The U.S. men’s national team’s Copa America dream ended with a lack of fight and intensity from the players and that theme continued on Saturday in the program’s first match following the summer failure.
Mikey Varas’ squad fell 2-1 at Children’s Mercy Park to CONCACAF rivals Canada, suffering their third-consecutive defeat and fifth overall this calendar year. Despite a much improved effort after halftime, the Americans started the match slow and ultimately were sloppy at times in possession.
Errors from Tim Ream and Johnny Cardoso led to a pair of Canada goals scored by Nashville SC’s Jacob Shaffelburg and Lille’s Jonathan David. Second-half substitutions such as Aidan Morris and Luca De La Torre showed promise, but ultimately it wasn’t a good enough performance yet again from the USMNT.
“The mentality is on the players, they know it,” Varas told reporters. “We speak the truth to each other. I love those guys. But they know that mentality to fight, to run and to sacrifice, I can’t do that for them. That’s on them.
“I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know,” he added. “I felt that the trainings were intense. They were aggressive. But when the game comes, you gotta get going. And the players are the ones that bring that. Coaches can only get you so far from a mentality perspective.”
Varas was selected as interim head coach during the September window as U.S. Soccer continued to try and lock down its long-term coach for the program. A former USMNT U-20 head coach and assistant coach on Gregg Berhalter’s staff, Varas is familiar with the squad and the style of play that they are familiar with.
However, the lack of intensity and overall pride on Saturday is a worrying sign for the USMNT, who have suffered three-straight losses for the first time since 2015. Veteran defender Tim Ream, who challenged his teammates’ intensity after the program’s Copa America elimination in July, once again echoed similar topics after Saturday’s loss.
“It’s something that I think we need to get back to really taking much more pride in wearing the jersey,” Ream said to reporters. “And that’s not to say that we aren’t proud to wear the jersey, but I think there’s a certain standard that we need to hold ourselves to and we haven’t been doing that and that’s on us as individuals, as players, and it has to come from within us.
“You can’t coach intensity,” he added. “You either have it or you don’t and you either bring it or you don’t and we haven’t been.”
New Zealand opposes the Americans at TQL Stadium on Tuesday, seeking a bounce-back result of their own following a 3-0 loss to Mexico on Saturday night. Darren Bazeley’s squad lifted the OFC Nations Cup this summer and will kick off 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifying later this fall.
The All Whites will be no pushovers for the USMNT and while Varas admitted that some of Saturday’s loss can be blamed on him, the players need to take responsibility as well.
“I think with the ball, that’s on me,” Varas said. “Because I want to present some ideas to them and you just never know how it’s going to translate from training to the game after three training sessions. And I asked a lot of them, you know, and if there’s a goal, I mean, that’s on me. Both goals because when you don’t have a lot of time to work and you want to play a certain way it creates confusion.
“Players are going to take responsibility for quality of action,” he added. “The translation of the ideas weren’t clear enough because you shouldn’t be static and you shouldn’t pass the ball just to pass the ball. You’re trying to be trying to accelerate play as quickly as you can.”
I’ll call that one: Recipe to Fail.
Unfortunately, that went about as expected. Which is exactly why I made other plans.
Unless you are Spain 2010, there is no better way to take the steam out of an aggressive press than to burn them a few times over the top or quickly transition/counter when you gain possession. So as per usual, we didn’t. At our best we aren’t remotely good, technical enough to slow everything down, dissect, impose our will on a decent team possessing the ball in tight spaces let alone with this B squad. I mean for F sakes, one of the most basic concepts in the game is the ability to see / identify then take advantage of space, gaps in the opposition. Last match fielding an inferior lineup, we did the same slow, plodding, predictable Berhalter paint by numbers possession. You really couldn’t make it any easier for a team to know where you are going- beat you to the spot every time than that and the perfect way to suck the energy and life out of a team is to feed them the same futile, flaccid putrid gameplay that was on the menu and failed the game before, and the game before…. and the game before.
Call me when you’re serving something remotely palatable.
I’m not so sure a coach doesn’t have anything to do with how intense a team plays. A coach sets a standard. A coach leads by example. In my experience, the attitude of the coach – does rub off on the team, and the team reflects that in their play a lot of the time. If you have a coach that teaches x’s and o’s but isn’t demanding of the team in terms of their performance and attitude going into a match–it shows. Think about how coaches have set a team standard in the squads that you have been a part of. On the other hand—if there is a lack of pride in the shirt—THAT IS A HUGE ISSUE. Many of us old fans that have followed the team for decades can see a palatable difference in the attitude of this team and the successful teams the US has produced in previous cycles. Our attitude carried us in many games previously. We may not have had the tactics or skill to hang with certain teams, but we always competed like wild men when we played. I think this is the most disturbing part about the situation.
