The 5 Choicest Snippets from the Gulati/Bradley Presser

"Some day, Bob, all this will be someone else's."

Though none of us could be present for the epic summit between Brad and Angelina Sunil Gulati and Bob Bradley, US Soccer was kind enough to furnish the internet with a transcript of their chat with the assembled media.

In it, there are lots of good nuggets for us to run rampant with, and in the spirit of such speculation, I thought it’d be a fun exercise to pull out some of Gulati’s words and Bradley’s HUUUUHHHHH for such games.

Seriously, folks. The amount of double-speak is f**king amazing.

QUOTE #1: Sunil Gulati, on the crucial factor in bringing Huh Bob back:
“What was the most decisive factor was experience, the record over the last four years, in games that mattered especially. We had to weigh that against something that Bob and I had spent a lot of time talking about, which is this issue of eight years and whether things might get stale. We’re familiar with the statistics about first and second cycles for coaches. I’ll leave aside any statistical biases in those, but in the end, I came to the conclusion that the experience and the record, the work over the last four years, overcame any issues about staleness, that we could overcome that.”

He’s familiar with the stats about coaches and their cycles—something commenter Ryan alluded to yesterday—and yet felt Bradley was not stale in the position. Also funny that Sunil’s discussing statistics, something he probably does a lot at his other job.

QUOTE #2: Sunil Gulati, on Klinsmann:
“We’re here to talk about Bob’s appointment as national team coach. I’m not going to talk about any conversations that we may or may not have had with any other candidate. We are going to talk strictly about our national team coach. We’ve discussed the reasons we re-appointed Bob. That’s all we’re going to be talking about today.”

Translation: Klinsmann was never really under serious consideration.

QUOTE #3: Sunil Gulati, on having an American coach:
“Do I think there are some natural advantages to having a coach who understands the American system? The answer is yes. That does not mean there aren’t also advantages to having a coach who has coached in the Premier League, or Serie A or two World Cups or whatever else it might be. Different candidates bring different attributes. I don’t think there’s any doubt that having knowledge of the American setup is a plus. I said that four years ago and I think that’s the case now. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t consider an international coach, it just means they’d have a different set of strengths. In this particular area it would likely be a weakness since they would not have the same experience here [in the United States].”

All those hoping to see a Hiddink or a Hitzfeld being lured to the US? Forget it. Seems like Sunil likes the concepts put forth by some managers about national identity, and using coaches from those countries who have a knowledge of the culture, the landscapes, the lay of the land, etc. I opined a while back in an early pod that I thought an MLS coach deserves a shot after Bradley: Kinnear, Schmid, Nicol even. Why not?

Ultimately for Gulati, he wants a guy who knows the American soccer scene. Perhaps he fears a scenario like Ruud Gullit at the LA Galaxy, and the comedy of errors that followed.

QUOTE #4: Bob Bradley, on the USMNT moving forward:
“When you begin a cycle, you do an overall assessment; you take inventory with your team. There are players, depending on their ages, who decide for themselves their international careers are over and discussions take place as to what it looks like as we move through the next phase. Most important is identifying players, beginning the process of bringing those players into national team camps, and looking for opportunities to get them into games. I really believe strongly our staff did an excellent job of that in the last cycle. We will try to do a better job as we begin this cycle.”

I think he did well in identifying players like Herculez Gomez and Jose Francisco Torres, neither of whom showered themselves in glory at the World Cup yet who could blossom into quality USMNT players if given time to develop. Whatever your thoughts, it at least showed a willingness to branch out a little, not to mention the inclusion of Clarence Goodson and the emergence of Alejandro Bedoya on the bubble.

The biggest problem for Bob is identifying these players quicker. Goodson could be a great international CB, except he’s already 28 years old. As a guy who was grandfathered into this role from his previous job as coach of the USMNT U-23s, you’d expect him to have more of a finger on the pulse of the emerging youth talent.

If anything, his job should be made easier by those players currently getting around Europe. Jermaine Jones will be healthy eventually, and Altidore’s growth will continue in Spain (one hopes) while Stuart Holden has been Bolton’s best player so far this season. That said, he must avoid reverting to form. Two words: Ricardo Clark.

QUOTE 5: Bob Bradley, on the strength of US youth players/player development:
“To have a chance to go further in tournaments and to try to be a top team in the world, you of course take the group you have and make sure there is competition, that you’re playing good teams. You do all those things, but at the same time we must work with MLS, with our Under-20s, U-18s and U-17s, to get the sense that what we need to continue to do to raise the bar for our players. That is an incredibly important part going forward. We’ve started a lot of good things, but to continue to make sure that our efforts are united and that we’re aware of how to do things better so we give ourselves that kind of chance going forward. Those are the kind of efforts and discussions that are ongoing and will be very important for the future of our national team.”

Better hurry up, Bob. Landon Donovan turns 29 next year. In all seriousness, this sounds like a Cliffs Notes version of the things Jurgen Klinsmann said on ESPN in the wake of the Ghana defeat. He acknowledges the same basic problem—creating a unified, coherent pipeline to keep players shuttling up from the youth ranks into the national team setup—but it’s another thing entirely to solve the problem quickly and incisively.

In his favor, you can argue that several prominent teams are struggling with the same basic issue; England and France could both do with a more coherent youth structure (though the French have a leg-up when you consider that their U-21 and U-19 teams have so many stars that will be impossible to ignore by 2012 and beyond), and they’re not the only ones.