I really do like Bob Bradley. Honest.

I don't want my previous posts to seem in any way as a knock on Bob Bradley. To the contrary I think right now he and Frank Yallop are the coaching class of MLS (LA is lucky to have both these guys in town).

Many people are going to look at Bradley's dismissal from NY Red Bulls as a negative. They shouldn't. The New York job has been poisoned to anyone who's taken it. Bradley was never able to do with that club what he really wanted because he had people above him (Alexi Lalas for one) mucking up the works. Bruce Arena is the only person that has the clout and control to finally straighten that club out.

Such a situation isn't all that much better with the Nats job, but it is, still, a little better. The player pool Bob will have to choose from is a much juicier one and doesn't have a salary cap limitation. And just because Bradley is a former Arena assistant doesn't mean he's an Arena clone. Bradley likes to play it faster and more aggressive than Arena did. Maybe that's because it was just MLS and when you get the national level you can't get that crazy. But I don't think so.

I also don't think that Bradley will fall into just picking that same old players that Arena did. Though his time is limited, Bradley will still want to leave with a certain, albeit small, legacy. And maybe since his time is brief he'll be a little riskier with what he does. Try some off the path things. I definitely think we'll see a much younger roster than before and not just because our old guys are just to old to play anymore.

I'm interested to see what he'll do. Not necessarily excited, but definitely interested. I don't think the Denmark game will give us any insight to Bob Bradley's game or provide any indication of how great a coach he'll be. It's the first game with a new coach. Every one's at least given a pass for that.

No matter how well Bradley does, however, in the end I really feel he won't get the head coach's job for good. Gulati is going to get his big signing and try to save as much of this disastrous beginning to his term as he can. Bob Bradley, no matter how he turns out, and done a very noble deed in taking on the job under such dim conditions.

Bob Bradley: It's only kinda what you think

The USSF announced today Bob Bradley as the men's senior team interim coach and the head coach of the US U-23 team.

This certainly means Bradley will no longer be coaching Chivas USA (have fun in LA with a Guevara that only Bradley had a chance of controlling). There was some speculation that he would pull double duty as head coach of the Goats and interim head coach of the Nats then return to Chivas USA full time once a permanent US head coach was named. That's all done now with the U-23 gig which has no interim label.

We might also be able to guess with a fair amount of certainty that Bob Bradley is indeed the stopgap we figured he was between Klinsmann backing out and another full time coach being named. Bradley gives us someone with intimate experience of the US and MLS systems and can be counted on to compile a good camp roster and guide the Nats through their upcoming friendlies without any concern until a full time man is found.

Who's the Fed going to look to now to fill that head coaches spot? José Peckerman was always speculated about as being high on the list. As far as we knew, the sticking point with him was his limited English. That may not be as large of an issue now as it once was.

I think that whoever they pick, they won't come from MLS. Bob Bradley is probably the best of the MLS lot and if they're going to pass over him then they're going outside the family. Sunil Gulati may be dead set on finding someone with fresh ideas and fresh perspectives on the player pool. He thought he had him with Klinsi. Obviously he was wrong. The trick is finding the second best person that fits his idea of a head coach without wanting as much control as Jürgen wanted.

No Klinsmann = End of the World (as we know it)?

Short answer? No. What it does equal, though, is a bunch of really pissed off people who have every right to be.

Can they be pissed off that we lost out on the best candidate and potential difference maker? Sure.
Can they be pissed off that Bob Bradley will be named interim coach? Sure.
Can they be pissed off that US Soccer may have tragically taken a step backward, or best case scenario, a step laterally, with this coaching move? Once again. Sure.

But all of the above reasons to be mad are simply smaller pieces of the much larger problem behind the legitimate reason to engage in anger towards the USSF and Sunil Gulati right now: that we've squandered that past 6 months in an exercise of organizational dysfunction.

People will hypothesize, theorize, and whatever else -ize out of what the phrase, "Klinsmann and USSF president Sunil Gulati apparently are far apart on issues of executive control over the U.S. program, which is more of an issue than money" means. If the USSF makes one thing very simple, it's that ability to become quickly confused and lost at how the bureaucracy of the federation works. Many lords fighting to control their little fiefdoms of soccer. It's own worst enemy. Therefore I'll leave that up to others to get headaches over.

Essentially, it's not that Klinsmann pulled out. It's that we had to wait 6 months for that to happen. And when it did, we didn't have a Plan B to immediately go to, so instead we get an interim coach until a full time one is found. It could be Bob Bradley or Sir Alex Ferguson in this short term role. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the title 'interim' that precedes 'coach'.

Gone are 6 months of no camps, no games, and no progress. And now the Fred is forced to essentially grab somebody and toss him into the coach's role so that we at least have someone selecting the Starting XI and roaming the sidelines during the friendly matches we've already schedule.

These upcoming matches have devolved from the infant stages of culling players and laying the bedrock for a future system into glorified training sessions, making sure the obvious players keep in shape and somewhat remember each other's faces. And the USSF gets to make money from the ticket sales.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. The USSF only did one of those thing and now it cost them.

I'm normally optomistic, but unless the USSF pulls off a miracle hire, the dismissall of Bruce Arena (sorry, the option not to re-hire) will be in vain.