I’ll tell you what difference is, it’s that they’re being paid a Kings ransom to play a game, something past generations weren’t, so they aren’t hungry because they think they’ve made it! Intensity can not be coached, either you have it in you or you don’t, and no coach should have to motivate professional players, any professional in any field for that matter, and that people keep excusing these performances as strictly manager related is a joke. These aren’t capable of doing the basics atm, they can’t pass, trap the ball, make basic logical decisions on counter attacks……it’s all bad and the sooner we start coming around to the realization that maybe this group isn’t who we thought they were the better
more i think about it, did we think we were going to be able to start the offense with square balls straight upfield like earlier in the year when they would have reyna almost playing like a 6? hit him, he is allowed to turn, we start trying to pass it forward. knowing full well the opponent is a high pressing marsch team that not only is going to be draped on the mid, and make him at most flick it sideways, but actually more likely be chasing the defender even trying to make the pass? that this wasn’t going to be uruguay sitting back waiting to swarm mid-block, content to let us fart around on our own end.
this needs to be the end of unqualified caretakers. we keep getting beat on basic coaching. panama shows up and just overloads the midfield at gold cup. how do you have the caretaker job for weeks and your first half game plan is i am going to try and start the attack right up the middle into a high press? you wouldn’t get away with that in D1 or USL much less the big leagues.
Carlisle reporting USSF board meeting tonight to approve the final deal. Seems they realized yesterday was a problem.
can we cut the PR optics crap and have poch co-coach tomorrow’s practice(s) and the game tuesday? they keep following a tired playbook. poch in the stands watching varas go through lame duck motions, like GB watching callaghan blow the gold cup.
i want poch at practice blowing his whistle when they don’t play right, i want his input on who plays and subs, i want his lockerroom input. NZ lost to mexico 3-0 and this guy should have been studying us for months? weeks? do i really need to finish the window under a YNT coach who had the players walking it up and trying to pass through the middle from the back?
i mean based on carlisle this was waiting to be finalized a week ago. why am i watching some career youth coach control a window when it sounds like poch-CFC was resolved a week ago or more? the new guy doesn’t get daily practices for months and 40 games like a club coach, for 2 years. he gets one more summer tournament, maybe missing guys for club world cup, and a slightly less than 2 years of normal windows, a week at a shot. burning daylight……
The problem goes beyond the coach. It goes back to USSF for rehiring Berhalter and so many other poor choices they have made. Having Varas in charge is a symptom of the deeper problem.
WTF they realized they have a problem?! We all realized after the Panama game there was a serious problem. Listening to Ream say what he says about intensity and pride is really lame. Guy sends a pass right to an opponent at the edge of 18. How about making a simple pass to relieve pressure instead of creating a goal for the opponent. Can’t wait til he’s longer part of squad. You can see the wheels coming off of him thanks for all you’ve done but the past is not the future. I hope the players listen to Jesse’s comments and take offense because the next time these two teams meet I want to see the tables turn with the US taking the game to Canada.
Ever since Ream did that bone head tackle against Panama in the 2011 Gold Cup and we conceded a penalty, he has been in the dog house with me since then. That is a long time to hold a grudge lol.
Ever since Ream did that bone head tackle against Panama in the 2011 Gold Cup and we conceded a penalty, he has been in the dog house with me since then. That is a long time to hold a grudge lol.
ream benefits from a basic misunderstanding of his history and the team’s. there is a reason he’s been in the pool nearly 15 years and has just 62 caps. he was first capped in 2010 but didn’t make that world cup team or 2014. in reality he emerged on the non-qualifying 2018 cycle team under klinsi as a LB. which isn’t exactly the good housekeeping stamp of approval. he was dropped after a few games under arena and left off by sarachan. GB brought him back, he struggled as a LB in games vs. canada (hmmm) and switzerland. he was dropped again for years then rebooted as a CB and brought back at the very end of the cycle as an injury replacement when richards and robinson both hurt themselves. he wasn’t going to make that team otherwise. and if you look at our W-D-L when he plays, he should be about 5th or 6th string.
he is more like brooks or berhalter himself than people realize. brooks was an injury sub in 2014, not a starter, and the 2018 team sucked when he became one. berhalter rarely played in world cups and when he did his germany shot was stopped and we lost. ream was generally not a starter. with limited exceptions the periods he has started haven’t gone well.
people seem to assume he was core on the 2014 team but he wasn’t. he wasn’t even on the roster. it amounts to a basic misunderstanding of history, of when he really emerged and our success (or lack of same) at that time. he emerged at the point we blew 2015 gold cup, the beginning of qualifying, etc.
i also think people assume because he was on FFC for years, he was a stud, but as an FFC fan for years while he was there they were a yoyo team that spend a few years in the c’ship and had a season they shipped 80+ goals getting relegated.
also it is just ingrained in my memory that c. 2010-15 when ream was breaking in, i wanna say a couple different years he would have both “best defender pass” and “biggest defender gaffe.” plus in recent years he could just be blown by on the wing for lack of foot speed.
