Firstly nothing I'm saying here should take away from the fact that the game last night was awesome and our team is awesome and I'm still buzzing about it. I can still hold the joy from that on the one hand, while looking forward on the other hand.
For what it's worth, I buy the explanation or at least that this is what they honestly think they're doing. One thing that seems to be a noticeable difference between old-school USSF and the current version to me (not sure how much this keys off Cone or off Batson) is their belief in real corporate management styles and the gibberish that comes along with it (Gregg was a leading indicator on this one, no coincidence that he got into trouble at a lame seeming management conference). Batson oozes this, Crocker oozes this, it's a big part of Gregg's whole thing. I can pretty comfortably believe that delegating the Gold Cup to a trusted subordinate in order to focus on higher level strategic planning and hiring is a thing that they genuinely think will benefit the cycle overall. Whether you buy it, I leave as an exercise to the reader.I certainly won't know until we see results from it, but I don't think they're insincere about it.
Gooch did his best selling it, but you can for sure tell he has more experience in a back 4 than in middle management.
I got nothing against strategic planning, that's a non-trivial portion of my own day job. But a coach's primary job is to
coach. He gets to really coach maybe 2-3 times per year, and the rest of the time can be spent on whatever tasks seem best to him and his senior leadership. What "high-level strategic planning" could possibly be so urgent that it can't be postponed by 3-4 weeks to let him coach the Gold Cup, and needs to pull him away from that primary job? Shit, I could argue that coaching the GC will help add information necessary for that high-level strategic planning, impressions that can only be obtained by in-person observation.
Maybe they're not being insincere, but if not then it feels both dumb and a missed opportunity - a USSF calling card. I'm frankly giving them more credit by assuming it's a ruse.
Take a look at the Gold Cup roster.
That's why Gregg isn't coaching. Having the team look the best it has in decades under interim managers then Gregg returning to crash out of the gold cup would look bad
I'm
looking at it, and if you assume that the guys who are pulling 2-tournament double duty (Turner, Miles and Zendejas) are actually available, we can run out a lineup of:
Cowell - Ferreira/Vazquez - Zendejas
Mihailovic - A. Morris/Busio - Roldan/Sońora
Tolkin/Jones - Long/Neal - Miles - Yedlin/Reynolds
Turner
That is decidedly a B-team, but it involves 4-5 guys playing at a higher-than-MLS level (Turner, Reynolds?, Mihailovic, Soñora, Zendejas) and a few who have spent considerable time at such (Yedlin, Sands, Miazga). It's not some joke of a roster like El Cashico was. I will enjoy the hell out of watching that roster and seeing who can stand out. Unless Canada runs it back with their A-team, really only Mexico should be favored against us (they're running it back with
their A-team), and only a handful of other teams would be close to parity with us. There's no reason we shouldn't make the final, and could very well win it.
So yeah, call me unpersuaded that the US couldn't win with this B-team. We did two years ago, with a roster no more impressive than this. I don't think they're just trying to save Berhalter from embarrassment.