Aufwiedersehen, Klinsmann!

Well, Jürgen Klinsmann has taken his name off the candidates list for the US job.

This from Allen Hopkins over at ESPN:

"Klinsmann, in a statement sent to ESPN, said: 'Sunil [Gulati] and I have concluded our discussions about the US men's national team program, and I have withdrawn my name from consideration as coach. I'm not going to go into details about our conversations. But, I certainly want to wish the next coach of the U.S. men's national team much success, and I want to, also, thank Sunil for the opportunity to exchange ideas.'"

And the kicker, no pun intended, from Jonah Freedman at Sports Illustrated:

"Klinsmann and USSF president Sunil Gulati apparently are far apart on issues of executive control over the U.S. program, which is more of an issue than money."

"Instead, a source close the negotiations tells SI.com the U.S. Soccer Federation will name Chivas USA coach Bob Bradley as the national team coach on an interim basis, which could eventually lead to his taking the job over permanently."


The sky isn't falling because of this. Far from it. But one can't help but think of this as an inauspicious start to Sunil Gulati's tenure as head of the US Soccer Federation. To fall from a list of quality, foreign, coaches to Bob Bradley is a large one. And how much control Klinsmann was trying to wretch away from the Fed is any one's guess (and I'm sure there will be many guesses).

This isn't to say that Bradley isn't a good coach, but he's already on his 3rd MLS team with Chivas USA. Amado Guevara will sure be sad to seem him leave.

More than anything, I wouldn't expect any official coach to be announced for some time now. My instincts said that most if not all eggs were in the Klinsmann basket.

Just when I get excited...

Just when I get excited about this article from earlier today, this one from ESPN comes out and pours cold water all over my eagerness.

The anticipation has reached a point where once the announcement is finally made, it'll be like, "Now what I'm I going to eagerly check on every day?'

Sure, there'll be all the predictions and "what if's" and everything else that comes with a new guy. But it just won't be the same.

This coaches wait has been almost as bad as waiting to find out what's happening next on "Lost".

Ives is asking the same thing we're wondering.

Ives Galarcep over at ESPN has been asking the same thing I've been yelling: Where's our new coach?

Most hopeful quote from the piece:

"Gulati promised an announcement this week and all signs point to it finally happening."

By the way, everything Ives says is spot on about Klinsmann. We need to get moving and getting ready for Denmark.

Read more of his thoughts about the subject at his blog.

I have ideas I tell you! Ideas!

I've decided to take stab on ways to improve the domestic game while I have plenty of time to think about it. The MLS off season and waiting for our new US head coach (to be announced I guess a month before WC qualifying begins at this rate) has left me with plenty of opportunity to toss around ideas in my head.

So here we go:

IDEA #1

As it is, if a player goes down and the trainers have to come on, the trainers will tend to the player on the field before eventually getting him off to the side where, more often than not, he pops up and is ready to come back on in the blink of an eye. An easy few minutes or more is wasted while all of this unfolds.

I say that if a player goes down and the trainers have to come on the field, they stretcher him off to the side and off the field of play before they can tend to him. This way play can be quickly restarted, the flow of the game interrupted less, and players inclined to diving/faking in order to waste time are now punishing their teams by putting them a man down instead of giving their team a chance to rest and regroup while they flail about.


IDEA #2

This next idea may at first seem complicated, but it's really, really not. It's genesis comes from basketball where they punish teams if they keep hacking away and fouling their opposition.

Too often, I feel, certain MLS matches spiral out of control into hack fests. This is because a defender is either tired, not that good, or a combo of both and is continually hacking down an attacking player instead of getting beat. How often have we seen attacking plays and counter attacks die because the DM takes the attacking player down, allowing the rest of his team to track back? All the fouling brings down the beautiful into something ugly.

You don't foul someone because you're the better player. You do it because you got beat or couldn't stop them legally. If the whole team is accumulating like 20+ fouls a games it's because since they're not good enough to beat you head on, they just hack you, disrupt your rhythm, and hope to get lucky with a counter.

I say that we start punishing teams in game based of team foul accumulations. This is how it's done.

A stat keeper will keep track of all the fouling done during a game. When a team reaches 10 total team fouls the person on that team with the most individual fouls will receive a yellow card. If that person already has a yellow card, then the person with the most individual fouls without a yellow gets it as a team foul yellow can not be used as a second yellow against someone. A yellow is dished out at every additional 10 team fouls, with the yellow going to the player with the highest number of fouls who doesn't already hold a yellow card.

This punishes the fouling team because a yellow card on a player changes tactics and dynamics. That player must play more careful and less reckless now, a coach may have to sub that player out earlier than they wanted to or take them out at all because it's too dangerous to keep them in. The less aggressive play allows for more attacking play to open up.

An important thing to note is that any team foul yellows a person gets is not eligible for fines and does not count against them with discipline points. If a player gets sent off from a game because a double yellow/red card and that first yellow as a team foul yellow, they do not have to sit out the next game or get fined and assessed discipline points except for only the yellow card they earned on their own.

This way it only punishes the team for that one game, and not the player(s) for future games. It also helps avoid get crap from the players union because you're not taking money from their members and making them potetnial sit out future games.




I have another idea but I'll wait to share that with my next posting.