to me he’s treated by some fanboys (since he was on FFC which was sometimes EPL) like an all purpose stud back like boca or pope were, which he’s not, when most of the time his marking fails and his real value (like brooks) is a team that will sit back and let him hit long passes.
some of our defensive problem is forcing passes from the back when we don’t have an open runner (or playing it straight upfield where it’s too easy to intercept at multiple levels). and then some of it is we seem to purposefully pick weak marking backs for offense, then not actually get a lot of offense while we hand the other team too many chances. i keep saying, this either needs to turbocharge on offense where we can score 3 on a team like canada and win 3-2 — or it needs to get cleaned up where we can win that 1-0.
i think it could be either. we have better backs. and we have played tournaments like NL 21 where we seemed to be devil may care attack minded and just outscore teams. but under pressure this seems to turn into neither fish nor fowl, a team playing for 1 goal that might be scored at high bodily cost, and who gives up the 1 goal the other way too easy. and being built for 1-1 in a world cup on a good day is a quick trip to the exit.
@TIV thanks for that insight, I agree with you. One thing about Ream he did have some good performances, then would throw it all away with a major brain fart/bone head move that cost us. He did have good Championship and EPL performances and got good minutes like Bocanegra and Dempsey. He was like Frank off Shameless lol.
Apparently they decided it’s not a problem because if they met they didn’t close the deal. Either give him what he wants or walk away.
The USMNT has had two peaks:
In 2002, we had a Premier League-quality striker in Brian McBride, an injury-free John O’Brien, a young Donovan and Reyna, and with rock-solid central defense, and goalies (Keller and Friedel) who could make spectacular saves.
In 2009-10 we had a a Premier League-quality striker in Clint Dempsey (and one can only imagine how good Charlie Davies might have been), Donovan, MB90 at the peak of his game, and more rock-solid defenders and a great ‘keeper in Tim Howard.
In both cases, defenders such as Gooch and yes, Bethalter, were rarely required to play out of the back, and more likely launched the ball 50 yards to McBride or Altidore hoping they would hold it up long enough for others to join. We defended like madmen, and countered: think Donovan’s goal vs Mexico in the World Cup in 2002, or against Brazil in the Confederation Cup in 2009. There was a reason we called our coach “Bunker Bob,” but hey, it worked up to a point.
What has stagnated and/or regressed is our ability to develop talent. Do we have any decent striker or hold up players in the pipeline? Josh Sargent has the potential, but hasn’t quite gotten there. We seem to develop two or three good players every cycle and that’s it: right now that’s Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie. Tyler Adams should be in that category, too, but much like John O’Brien, he is more often injured than not. None of our center backs are good with the ball at their feet, yet we still keep trying to play out of the back like we are Man City. All of our coaches are obsessed with their system, and how they want to play, instead of thinking: what formation can I use to win with my best 11 on the field?
Our lack of talent is exemplified by who we put on the field at any given time: Dest, Robinson, Musah, Balo. None of them learned how to play soccer in the United States. Add Weah and Gio as players who probably learned more from their parents than US Soccer.
If anyone needs me between now and 2026, I will be over here in the fetal position.
Take heart Josh, the USMNT is absolutely better than what we saw yesterday. I loved those teams from the past you mentioned and am old enough to have watched them at the time. Our talent is so much better and deeper today than it was back then. Yes I know the results haven’t been there (but I don’t ever remember dominating Mex the way we have the last few years, and we only ever have gone one game further (once) than the rd of 16 at WC) but I’m convinced we have more than enough talent. We may not have a star like Mbappe or Vini, but only a couple nations do. CP is already the best American player ever, and he is still getting better. Those teams in the past didn’t have anyone with talent of say, Weah, or McKennie. Adams is already better than Bradley ever was. What those teams of the past had is what you said, a gameplan that suited their strengths. Like many on here have said, our coaching/tactics have been a woeful pairing with the player pool. I don’t know if Pochettino or whoever the next manager is will be the absolute answer, but a fresh take has been sorely needed for so long.
I respectfully disagree. The recent Mexico teams are the worst in generations, and they are having their own problems.
Whom have we beaten in official competitions since 2010? Ghana in 2014. Ecuador in 2016. Iran in 2022. Bolivia in 2024. Meanwhile, we keep losing to T&T.
Not. Good. Enough.
We have regressed since 2010.
to me the “poker tell” that this is about aesthetics is a team can show up telegraphing they intend to high press us and we will still try to build on the ground from the back like we are some barca age group team told to start from our own endline, egg the team way up, and if the ball leaves the ground they will be immediately subbed. that is a stylistic choice rather than sound tactics with our personnel.
last thing you tell a team about to be pressed is if you have no options you are NOT allowed to just whack it long. if there are no runners and no options and the press is coming, you hit it to mars. maybe we get it, and if not, they can start their attack from their own end.
similarly, where is it written we can’t knock a goal kick long? or that we can’t take a long free kick and play it in the box to our good aerial bunch? we keep losing to teams that do it. but we have obviously bought into some over-finesse aesthetic crap.
