RIP World Cup for the USA

[Kentares]

And some who suck because they take too much action to 'remedy' the situation. One of the problems the Cleveland Browns have is that they keep changing management and coaching about every two years. There's no consistency, from the type of players they need for how they want to accomplish things as well as the plays that the players run.

That happens in soccer also

[Iron Mongoose]

20 years ago, it was UNHEARD of for players to make 10 mil a year, let alone 100 mil for a 3 yr contract.  NOW its seen as teams being cheapscate if they DON'T offer somewhere near that much..  THAT's what i was getting at..  We seem to see one upmanship on every contract signed, even if the player SUCKS Balls..  And teams pay out, just cause "they want the brand name the player might bring"..
BUT IF they all took a big pay cut, and actually were paid BASED ON HOW well they do, imo that would push more to actually PERFORM rathr than the crap we seem to see..
AND ITS for all sports, not just soccer i wish something like that was done with.

I do agree, it is for all sports.  How to combat that?  A hard salary cap is one way.  It won't solve everything, but a quick look at the NFL shows that it's top players tend to make less than top players in other sports, despite being a more popular and lucrative league (and being a sport where players are at vastly greater risk of career ending injury). 

For my part, I'd say just let the market sort things out.  In the case of football (soccer), which is broadly considered the most popular sport in the world, it's broadly reasonable that the best/most popular players should be paid massively.  If Christiano Ronaldo, Andrew Luck, Clayton Kershaw, or LeBron James (according for Forbes the highest paid in their sports) can provide entertainment a few hours a week to millions (or billions) of people, there's value in that (and if they can use that entertainment to put advertisements in front of millions of people, there's value in that).  I don't mind it, for my part.

And some who suck because they take too much action to 'remedy' the situation. One of the problems the Cleveland Browns have is that they keep changing management and coaching about every two years. There's no consistency, from the type of players they need for how they want to accomplish things as well as the plays that the players run.

This is one upside of relegation.  You can change coaches, players, GMs even, but the billionaires who sit at the top of their teams food chain don't go anywhere, unless their team is relegated.  Sometimes, one wonders if that would either motivate some teams to shape up more aggressively, or else just clear out some of the deadwood, and get some new blood in the game.

[Kit deSummersville]

  You can change coaches, players, GMs even, but the billionaires who sit at the top of their teams food chain don't go anywhere, unless their team is relegated. 

Or they get recorded making racist rants to their mistresses.  ;)

[garhkal]

This is one upside of relegation.  You can change coaches, players, GMs even, but the billionaires who sit at the top of their teams food chain don't go anywhere, unless their team is relegated.  Sometimes, one wonders if that would either motivate some teams to shape up more aggressively, or else just clear out some of the deadwood, and get some new blood in the game.

But all too often (especially in soccer/epl) we seem to only SEE the coaches and managers being fired, when the PLAYERS are the ones sucking..

[Iron Mongoose]

Well, people are definitely capable of sucking at any level of an organization. 

If the players are sucking, then why is that?  Are they intrinsically poor players?  If so, why are they on the team?  Perhaps the coach or GM should still go first anyway, since they stocked the team with poor players, and the new coach/GM (depending on how a team's front office is structured and what terms are used) should have a chance to rebuild on their own time.  Or perhaps the players are capable, but they're not being utilized well, or trained well, in which case the coach should still go.

I think it's worse in soccer, because coaches are easy to replace, while getting new players is quite expensive, and knowing who to bring in is, in any event, a very subtle thing. 

Of course, one easy fix is just to throw giant gobs of money at the problem.  It's not foolproof, but I'd say it's got a better success rate than other solutions.

[garhkal]

The coach though is not the one doing the hiring of the playrs..  That's the owners or manager.

[Iron Mongoose]

Well, this is timely: Bruce Arena has resigned (not quit, though of course we don't know how strongly he was encouraged to leave, and how much was his own sense of responsibility). 

In a case like this, I do think a new coach is probably right, simply because on a national team it's a lot harder to just get new players.  Some countries that are more football mad, it's probably a lot easier since they've just got more depth of talent in the pool of eligible players, but I'm not aware of any stars or any hidden talents in US men's soccer (in contrast to women's soccer, where we've got plenty of players in the NWSL and around the world who have the quality to make the team, we may well have fewer than 11 really world class men, though that may just be my own biases speaking).  So, if you accept that we can't make meaningful player changes (you don't have to) and you can't really change the 'ownership' (though I do think the organization isn't particularly good in many key ways and does need to make some changes) then all you can really do is change the coach.

Now, of course, the counter point is that, especially for a team like the US which (despite two decades of World Cup qualification) is really still in need of development, changing coaches affects players and the time being able to grow and develop. How is the team to train?  How do we bring up our young players?  Are players encouraged to go to and recruited from Europe, or are they encouraged to stay in the MLS?  Of the 23 players called up for the most recent game, 15 were over 30, and only 5 were under 25, which hints that the next coach will have a lot of world to do to continue to attract and develop talent (now, a dozen or so other young players have played with the team in other games, a few in quite a few other games; why Arena picked the team he did, you'd have to ask him. Also for reference, all our opponents were under 30).  So, one might hope that we can identify a good coach and give them time and let them endure some setbacks, so long as we retain confidence in them, and let them work their magic and shape the team with their vision.

But, how common are such coaches?  Where do we find one?  Go abroad again?  Hire locally?  I don't know.