YES! US v Colombia on Tuesday 10/12 to be played at PPL Park in Philly!

Spector got raped today. Shocker.

Also deleting pics because they are both pretty meh and huge.

Bradley signs 4 year extension

Yep.

http://www.soccerbyives.net/soccer_b...ough-2014.html

And DMB signs with Hannover 96.

Well, I don't think bradley nor the usmnt could do better, despite both of them wanting to.

It's the Devil we know, I guess.

I'm fine with it. It would have been nice to shake things up but Bradley's done well with the USMNT (as infuriating as he often is) results wise and I'd prefer him to Klinnsman.

The thought of two guys named Brek and Mix manning our wings in 4 years is pretty OMG awesome

Bradley needs to get to a medal game at the Olympics.

Wanted Klinsman, ok with Bradley.

This obviously isn't a possibility anymore with Bradley re-signing last night, but go listen to the 17 minute mark of this podcast from yesterday afternoon (maybe 2 minutes of talk):

http://www.mlssoccer.com/videos?catid=1916&id=8264

Should bring out a whole host of awesome emotional opinions.

Blog Post


The breaking news last night was the decision by the US Soccer Federation to keep Bob Bradley on as coach for another 4 years. Feelings are mixed among a lot of people, but no one seems too emotional either way. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that people seem to accept Bradley but not be enthralled by him? Let's try to break this down.

The Good

1. Bradley has been successful
In the past 4 year, the USMNT has reached both Gold Cup finals, winning one, made it to the finals of a FIFA tournament, won the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying group, won it's World Cup Group, and beaten home team on 3 different continents (North America, Europe, and Africa). Not many coaches in US history can claim these kinds of credentials on their resume. He is clearly a very good coach who has done great things with the US team.

2. The players like Bradley
If there is one thing that BB has done incredibly well it's protect his players. They know that what happens inside the locker room will stay there and they respect that. Bradley does not air out dirty laundry in the press, does not put himself above the team, but will tell players how it is even when they don't like it.

3. Bradley is good at bringing in new talent
Some have been hard on Bradley for not bringing in new faces fast enough, but I think that's off. Charlie Davies got called in when he deserved to get called in. Same with other young players like Bedoya. You can't be turning over the lineup every friendly to give each fringe player a shot. Besides, after watching him get eaten alive against Brazil, does anyone here really want to argue that Bedoya should have been on the team over another midfielder?

The Bad

1. Bradley is not a good tactician
That ugly 4-4-2 empty bucket reared its head for too long. I understand that the US gets by more on physicality, fitness and heart than having skilled players, but there need to be better game plans against the top squads. We've seen it too many times where one player is clearly out-classed by his assignment and there is no tactical change to provide him some sort of cover. We saw it with Neymar on the wings in the Brazil friendly, and we saw it with Ghana's midfield having way too much time on the ball in the World Cup. Very rarely will a plan make up for a significant gulf in talent, but the right tactics can make the US a better team than they are right now.

2. Bradley relies on his guys too much
This relates back to tactics. How long did it take for Beasley to finally fall out of favor? What about Mastroeni? Rico Clark and Oguchi Onyewu in the World Cup are two more examples of Bradley's difficulty with letting go. Sure his loyalty works as well. The calls for him to bench his son have disappeared as Michael Bradley has become maybe the most important player on the US squad at the moment. However, it's a dangerous game he plays and I think there have been more bad results from it than good ones.

I can understand if you think this is at odds with #3 of the Good list, but hear me out. Bradley picked the right 23 to go to South Africa. Where he had problems was putting the right people on the field without seeing someone fail first. Once Gooch looked slow and hurt, he was off. Once Bradley realized Rico didn't belong on the pitch he subbed him out in the 31st minute against Ghana. They shouldn't have been left off the team, but they should not have been starting. The problem is, he should have been willing to make these moves before poor play forced his hand.

3. 2-term coaches don't have good track records
Bruce Arena in 2006. Marcello Lippi with Italy. Raymond Domenech with France. Can Bradley buck the trend and provide 4 more good years? If Landon and/or Clint start to slip in their early 30's is a coach who has been relying on them for 7 years going to be able to say "Sorry guys, it's time for a young guy like Brek Shea or Mix Diskerud to take your place" or will he stay loyal?

Overall I would say I'm not disappointed that Bradley is sticking around. I think he has done an admirable job and I think we are in good not great hands going forward. I would have liked to see him take a job in Europe for a couple reasons (to open up the door for US coaches to move there and to bring in a new coach to lead the US team) but I'm not going to be upset that he is still in charge of the team.

It sounds like it was between Bradley and Klinsman. They won't be terrible with Bradley and Klinsman only wants the job with total control of everything so I'm fine with it.

Meb, nice blog post.

FWIW if it was down to retaining Bradley and getting Klinnsmen, I am glad we kept BB. Klinnsmen is an egomaniac and is taking far too much credit for what happened with the German team, considering his predecessor has taken them to a Final and a Semi since he took over (same guy that was his Assistant in 2006), I think we can put to bed this myth about him being the coach we need.

I hope Bradley keeps looking at the young guys, which is what he did for the 2007 GC, so I have some optimism he will. As long as he does this, I think he can avoid the "sophomore slump" because I agree with you, he definitely had faith in some players for too long (which coincidently is something I think is both good and bad).