I remember a Champions League game maybe 4-5 years ago between Bayern and Barcelona. From the beginning Bayern was high pressing and I thought, you can’t high press Barcelona with success. This is when they had that core of Messi, Suarez, Basquiets and all the others. Darned if Bayern didn’t totally stymie Barcelona and win the game. You need to have a Plan B and Barcelona didn’t. Additionally, you are never going to beat a high press by having a player bring the ball up and his teammates just standing around, like the US did for most of the first half. One thing I have pointed out before that seems to have been ignored is what Klinsmann did. Undoubtedly he spent a lot of training practicing it. Guzan would kick a goal kick to around midfield, to one side or another where Zardes was. Zardes would almost always win the header and either control it himself or pass to a teammate. That way you removed the danger of a turnover in your own third, but still controlled the goal kick about 75% or 80% of the time. That’s the kind of thinking and coming up with alternatives to best make use of our players that we haven’t seen for a while. So many US coaches try to fit our players into their schemes instead of coming up with schemes to best fit our players. With a club team you can go out and buy the players that best fit your scheme. You are stuck with the player pool you have with a national team, something some coaches don’t seem to acknowledge, thinking they can turn players from one type of player to another even though they spend so little time, relatively, with the national team.
if you watch UCL barca is usually good until it is very bad and they ship 4-5 goals and go out. they overwhelm weaker or rotating teams with their skill. you put them against an excellent team who emphasizes team defense, like a bayern or real, they struggle. they can’t break down the defense, take naive risks, get punished on the break. i wasn’t kidding when i mentioned man city. they need to be so much better you are too busy pinned back to expose them.
we might be thinking of the same chile goal with zardes and pulisic. 2 pass goal,. keeper guzan clears loose ball to zardes, who traps and plays pulisic through, chips keeper, goal. creative, requires skill. i am fine with that. i don’t think we are good enough to toy with teams and build 120 yards with 20 passes. in particular, we probably gave them 4-5 chances from back giveaways alone, 2 of which they scored. we seem to be pretending the slow buildup way is low risk high possession versus some strategy that might emphasize more direct play and chance creation. but someone on here posted where most of our possession and completed passes were our own half of the field.
nah my general impression of that game was the loss was self inflicted. backs forcing passes within the defense.
you watch it and most of our chances aren’t within the scheme, they are corners or we got out and run at them.
Also Luca De la Torre goal, if VAR was involved, that goal would have been offside. We were lucky to get that goal and only lose 2-1. I have faith we will look sharper against New Zealand.
It was close Bombito might have been keeping him on side I never saw a good sideline view. Of course VAR might have also taken off the first Canada goal for the obvious kick on Lund. It’s his mark who is wide open to start the counter because Lund is in a heap on the ground. Probably should have been 4 or 5 from Canada if they’d have been as clinical as Colombia was this summer.
bombito kept him on. i like the dude’s defense but as with some freelancing manmarker defenders he can lose the line. but some point the US catches on i am going to win more games with shutdown D than i give up occasional goals because they are so busy marking they keep someone on. we will be neatly in our lines watching a guy score 5 yards in front of us unmarked.
With due respect to New Zealand, it should be a game like a good junior varsity team versus a varsity team. New Zealand won the Oceana championship by beating Vanatau 3-0. I know Vanatau is a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, but really, Vanatau was a finalist?
New Caledonia pulled out of the tourney due to their “civil unrest.” They’ve been the #2 there since AUS left.
i personally think we exaggerate the concern with winning friendlies. like yesterday with mostly regulars went so well. or the summer. etc. we need to play around.
but to your point, mexico beat NZ 3-0 the other day. we can’t take it completely lightly — TnT twice has reminded us that lesson — but to me that’s the game to mess around with if nothing else. to me it should have been both. to me the basic concept since wales 2020 has been about the same, mostly same faces, and it didn’t win that first wales game and it hasn’t done much since. at a point it needs to be, there is already significant risk of looking crappy in the status quo. as such tinkering is not so risky.
to me the US’ pattern is we make the knockouts and the personnel and scheme ossify and we plateau. like an ego trip. good teams want to kick the next door down and make what changes they need to make to advance further. they need to get off the ego tripping — both in terms of player CVs and how good they think this is — and take a cold blooded look why we lose games. and fix it.
marsch: “And then in buildup, we wanted to make it hard on Tim [Ream] and try to make sure that Tim wasn’t able to just pick us apart. We knew that they liked to play through the middle, and when they played through the middle, we wanted to really jump on their players, win balls and play forward and get into transition. So those were some things that I thought we did well.”
a basic flaw in our tactics is the notion we think we can play with impunity, pass in and out of dangerous areas without risk, toy with people, even when they press. we aren’t that good to do that.
you can xerox that critique for japan, holland, and a few other games. our tactics seem premised on being allowed to pass endlessly without confrontation and the other team will play like the U14s on the highlight videos and not tackle anyone. in reality it sounds like teams are almost baiting us to try to work through the early middle of their defense.
