Neil W. Blackmon
US Soccer continues to fill its various coaching vacancies, with both the men’s and women’s U-20 teams the latest positions to be crossed off the list.
First, Laura Harvey was named head coach of the U20 Women’s National team on Monday.
The decision to name Harvey as manager of a critical US Women’s development team was, at least at first glance, and understandable one. Harvey is widely-admired in soccer circles as a smart tactician and in the main, beloved by her players. She also has a championship pedigree, having captured the Women’s League title and FA Cup with Arsenal in 2011 and having won two NWSL Shields- and NWSL Coach of the Year honors- while managing the Seattle Reign from 2013-2017.
There are certainly nuanced, deeper criticisms of the Harvey hire; I’m not wild about appointing a coach with no experience in and a history of dismissive remarks about college soccer, for example. But those criticisms can wait for another column and at bottom, hiring Harvey, at one time a star in the profession, still generates some positive column bullet points. On paper, even if it isn’t a perfect fit, the argument can be advanced that Harvey is a suitable and justifiable appointment of a coach who understands first division success on both sides of the pond.
Wednesday’s announcement that Anthony Hudson has been hired to lead the US Men’s U-20 tam has very little in the way of justifiable qualities.
It’s a bizarre appointment of a coach with very little connection to American development whose most recent job ended in very quick failure in this country’s top domestic league.
US Soccer’s release applauds Hudson’s efforts with the New Zealand national team (who failed to qualify for the World Cup) and Bahrain, where his main claim to fame was scoring zero goals and finishing third thanks to the drawing of lots at the WAFF championship.
Still, those are hardly the largest red flags.
Hudson’s most recent job, as head coach of the Colorado Rapids, was a spectacular failure.
Among coaches who managed over 30 MLS games, Hudson ranks dead last in points earned per game:
1. Anthony Hudson (8-26-9), 0.767
2. Aron Winter (7-22-15), 0.818
3. John Ellinger (15-37-16), 0.897
4. Mo Johnston (10-20-15), 1.000
5. Alfonso Mondelo (15-29-3), 1.021
Worse, Hudson’s response to all that losing wasn’t to demonstrate humility and accountability, both important characteristics to possess while coaching a team. Instead, Hudson blamed everything else: the western conference, ownership, the players.
Things Anthony Hudson publicly blamed for his failures in Colorado:
— Will Parchman (@WillParchman) January 7, 2020
– His own players, directly
– Lack of effort
– Lack of ability
– Lack of front office ambition
– Lack of DPs
Neat. Can’t wait.
“We are fighting down the bottom with a bottom group of players and we have to find a way to pick up results whilst also being a team that tries to play a certain way. And we just have to find that balance,” Hudson said after one particularly frustrating defeat.
A bottom group of players. Wow. Imagine being 8 for 42 and talking about your guys that way.
Isn’t it the manager’s job to tactically put a team with limited technical talent in a position to succeed? Look, no one is going to accuse Stan Kroenke and the Rapids ownership group of being big spenders or even good custodians, but the reality is the Rapids improved er… rapidly when Hudson was dismissed under the likes of Conor Casey and Robin Fraser. This is not coincidence.
Still, Earnie Stewart touted the hire, citing Hudson’s “experience in the international game and at the club level” and suggesting those “make him a great choice to continue that success.”
With all due respect to Earnie Stewart, no- this is not a great choice.
A better choice would be to hire someone that didn’t want to move to Chicago but was willing to do extended camps and tournaments wherever duty called. Or to retain Tab Ramos, the wildly successful coach of the last four US U-20 cycles, which featured three consecutive U-20 World Cup appearances.
Ramos’s teams have already aided in the production of players who are changing the face of the US senior team culture: players like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Paul Arriola and Zack Steffen, among others.
The truth is U-20 international coaches are just roadside detours on the trajectory of these players careers, at least until the big global tournaments that showcase their talent to a huge number of scouting networks. Otherwise, the coaching staffs simply don’t spend enough time with these players to truly alter the trajectory of their development, or at least the sample sizes are small enough to limit helpful or harmful impact too much in either direction.
But good coaching matters always. Good tactical approaches to soccer- and football ideas- matter always. Players learn tactics and culture from the coaches they are around, and the more good ideas they receive, from both club and international coaches, the more well-rounded they become and more expansive their games can become.
Ramos was a strong tactical coach, who had an established system and traditionally put his players in a position to succeed. He also understood player management and the political and broader developmental picture as it related to US Soccer.
For example, Ramos championed increasing access to different communities and access points in US Soccer. Ramos urged reform to make sure US Soccer cast a wider net in Latino communities and partnered with state federations to increase structured programs in underserved, working class areas. These ideas, if fully embraced, would have borne fruit and Ramos knew that because he was intimately familiar with that cultural piece of US Soccer. As US Soccer moves forward from Couva, that’s a box any US coach should check.
Hiring Hudson does not check that box, or a system or tactical one.
Instead, it feels like a panic hire intended simply to put a warm body in place ahead of a US training camp to help prepare the players for the CONCACAF U-20 Championship, held this summer.
Maybe time will prove me wrong. Maybe the US will power through a group with Jamaica and Costa Rica and look brilliant in winning a third consecutive U-20 CONCACAF title.
If that happens, it will buck Hudson’s history, which at best is a colossally uninspiring monument to mediocrity at a time US Soccer should be thinking boldly and bravely.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.