In one sense, the U.S. men’s national team’s Gregg Berhalter era ended with his firing. In a second – arguably more important – sense, it’s ended with his replacement.
Mauricio Pochettino isn’t just the most accomplished, biggest-name coach ever hired to oversee the USMNT by a distance usually associated with how long it takes sunlight to reach Earth. He’s one of the most accomplished, biggest-name coaches currently hired to oversee any national team. Even among world-class sides that have drawn from the club coaching ranks – your Italys, Brazils, Netherlandses – the USMNT can claim to employ the manager with the best club CV in the world.
On paper, the Pochettino hire isn’t so much a grand slam as a grand slam where the umps allowed U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker and co. an extra runner on each base, just for fun. Sure, it took significantly longer than expected to get Pochettino’s contract over the line.
But, hey, aim for the moon, as a thousand senior yearbook quotes have told us. Even if you miss (on Klopp) you’ll land among the stars.
If this sounds like hyperbole, the example of the hiring process that led to Berhalter helps explain why you should forgive it. Both of the following statements are true. Here’s the first one: vast swaths of the USMNT fanbase unfairly held the circumstances of Berhalter’s hire against him, never giving him his due credit for resurrecting the U.S. program post-Couva and meeting any reasonable expectations for the 2022 World Cup cycle. And here’s the second: Berhalter’s first-cycle success didn’t retroactively make the U.S. Soccer’s decision-making process that led to his appointment less uninspiring.