to be clear, our tactics are just fine because international soccer is played like touch football, except the world cup, copa america, nations league, gold cup, and most of our friendlies. the fact folks whine about how physical a game is or how they wish the ref cracked down, every time, couldn’t possibly have aggregate meaning about how most international soccer actually is.
the reason dutch teams can play this way is the league barely plays defense and everyone scores a ton of goals. the reason man city can play this way is their payroll and transfers dwarf everyone which often triggers a cautious defensive response.
we should have known by 2014 that international soccer had swung back towards physical soccer — because WE PLAYED THAT WAY. 2010 tiki taka is over more than a decade. the era when you got carded for breathing on someone, which helped tiki taka — is over. i don’t now if the fanboys never played soccer at a meaningful level but my experience was more often than not it was physical. quit crying every game about refs and physical play. this. is. soccer. come up with tactics accordingly. if your tactics assume 20 pass builds including passing through the heart of the defense, with passive response, you’re either in a dream world or din’t play past about U14.
I don’t disagree with most of this. I do want to say that “which often triggers a cautious defensive response” is an interestingly euphemistic way of saying that Man City has a roster worth over $1B and everyone knows that they are objectively better at almost every position than all but maybe 3 other squads in the world. I think you’re being a little harsh on the glory days of “tikki takka” since it mostly worked because that Spainish roster just happened to be better than anyone else in the world through the entire midfield and much of the defense. Also, their defense was brutal. So they did know about physicality. In the end, they got old and slow.
Well, we had a coach who said we needed to be more “nasty.” And after our
WC loss to Holland I pointed out that was a big reason why we lost–the lack of desire to take the tactical foul, especially when it might mean a yellow card. The Dutch, on the other hand, would chop down our players as soon as we started to have a counter attack. You are not in the WC to win the Fair Play award, but to win games.
GP: re “nasty,” i played on a tough defensive team and you should be playing hard every minute anyway, and making tactical fouls instead of allowing goals, all that jazz.
but i also feel like some of that discussion is like they are too settled on the scheme and the unit, which is modest payoff, at which point, all you have left is effort. that’s what mid-table or bad teams tend to do, is come out hard for 30 minutes, is hack and foul desperately.
i want us to be creating more chances from a more liberated scheme, where we might score 2-3 goals a night, and where the intensity becomes more about holding a lead as opposed to scrapping for any result.
i think they need to incorporate more, better players in the team where this can be rotated at a world cup, where we aren’t exhausted end of group or beginning of knockouts, or where i can bring guys off the bench to do something other than fight for a tie. in the good old days you would have someone like mathis or holden off the bench who could positively win games rather than just bareknuckle brawl or play keepaway to the whistle.
Did they know all that from their drone footage of practice, I wonder?
nah, they correctly anticipated if we use some YNT/assistant hack that we will do the SOS. just like panama did at gold cup under callaghan. just like the teams did all summer. how many times we have to get outcoached before we figure out the tactics are not the money tree?
i mean we lost the game on 2 passes from the back that they know are coming. not some buildup. they just wait for mistakes and counter with speed. self inflicted.
It was a joke, IV. When a rep from your women’s team gets literally thrown in jail in France, your female counterpart fired, and the women’s team docked points, and you openly said they gave you video of a Copa opponent training, but you told them to delete it. You probably shouldn’t use the words “we knew what they were going to do.”
My new theory is this: as a group this generation has seen its peak in Qatar – and they know it. Up until then exuberance of youth had them believing they were better than they are and they were fighting to show the world. Qatar showed them their ceiling as a group. They fought their hardest and came up short of who they thought they were. They are learning the same lessons on their club sides – struggling for PT or having to drop to non-contending teams, lower divisions or leagues to find it (Tillman, Dest – even Pulisic [Prem to Series A]). Ceilings are being reached and they aren’t where they and many fans had expected those ceilings to be. The reality has set in and the ability to turn up to camp with the same vigor and fight just isn’t there. They thought they’d be challenging for trophies but they realize no matter how hard they fight they will not be able to match the elite teams consistently and that realization is soul crushing for many of them – what’sthe point of giving so much if the return will just be a reminder that you aren’tas good as you thought you are? The reality has setting in. And
it provides its own self fully prophecy cycle of failures. This is Konrad De La Fuenta’s career transposed onto the group – after not sticking with Barca what’s the point?
The remedy? Nothing that hasn’t been said here before. Definitely new blood. A transfusion of hungry players eager to prove themselves mixed with the players who can turn up despite set backs and of course the new coach. The new coach bump is a Thing because it re-engerizes teams that have given in to what they see is their ceiling and have stopped striving for more. If Poch can get the players to strive to reach the potential they themselves once thought they could reach and mix in some new blood perhaps the core of this group can be who they thought they were. For now those teams of to 00’s are still the all time best for my money.
