Monday, December 11, 2006

USMNT head coach position

So, apparently Klinsmann is no longer in the running for the USMNT head coach position. (Yes, I know I'm a little behind here with the soccer world, but you would be, too, if you've had the same past couple months that I've had!) And, unless there some other news has broken with the past couple days, Bradley is in. As Kali said, this was something we all expected back when in his days in Chicago.

What does this mean for the state of US soccer?

The good: he's not that bad of a coach, and I personally consider him to be at the same level as Arena, who, up until this year, did a pretty good job of making the USMNT a somewhat credible contender on the world stage.

The bad: same as above; I consider him to be at the same level as Arena. The USMNT is at a point where what they need is to break out of their plateau. And while I could be wrong and Bradley could be the one to do that, fresh blood and a different coaching style is far more likely to be successful.

The ugly: again, same as above. Remember this past summer? Do we really want to see a repeat of that? The element of surprise that the USMNT had back in '02 is long since gone. They have got to start playing at a higher level if they hope to do well. Again, there's the whole fresh blood issue that could be important here.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Spam

While I welcome comments on this blog and am all for free speech, I have a zero-tolerance policy for spam, and will not hesitate to delete any spammish comments that I may get.