself on an island as much. It also allows Gio and CP to be interchangeable as a wrinkle.. and we’re not so daggum predictable by starting almost every sequence by saying OK, let’s first give Tyler the ball…and then stand around and wonder what happens next.
Even though Richards had his share of mistakes he did play like 8-10 games at Def Mid, and if Miles keeps improving I think we’ll have the wheels to play that as a unit. I’ll even throw a haymaker in there and say I’m curious to see how Scally would look at RCB once Dest returns. And even though I absolutely love Weahs pace, one thing Dest can do that he can’t is cut inside, and we don’t have winger depth.. We have have a few guys that can play as a wide forward, but we don’t have depth at the wing. I wanna see a look at Dest further up the field.
There’s a winning formula in there somewhere waiting to be discovered… (Please effing fine someone to uncover it!)
Just my 7 cents
@Bac
add two bits more!
4231 maybe part of the package. Hayes loves her 4231 base with the women. Gio has got to get a gig playing, wherever that is, whatever league. he’s plenty good but needs to play, right?
re. Mexico, the USMNT helped kick them down the pole. that 2021 win over Tata’s group was no small feat. that Mexico team was good seemed to me, and a thrilling victory but just as crushing a defeat to Mexico, a real nut cracker
it was time to move on from GB, but man I’m telling you, until we get this world reffing jive mitigated somehow, we’re not good enough to overcome that impact, my strong opinion.
the world would love nothing more than to watch the USMNT eliminated in the group stage, as the host.
@ 2tone, agreed and I can
I’m extremely received today. No personal animosity- just don’t think he’s the quality manager our team should have. You look at GGGs tenure/record: If you haven’t actually watched the performances- the same repeated issues over 6 years- the record is deceiving. Lots of factors: Mexico being as bad as they’ve ever been, Costa Rica aged out, way down in quality, 90% of our matches at home, Nations League killing games vs out of region opponents, Gregg’s horrendous record away from home. His atrocious record vs top 30 opponents- essentially, the only remotely decent team he’s faired ok against is Mexico. The shine comes off the penny real quick.
I’m praying ATL stays away from GB. Fingers crossed 🤞
I’ll not reup if he’s our ‘coach’.
He was a pretty good club manager at Columbus. Despite Precourt not spending money so the team could move to Austin. I never understood why when a #10 and a target forward was the focus of The Crew’s offense throughout that Gregg fought the use of a traditional 10 and target forward with NT for his entire tenure. He also was known for switching formations.
England still wouldn’t win. How did they do with Euro 2021final on home soil? They lost.
Was gonna say, a better comparison would be if all Real Madrid’s Copa del Rey games were played at the Bernabéu.