Boy, what a narrow and unrealistic view. You don’t make Barcelona and your career is a washout? Look at our previous stars. Dempsey was a star at Fulham, which was constantly fighting relegation. One year they made the Europa League, but mostly they were lucky to be mid table. Donovan failed in the Bundesliga and did okay at Everton, but Everton was another mid-table team. Gooch spent most of his career at Anderlicht and when he moved to Italy he rarely played. Bocanegra was one of the few US players who really did well across a number of leagues, but never on a top European team. Both Juventus and Milan are better teams than any former US player played on. Former US players who excelled for the national team played in Holland, Belgium, and similar. Bradley did well in Italy, but only on a mid-table team. When he moved to Roma he did not stand out. Scally already has a better club record than most former US defensive backs. Robinson was judged the 5th best left back in the Premier League last year. Current US players, as a whole, are better than the past groups.
Gary, you kind of are making my point for me. The guys you named never gave up. They were fighters. These guys are not. They’ve gone soft when they’ve hit their ceiling and stopped fighting. You can’t argue the fact that since Qatar this team has been worse than the teams of the past when wearing the the nats shirt. They have lost their edge. They don’t care. It got hard and they didn’t reach the expectations they themselves had for themselves and now they can’t get up for it. It’s obvious. This club that club in this league and that league….whatever…they have sucked since Qatar and haven’t looked into since the Netherlands defeat. They are broken.
i have read as an excuse for what happened that we owe varas money. yeah, we owe GB money too. so what. didn’t stop us sending him on his merry way and NOT coaching the team this time.
it hints at the underlying fed stubbornness on tactics that we keep doing continuity when given a transitional period to think about things. hudson/callaghan last time. varas this time. i know poch in a broad brush sense is not dramatically different and that concerns me,
i guess we are pretending the tactics are fine and it was just GB. that’s the message i get from constant continuity caretaking and using his own assistants when GB loses the job. we somehow think this is barking up the right tree and you dump GB and it’s fixed. you’d think callaghan and hudson’s stints would hint otherwise. hudson couldn’t accomplish anything — like varas — and callaghan looked miserable with the Bs.
i understand poch has slightly different ideas how to do the same tactical thing but based on what i am watching this shouldn’t be anything similar anytime soon.
as i said on the other thread on what planet does this style accentuate some strength of this team? this is not a high skill team that passes opponents off the field. this is athletes with some kill, some speed, and some aerial ability. the tactics should go that way.
and in my personal experience if you have a defense or intensity issue, you cut your way to a solution. you coach them in practice to play tough. you tell them before the game to get stuck in. you assess the players based on does that happen. you cut the guys who are soft.
when i see the same names every window despite energy and intensity issues, they are neither sending the message nor culling the team in the direction they want. you keep calling new people til you get what you want or the best approximation the pool has. you also send the message to lazy players that you mean what you say, which either motivates or gives you an excuse to take action if you don’t get what you want.
last, we don’t win often enough to have the lengthy list of untouchables we seemingly have. what got applied to turner vs. schulte needs to apply to everyone. fit the scheme and play well or lose your job. everyone. one reason for apathy is most of the same folks’ll be back next time.
Thats one thing holding up the Pooch deal from becoming head coach. Chelsea still owes him money and suppose to pay his wages until he finds new coaching gig, also Pooch will be taking a significant pay cut if he takes USMNT.
Who would take a one week job to coach two friendlies? Especially knowing they have no chance to get the head job? Then you want them in two days to instill a different system that probably won’t align with Poch’s ideas. What is the point of that? Like seriously who would want to do that? They need to get the deal done with Poch like yesterday, but there wasn’t going to be a huge shift this window no matter the lame duck in charge. Could they have maybe convinced Hugo Perez to do it or got Philly to Jim Curtin maybe but there just going to roll it out there and say do what you do.
first off, please don’t downplay this. we have now spent like 1-2/3 years of the last 7 playing for 4 caretaker coaches, maybe 1 of whom was even halfway qualified. 1 year under sarachan. on up to august under callaghan and hudson. this. it starts to come off as a pattern of half @$$ed.
second, does it really take 2-1/2 months to hire an effing coach?
third, off the top of my head, bradley arena wagner fraser luchi. you seem to pretend everyone is an economic actor out for their own ends and that no one would take the job for a week out of loyalty and patriotism.
bradley in particular, i think he would be on top of the pool, willing to tinker, and my personal experience from watching a lightly attended preseason game up close, definitely in charge and drill sergeanting the team.
last, i know hugo played for the US and coached YNTs but his most recent job was ES. that would potentially be like letting marsch caretake this then go take the canada job.
you’re missing my basic point which is we don’t pick the better available people in part because we want to pretend it’s just a coach burned out, that we don’t have a tactical issue or personnel misunderstanding. you hire someone with their own gravitas they will expect tactical freedom and personnel power, and they won’t just do what varas seemed to do, which is run out a lot of familiar faces to play a familiar way and hope for a result.
what i got out of that game is varas lectured them on a particular progression, with instructions not to whack it out, and we then played canada even second half when he undid his coaching. you get any decent coach in and that’s a tie or better.
