USMNT coaching search raises distressing questions over how much has really changed

Any day now, U.S. Soccer should be announcing its new senior men’s national team head coach, installing the first full-time manager since Oct. 13, 2017.

Back then, Bruce Arena resigned in the wake of the unimaginable failure to reach the World Cup in Russia, precipitating more than a year under acting head coach Dave Sarachan – Arena’s longtime assistant in various jobs.

There are all manner of reasons why it took this long to hire Arena’s replacement, after Arena himself replaced Jurgen Klinsmann mid-cycle. Some of them are valid, others less satisfying. But it’s all conspired to give the national team program a sense of staleness, no matter how many young players have been introduced.

Most fans would probably agree that it will all be worthwhile if the long delay produces the right coach. It’s widely expected to be the Columbus Crew’s Gregg Berhalter, by the way, as predicted by Yahoo’s Doug McIntyre many months ago before it became fashionable.

But in defining “the right coach” lies the trouble, however.

U.S. Soccer has consistently refused to comment on the specifics of its men’s national team head coaching search, but various reports have been compiled to produce a list of the men who have not interviewed for the job.

That list includes no less than standout Major League Soccer managers Jesse Marsch, Peter Vermes and Oscar Pareja, as well as former Mexico national team head coach Juan Carlos Osorio and Mexico coach-in-waiting Tata Martino.

Martino has confirmed that he never even spoke to U.S. Soccer informally. And since new USMNT general manager Earnie Stewart has said on the record that he feels his coach should speak good English, Martino was clearly never in the running.

There’s a reasonable defense for such a policy. The national team head coach has lots of responsibilities beyond picking and instructing the 11 men on the field. A fair few of them are communication and ceremonial chores, like giving interviews and other assorted talks. That is indeed tricky when your English isn’t good.

Yet that isn’t an entirely exculpatory reasoning for not interviewing Martino, who was quite clearly the most qualified soccer coach currently working in North America. Before his current job with Atlanta United, with whom he has far outperformed the expectation on an expansion team, albeit with enormous financial backing, he managed Argentina, FC Barcelona and Paraguay.

Does that make him the right man to coach the U.S? Not necessarily. But to not even sit down with the man, no matter that his English isn’t fluent, is incomprehensible.

So too for Osorio, who did an admirable job as Mexico manager in spite of his unpopularity. Osorio’s English is excellent, he has worked in MLS, and he has a wealth of international experience. He seemed to tick all the boxes and was rumored to covet the job. But U.S. Soccer dallied for so long that Osorio took the Paraguay job instead.

Marsch and Vermes and Pareja have innovated the American game and elevated MLS’s level substantially in their work with the New York Red Bulls, Sporting Kansas City and FC Dallas, respectively. Former national team coach Bob Bradley – who has since worked in the English Premier League, however briefly – and longtime under-20 coach Tab Ramos, also weren’t invited to interview, per reports.

The talent pool for this job was remarkably well-stocked, given that the next World Cup is four years away and the national team represents a total rebuilding project. And if this is supposed to be a period of reform after the biggest failure in the federation’s history – in the men’s, women’s or youth programs – such a breadth of potential head coaches offered a chance to rethink things, to take on lots of ideas and hear differing visions.

This was a chance for minds to be changed and new ideas to be cultivated.

But that doesn’t appear to have happened.

Given the names of the men who didn’t interview, it appears that the shortlist of job candidates who did was very short. And while Stewart has said he spoke with a lot of program stalwarts about the way forward, this search has the look and feel of a process that could just as easily have happened in 2006, or 2010, or 2014. It doesn’t seem to differ all that much from previous small-scope searches, other than the fact the man conducting it did so from a new role. (In the past, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati and CEO Dan Flynn made the hires.)

And none of that is a knock on Berhalter. He is eminently qualified as well, having done a remarkable job over five seasons with the Columbus Crew in tough circumstances with an owner trying desperately to move the team across the country.

Even in a broader interview process, Berhalter might very well have still come out on top.

But that such an exhaustive search never seems to have taken place poses questions about how much has really changed in the wake of a generational failure.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Yahoo Sports soccer columnist and a sports communication lecturer at Marist College. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.

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