2023 International Soccer (National Teams)

[MJWalker45]

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/65179574

Switzerland will host the women's 2025 Euros. 

[MJWalker45]

https://theathletic.com/4442343/2023/04/23/ussf-matt-crocker-sporting-director?source=user-shared-article

The Athletic is reporting that the sporting director at Southampton will be taking on the same role at USSF.

[Digby]

My easy instinct was to make a joke about how Southampton’s getting relegated but his resume includes a director position for England’s youth teams during their Southgate-era rebuild, so cautiously optimistic here. Certainly not the usual old boys club hire at USSF.

[feltini]

I agree with you. Southampton is doomed but he has some credentials with England's youth. Let's hope he can improve our national team.

[MJWalker45]

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/65453756

Infantino threatens to cut off Women's World Cup feeds to England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy if they don't pay more.

 

"Infantino said European broadcasters had offered world football's governing body $1m-$10m (£800,000-£8m) for the rights, compared with $100m-$200m for the men's World Cup.

"Should the offers continue not to be fair, we will be forced not to broadcast the Fifa Women's World Cup into the 'big five' European countries," Infantino said at a World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva.

"I call, therefore, on all players, fans, football officials, presidents, prime ministers, politicians and journalists all over the world to join us and support this call for a fair remuneration of women's football. Women deserve it, as simple as that."

Rights offers for previous tournaments were bundled together with other events including the men's World Cup, but Fifa has now separated the bidding process.

In calling for improved offers, Infantino said all TV revenue for the tournament would be reinvested in women's football and that public broadcasters in particular, such as the BBC, have a "duty to promote and invest in women's sport".

[MJWalker45]

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/65614237

Folarin Balogun has officially switched from England to the USA. He's done great this year in Ligue A, and he'll probably be back with the Arsenal first team next year. 

 

The 21-year-old, who is currently on loan with French side Reims, was born in the US to Nigerian parents but raised in England.

Balogun has previously played for England Under-21s but withdrew from the squad in March because of injury.

He will not play in the upcoming European Under-21 Championship.

A Fifa spokesperson told BBC Sport: "The change of association of the player Folarin Jolaoluwa Balogun from England to the USA has been approved."

Balogun has scored 19 Ligue 1 goals in 34 appearances for Reims this season.

Speaking to US Soccer's official website, Balogun said the decision was a "no-brainer" and he feels at "home".

[andregunts]

im here to talk about kits and im like something isnt right, keep it going my man 

[MJWalker45]

Can someone tell Mexico they were playing soccer not football? Pathetic second half after going in at half 1-0. Ref had VAR available and still made the wrong decision to toss McKennie. Dest was just dumb to get sent to the showers early as well. And the icing on the cake was Berhalter getting his job back. It should be interesting to see how Gio and Pepi react to him coming back in. 

[Rockstar Matt]

Not sure where to post this, but smack dab in the middle of tonight's US-Mexico Nations League semifinal the news broke that the US is about to bring back Gregg Berhalter. I cannot stress enough how poorly this looks on the USMNT.

 

Independent of my own personal opinions on the matter, bringing back Gregg after these weird 7 months where they basically relieved him of all duties and then conducted a "head coaching search" only to stay with him makes this organization look embarrassingly amateurish. If he was their guy from the start, then why have the 7 months where the players/the federation have been essentially rudderless and being coached by interim managers? Why not have Gregg in charge from the beginning of the year? This gap with no coach only to return to Gregg just doesn't make any sense.

 

At least the US thoroughly destroyed Mexico tonight. Pulisic looked outstanding, really happy for Pepi to get that goal tonight and the whole team looked ready to play tonight. Credit to BJ and his staff for getting this team to look as good as they did. The official unfortunately lost control of the match and because of that the US will be without Dest and McKinnie in the Final against Canada, but hopefully we can still get it done Sunday.

[Digby]

I'm fine with Berhalter coming back, but yeah, that's not a decision that requires a global talent search and a new sporting director first and for it to leak at the start of a big match, but okay. If that's not classic USSF...

 

At least they're not going to play the whole friggin' Gold Cup with the interim to the interim coach, the way things were looking recently.

 

This BJ Callaghan guy really had the guys cooking last night though. Head assistant! Make it happen.

[MJWalker45]

8 hours ago, Rockstar Matt said:

bringing back Gregg after these weird 7 months where they basically relieved him of all duties and then conducted a "head coaching search" only to stay with him makes this organization look embarrassingly amateurish.

I think the fact that they paid someone to go look for a coach and came back to Gregg tells me either Viera, Marsch and others were asking over the price the USMNT wanted to pay for the job, or they decided, "Can we really get rid of a coach that we were already going to keep until the Reyna's threw a fit"? 

1 hour ago, Digby said:

This BJ Callaghan guy really had the guys cooking last night though. Head assistant! Make it happen.

I think he has to stay on. He's been with the team since January at least and he's using the same tactics that Berhalter wanted to use, according to insiders. USMNNT Twitter is naturally a mess right now, but it's still now as much of a circus as El Tri Twitter. 