Unless he’s been fired Bradley is coaching Stabaek again. I’m sure Fraser or Luchi would have done it, but Luchi might have had the same issue as Poch. And if your Luchi you aren’t giving up SJ paying you for a one week salary. Also Luchi is from the same coaching branch (FCD youth, Berhalter) as Varas. Luchi has been fired twice in MLS. Gregg has a better MLS winning percentage than Robin or Luchi. Arena isn’t taking a one week deal for friendlies. He did his patriotic duty, and got blamed for Couva which he wasn’t willing to accept. Wagner runs a 4-3-3 or an 4-3-2-1 so not sure that’s any different from Varas. And again they’ve got two days training before Canada no one was going to come in and change a bunch of tactics. It just wouldn’t happen.
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Yes they should have gotten this done faster. I’m fine with them taking their time if it’s the right hire. Crocker did pretty well with Hayes. I heard some rumblings that Chelsea was holding things up because they didn’t like that we stole Emma away. Also heard Pochettino was trying to bring his whole staff which was more people and expense than the MNT was used too. I’m sure the Athletic will do an expose in a few months. But it shouldn’t take this long from Pochettino is our guy and he’s excepted to this point.
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How is having Hugo who used to coach ES like having Marsch who is the current coach of Canada manage us? He doesn’t work for ES anymore and it didn’t end well. Even if it had is he going to give away secrets like this is how I played Canada which is nothing like Pochettino would play El Salvador?
IV,
“first off, please don’t downplay this. we have now spent like 1-2/3 years of the last 7 playing for 4 caretaker coaches, maybe 1 of whom was even halfway qualified. 1 year under sarachan. on up to august under callaghan and hudson. this. it starts to come off as a pattern of half @$$ed.”
Nonsense. The USSF and the USMNT has looked and been half assed for years. The current situation is SOP.
“second, does it really take 2-1/2 months to hire an effing coach?”
What is your basis for comparison? This isn’t a college, high school or select team coach. Have you ever hired one? WTF do you know about it? It takes as long as it takes.
“third, off the top of my head, bradley arena wagner fraser luchi. you seem to pretend everyone is an economic actor out for their own ends and that no one would take the job for a week out of loyalty and patriotism.”
Didn’t you just say you are worried about looking half ass? This would be the epitome of that. No true professional manager would come from the outside and manage the team for a week or two.
First of all, the players will know this guy is only there for two weeks and then he’s gone, so they will go through the motions and whatever. Second of all, if I’m some outsider who gets asked to do this, I will say to the USSF “you’ve got Mikey Varas there under contract, if you think he sucks why should i get in the middle of that? Fire him and then tell me that the job I do will serve as something of an audition for the permanent job and pay me for the week, and then we have something to talk about.”
What you’re proposing is like having a yard sale to raise funds for Pochettino’s salary. Very amateurish.
No real professional is going to give the USSF something for nothing.
“bradley in particular, i think he would be on top of the pool, willing to tinker, and my personal experience from watching a lightly attended preseason game up close, definitely in charge and drill sergeanting the team.”
When Bob was in charge he got called worse names than Gregg by guys like you. Bob and the USSF have a very frosty relationship and it does not appear to have mellowed over time.
Sunil wanted JK , couldn’t get him and signed Bob as a last resort. But Sunil always longed for JK and others ( Bielsa). And when Sunil finally convinced JK to sign on the dotted line he dropped Bob like a used tampon. More than a little bad blood there.
Besides Bob is currently the head coach of Staebek and is keeping Michael as his assistant
“you’re missing my basic point which is we don’t pick the better available people in part because we want to pretend it’s just a coach burned out, that we don’t have a tactical issue or personnel misunderstanding. you hire someone with their own gravitas they will expect tactical freedom and personnel power, and they won’t just do what varas seemed to do, which is run out a lot of familiar faces to play a familiar way and hope for a result.”
Your basic point is nonsense. An assistant coach is hired to help the head coach. It says so in the title. Got it? When the head coach is indisposed, the idea is the assistant is there to stand in for him until he returns. If the head coach is permanently disposed of and you really hate everything about them, you clean house.
Presumably, the USSF looked at the schedule, figured hiring their guy might take some time and kept guys like Varas around just in case.
You could hire experienced former head coaches to serve as assistants and national teams have done so on the past, but it is likely that that model does not fit into the current salary structure of the USSF. You could change that structure but I would rather spend the money on hiring a guy like Pochettino. You see NFL and MLB teams with Assistant Coaches that have head coaching or manager experience. But that is a salary structure way bigger than what the USSF has.
“what i got out of that game is varas lectured them on a particular progression, with instructions not to whack it out, and we then played canada even second half when he undid his coaching. you get any decent coach in and that’s a tie or better.”
