Michael Stein

Rough start to the season for A&M. Most of Texags is already ready to fire their coach in Year 1. Very similar to the Rant :lol:

That’s the best half we’ve played in a long time. Some outstanding sequences of play. We passed around the Jamaicans like they were barely there most of the time.

Interesting to see Jedi pushed so high up and inverted when we have possession, but it worked great. I’m excited to see what Poch will do when we finally have the full arsenal of players to work with.

Jamaica look like they have no interest in playing. They have a solid team on paper, but it just rarely comes together. They might still qualify for this World Cup by default.

I would expect Josh Sargent to start up top tonight. He’s the kind of hard-working, physical #9 needed to implement Pochettino’s ideal high-pressing system.

Interested to see who we’ll start in goal and if Tim Ream is one of the center backs.

A lot of people were speculating the Pulisic might come off the bench tonight instead of starting, because Poch seemed to imply he was a bit tired coming in from Milan. We’ll see.

Excited to finally begin this new era!

Alexi grew up in suburban Detroit (same town as Tim Allen), which can be a pretty conservative area compared to the city itself.

Alexi has kind of become the US Soccer version of Stephen A. Smith over the last 10 years or so. He enjoys attention, even if it means pissing people off or spitting outlandish hot takes he doesn’t really believe. Every once in a while, I think the genuine Alexi shines through, and I really like that version of him when he isn’t playing a character on TV.

I’ve seen interviews of him from 1993 before the ‘94 World Cup, and he seems like a super chill guy that would be a blast to hang out with.

I’m still kinda shocked he’s posting this so publicly, given the general political affiliation of soccer fans and pundits in this country. :lol: This board of course has far more conservative posters, because TigerDroppings mostly has users from the Southeast. It’s fair to say that hardcore American soccer fans generally skew more left politically, and the far-left portion of the fanbase is extremely outspoken and visible to the point where the USSF and MLS feel the need to pander to them, which is off-putting to the people we want to attract to grow the sport.

I used to be a pretty active poster in the MLS subreddit until the summer of 2020, when it became incredibly toxic and almost indistinguishable from an ANTIFA subreddit. I got my account flagged for arguing with some Sounders fan that Ben Shapiro isn’t a Nazi and using that word so loosely is dangerous and stupid. That experience really soured me to participating further in that community.

The can be unaccountable to an extent within the Soccer House amongst themselves, but as fans we can hold them accountable with our wallets and support. There was a ton of turnover after the failure in Couva, although sadly the replacements haven’t been much better than Sunil’s crew.

If they make a lazy hire and frick up our chance to make an impactful run in 2026, I think the outrage from the diehard fans and some of the media would be 10x what we saw this week with Gregg. I would have a hard time getting invested ever again. Let’s hope they make a good hire that gives us no reason to be upset at anyone but the players if 2026 doesn’t go the way we want.

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Deere has gone the way of Landon Donovan in terms of the national team they support.

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I thought you were joking. Didn’t realize John Deere is actually shifting production to Mexico. :casty:

Hopefully, they’re just feeding us Cherundolo as a smokescreen or last-ditch fallback option while we continue to talk with better candidates. That would be an epic disappointment.

Supposedly we’ve been in talks with Herve Renard’s people, and both Egypt and Nigeria are also looking at him. One huge advantage we would have over them is that our spot in the World Cup is guaranteed, while the African qualifying system is brutal (and it used to be even worse). Egypt is on track to qualify currently, but Nigeria are in big trouble.

He can have an entire fleet of tractors, if that’s what he wants. John Deere, hook this man up. :lol:

Another example of why I hate short corners so much. They’re easier to defend, and more likely to result in an offside or a counterattack the other way. Even at the pro level, for every one short corner that results in a dangerous delivery, there are about 8 like that. Just serve it in from the corner.

This is a good sign. If they were looking to keep Gregg, they’d probably just go radio silent. That this leaked out means Gregg is probably gone. Similar timeline to Vlatko.

Fox specifically said the announcement should be expected by the middle of next week.

This is why I’m generally a believer in only one cycle for national team managers. There are exceptions like Spain, Germany, the USWNT, etc., but generally it rarely works out to keep the same manager for more than 4 years. Things get stale, and players get too comfortable with their spots.

We had some good moments under JK, and were especially good in 2013, but starting in 2015 he started making some baffling tactical decisions and we spiraled in 2016. It was time to move on.

We had a few fleeting good moments under Gregg, and the players seem to like him, but we haven’t shown any progress since Qatar. He’s clearly not the right guy to lead us into the World Cup, and the team needs a shake up.