 

 

 

Also, Charlie Davies saying some nonsense that the reason the USMNT didn't go after coaches with likely higher salary demands was because the coaches, not just the players, had to be on equal standing. Unless Berhalter took a huge pay cut, he was already making three times more than Vlatko. There's no way Club America was going to pay him less than what he previously made, if he actually was in the running for that job. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I'm just a casual but I feel like USMNT has been so consistently good for the first time since I've been watching them (about a decade now), that it's hard for me to understand the concerns.

 

I get that there's a world where a better coach could maximize the return on the unprecedented talent of the USMNT roster, and maybe Klinsmann made more out of the MLS roster than Gregg is out of his La Liga/EPL/Serie A team.

 

At the same time, USMNT keeps winning trophies, performed as expected in the World Cup, and the pipeline seems to be as good as it ever has been.

 

I guess it speaks to the absurdity of US Soccer that we can't just let the good times roll and have to be distracted by this nonsense.

[Digby]

2 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

Also, Charlie Davies saying some nonsense that the reason the USMNT didn't go after coaches with likely higher salary demands was because the coaches, not just the players, had to be on equal standing. Unless Berhalter took a huge pay cut, he was already making three times more than Vlatko. There's no way Club America was going to pay him less than what he previously made, if he actually was in the running for that job. 

 

That was such a bizarre sequence. I get that they had to totally wing it since the news leaked on-air, but... that's the half-baked take that you came up with, Charlie? It's true that the USSF is not going to pay $8 million a year (double that if you want a highly rated UCL club coach to come over) for the biggest of big names but that's not the women's team's doing.

[MJWalker45]

1 minute ago, Digby said:

 

That was such a bizarre sequence. I get that they had to totally wing it since the news leaked on-air, but... that's the half-baked take that you came up with, Charlie? It's true that the USSF is not going to pay $8 million a year (double that if you want a highly rated UCL club coach to come over) for the biggest of big names but that's not the women's team's doing.

And unfortunately there are plenty of USMNT Twitterheads that were happy to latch onto that quote like parasites. 

[Digby]

5 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

And unfortunately there are plenty of USMNT Twitterheads that were happy to latch onto that quote like parasites. 

 

Is Reddit still "blackout"? I hope for the sake of /r/ussoccer that it is.

[MJWalker45]

4 minutes ago, Digby said:

 

Is Reddit still "blackout"? I hope for the sake of /r/ussoccer that it is.

Some of it is, but there's still some BS flowing through there too

[Digby]

"The 2026 World Cup is the most important event in American soccer history, so let's be sure to just waste time for the first 20 percent of the cycle."

[MJWalker45]

6 minutes ago, Digby said:

"The 2026 World Cup is the most important event in American soccer history, so let's be sure to just waste time for the first 20 percent of the cycle."

With the 2023 Gold Cup expected to be MLS heavy, I feel like this entire year is just a throwaway now that they made the Gold Cup final. I'm glad I didn't buy tickets for any of those games. 

[aawagner011]

Perhaps the thinking with the Gold Cup is that at this point, Berhalter has been out of the mix for 6 months. The tournament starts in barely a week. That’s a big ask for him to jump back on board having little to no time to game plan and get tactics in order. Whereas the current coaching staff has had time to prepare and is currently the one voice the players have been listening to. I don’t like it but I get it. It’s also a B squad. Long term, I am not opposed to Berhalter. I think he did well with what was an exceptionally young squad and they should reap benefits going forward as the group matures towards 2026. I think the main issue with how things were handled was how long and drawn out the process was. It seems to me the biggest roadblock was getting Matt Crocker in place to make the hire. Once he was on board, things started to happen fairly quickly. But now, we have lost 6 months of time.

 

Side note as to the Charlie Davies discussion: I loved him when he was the surging new player 14-15 years ago and his story was inspiring, but I don’t think he cuts it as an analyst. He seems to shoot from the hip too often and is hard to listen to. Maurice Edu is very polished and Clint Dempsey is a good listen. But Davies’ thoughts are all over the place.

[Rockstar Matt]

On 6/16/2023 at 7:04 AM, MJWalker45 said:

I think he has to stay on. He's been with the team since January at least and he's using the same tactics that Berhalter wanted to use, according to insiders.

 

To an extent he is, but with more flexibility than Gregg usually wanted. BJ and Hudson both utilized our players in slightly different formations than Berhalter's rigid 4-3-3. Yesterday for example, BJ had our guys lined up in a 4-2-3-1  with Reyna as the 10 flanked by Pulisic and Weah on either side, coupled with McKinnie and Musah playing the dual pivot. That has been my dream formation for the USMNT and we finally saw how good it actually is (and I know LLL Tri isn't nearly as good as they once were).

 

They were still playing through the back and out wide with fullbacks making overlapping runs with the wingers and sending crosses into the box like Berhalther likes (which is going to be more effective with a quality striker like Balogun), but with more freedom to attack and exploit the midfield. I'll honestly be fine with Berhalter so long as he isn't so rigid in "his" style of play, and stop calling up players like Ferreira,  Arriola and Roldan. Maybe it'll be better this time too because the players know the system so well now they don't have to think as much and just play.