Yeah? So what? First the USMNT needs to hire the best head coach possible. That’s way, way more important than worrying about assistant coaches not being up to the IV standard and losing a friendly.
dude, half my point is that it sounds like any caretaker has to be a continuity lapdog — intent on carrying out the exact same thing that wasn’t working with roughly the same people who weren’t getting it done — which defeats the point to firing the coach. when you’re like, but he has another scheme, but he might want personnel choice — yeah, this needs a different look. this boat needs rocking.
re poch, we keep hiring unavailable GMs and coaches. everyone forget having to wait on berhalter to finish columbus — which turned out fairly anticlimactic in what that year accomplished them? or stewart had to finish out AZ. maybe hire someone doesn’t have a girlfriend already they haven’t quite broken up with.
with CFC, over the years i have soured on them a bit because that organization seems all about money. extract extract extract. have kids on loans half a decade. you can do that because they have a contract nominally that long. ethically you should let them go for a reasonable sum if you have no belief they will ever see a chelsea first team field. poch is along those lines. they fired the dude. i am sure he has a noncompete attached to continuing to get salary. split the difference and let him go. does poch want to coach us or does he want payday. that’s one reason i was concerned he hadn’t sorted out a lump sum months into being sidelined. he wasn’t quite free and ultimately if CFC is willing to keep paying paychecks — or even to just play chicken — this could drag out forever. as CFC wantaway loan players often endure. there’s a reason i follow them less now.
i dunno, the pretense is it’s ok to waste windows this way. we already burned like 8 months once before this cycle on caretakers. this hasn’t looked worth a crap since. we are burning a lot of this cycle having age group coaches or assistants run the team.
and lest we forget, the first caretaker was so shoddy callaghan replaced hudson. we have literally already done this song and dance once. this wastes finite time. when the team then looks unpolished with meh results, well, people forget GB had basically the end of 23 and then 6 months of 24 in charge.
this hasn’t been stable and part of stable is qualified coaching when it’s not the big dog. and a big dog that is serious.
poch should have a fresh full staff. if this is literally his only gig he should be fully immersing in MLS and our expat players, he doesn’t need an american liaison, or a translator, he needs maybe some scouts and analysts to bring fresh player ideas to him.
didn’t klinsi have herzog and vazquez? are we getting cheap? top dollar coach but he has to hire domestic assistants or retain staff who can’t win a friendly on their own steam? i mean poch may only be here the 2 years, so it’s just 2 years’ cost, and there isn’t necessarily some second cycle to be had where we finish out his ideal staff. now or never. dumb fight.
last, you’re letting the great be the enemy of the good. i would ideally like a strong resume former US coach to caretake. but the basic idea here is maybe don’t have underqualified hudsons and varases where you almost want to fire the caretaker — or in fact do it. let me repeat that. before we pretend this is nothing, we have literally already fired a caretaker already this cycle. and poch ain’t sealed yet. so maybe raise the floor on the job a little. we don’t need to necessarily hire a league champ to coach the team, but the people you’re wanting to nitpick would have better resumes than the people we are using. and the caretaker results since 2017 generally speak for themselves.
IV,
“dude, half my point is that it sounds like any caretaker has to be a continuity lapdog — intent on carrying out the exact same thing that wasn’t working with roughly the same people who weren’t getting it done — which defeats the point to firing the coach. when you’re like, but he has another scheme, but he might want personnel choice — yeah, this needs a different look. this boat needs rocking.”…………………
last, you’re letting the great be the enemy of the good. i would ideally like a strong resume former US coach to caretake. but the basic idea here is maybe don’t have underqualified hudsons and varases where you almost want to fire the caretaker — or in fact do it. let me repeat that. before we pretend this is nothing, we have literally already fired a caretaker already this cycle. and poch ain’t sealed yet. so maybe raise the floor on the job a little. we don’t need to necessarily hire a league champ to coach the team, but the people you’re wanting to nitpick would have better resumes than the people we are using. and the caretaker results since 2017 generally speak for themselves.”
You propose to hire two head coaches , one in reserve. The one in reserve will have a different philosophy from the real head coach so that if the head guy is fired the reserve guy can change the team philosophy instantly so that the players can instantly change how they play. That way we would win a bunch of friendlies that we lost.
And that would accomplish what ?
Hiring your successor and keeping him around ” just in case” sounds like a winning plan.
IV no one is taking the job for a week and if you found someone willing he’s not going to change anything. He’s going to say go play for the shirt and have fun. Changing things is not in his job description because the new guy is just going to do what he wants in a month anyway.
-not sure what the Poch staff rant was directed to, but that’s allegedly the last hurdle is getting all his staff’s salaries and buyouts taken care of. Varas is taking the head job for the new San Diego MLS team.
Poch is much more pragmatic and builds teams from the back, develop defensive stability first and then become more dynamic offensively. Wouldn’t surprise me for him to move to a 4-2-3-1 with the 2 having more defensive duties including 1 of them sliding into defensive line when the FBs are released upfield to keep us from being as suseptible to the counter.