Also, as much as it may sound weird, the issues we had at the WC were magnified by injury issues to a few players and our complete lack of viable FB options. I mean we had Bocanegra out there ffs. We could have played him at CB all tourney if we had someone else who could play as our LB.

Sorry if I missed this being mentioned previously, but the newly revealed 2014 CONCACAF qualifying format has three qualifying rounds: 8 groups of 4 -> 4 groups of 4 -> 2 groups of 4.

This is awful as the US might never play Mexico in WC qualifying again, will have some excessively lopsided fixtures early in qualifying, and will have to deal with a lot more variance in the final round.

DO NOT WANT

Good observations mmbt0ne

***RANT ON*****

IMO its not so much favoritism to his guys as it is he is a bad/horrible talent evaluator/tactician.

I know everybody focuses on this but they should. Rico didn't deserve to be on the pitch at all in South Africa, and this crime against Maurice Edu and any fan of American soccer is so egregious as to call his entire judgment into question.

After Rustenburg he then clowned it up again with Torres in the middle at Ellis Park. I will never forgive him for that, it was obvious to everybody in the stadium from the start Jose was lost (even to the local South Africans sitting in our box who knew little about the USA before the match) - its egregious he waited until halftime. The second goal was IMO a product of Torres' positional CLOWNINESS.

And then in the knock-out he goes back to Clark - even more unforgivable. (say what you will but i disagree till the end that Mo was poor v. Algeria and think the substitution for Buddle in the 60th or whatever was entirely tactically [yay BB got one right ] and not performance driven). Mo might not of had his best game against Algeria but his 90-95% game is still enormously better than the other USA options.

I won't rant about the striker choices (which were in effect the decision not to start Benny) and formations but I only have somewhat less exasperation about those issues as I do about central midfield.

Sorry for that, I still have real strong feelings about this.

***RANT OVER***


IMO its somewhat unfair to give him mucho credit for bringing in young guys. I disagree to some extent if the suggestion is Bruce didn't, and I also think a part of that is the changing dynamic of the growth of USA soccer leaing up to 2010 as opposed to leading up to 2006. It was obvious that a big part BB's role was to tap into the growth in USA soccer, and he did that, but that was an obvious thing any HC after 06 was gonna do - that was the big part of the job given Lewis, Mcbride, Claudio, Beasley, Pope, Mastro, Convey etc. While BB may have had exceptional domestic contacts and been the right man for the changing of the guard after the Marcus Merk disaster in Nuremburg, its no longer the case that such a uniquely talented person is needed given USA soccer's growth.

Sure vis-a-vie a foreigner he may be more partial to homegrown talent, but I think a lot of what BB and Gulati accomplished domestically in the last 4 years (along with the growth of USA players in general) is that we don't need a coach with a domestic bias, the USA talent train is in place enough that what we need is a real head coach.

I'll give you that he has great report with players and their are issues given MB is at the heart of the national team - its sad BB couldn't continue in a role that did not involve being head coach - but IMO the most important thing about a national team head coach is the tactics.

Obviously you can't lose the players' trust (Sampson), but IMO player report/goodwill - especially in the context of a national team where motivation/commitment is not as hard to come by (outside of that Island above mainland Europe) as it may be during a grueling club season - is way down there compared to tactics. Most everybody gets up for repping their country in the biggest competition on the planet.

I really think BB's skill set is ideal to be the number 1 to the HC, and am way sad to think I'm gonna have to see this nonsense repeated in Brazil.

I'm not sure how this is more than the excessively lopsided fixtures would be right. In Round 2 the US beat Barbados 9-0 on aggregate. The 4 Groups of 4 won't be that different from the original format, which is 3 groups of 4. The fact is that the first two rounds for the US are normally pretty easy.

Frankly, I don't think this would lead to more variance either. I'd think it'd lead to far less variance tbh, as long as it was gerrymandered in our favor.

Not playing Mexico every does suck though.

Nah, the UEFA and Africa qualifying is much higher variance than our old qualifying or CONMEBOL, even though UEFA and Africa seed (gerrymander) their groups.

I remember their 8-0 win in that first leg, and you wouldn't think things would get much more lopsided than that but for what it's worth Barbados was the 14th-ranked team in CONCACAF entering qualifying. So the US would theoretically be matched up with at least two teams even worse than that in their first qualifying group. The early qualifying will always be easy but i'd figure if you can't play good teams to gain experience in qualifying, you at least want to play teams that are capable of not being embarrassed.

And as far as the variance goes in the final stage, getting 10 games to finish in the top 50% of a group is better than getting 6 games to finish in the top 25% for a guaranteed spot. I'm sure there have been 6-game stretches in qualifying where CR or Honduras has beaten us in the past.

FYI

http://www.whufc.com/articles/201009...236884_2143922

The difference between the teams in concacaf is not a straight line. The difference between the US and Barbados is far, far more than the difference between Barbados and whoever is 10+ spots below them.

good for him. Glad to hear he wants to play for the US as well!

Do you expect him to play in the senior team this year?

Maybe Avram will take him to the massage parlor to celebrate