4 More Years

We seem to be facing four more years of Bob Bradley. The thing about making decisions is that you never get to see what the alternative might have looked like. Thus criticism comes easy from the gallery. It is easy for the rest of us to sit around and imagine consequences that will never materialize when we dislike the choice of others, because the critics shall never find their opinons tested by reality. Only Sunil Gulati faces the stern grades of reality, and given the enormous weight of being actually responsible for the future trajectory of USA soccer, he is owed as charitable a read on his decision as can be allowed.

In this vein, we owe him a thorough read on the situation as possible before judging his choice. There are a number of different factors that go into hiring a manager that need to be weighed, and I think if we’re being honest, Bob Bradley comes out of those factor as a desirable choice. Here’s a quick survey of relevant considerations:

Potential Costs:

Salary: Bob Bradley is clearly a low-cost solution. If you like getting the most out of the resources you put in (which, as a Columbia University Economist, you just might), one way to do this is to spend as little as possible on the front end to minimize the costs if things go terribly wrong or maximize the rewards if things go completely right.
Staff/Infrastructure Costs: Not only is Bob Bradley cost effective, by extension, Bob Bradley’s staff is cost effective and the infrastructure around Bob Bradley is cost effective because it does not need to change.
Risk of Leaving: The risk that something might happen two years in causing you to lose your manager and need to find another appears to be much lower with Bradley than Jurgen Klinsmann. Klinsmann is unorthodox and famous. He could get an offer he cannot refuse somewhere else. He could flip out over some issue with USA soccer and quit. He could decide he misses his cushy life as an ESPN analyst. The risk of having to make another hire midstream is too great.
Player Fatigue: There’s a question as to whether or not players will fatigue under the same regime for too long. With Bradley, it has to be said, it seems unlikely that this will set in. Bradley has shown himself to treat his players with respect as a manager, but as chess pieces on the field. This is, in my view, one of his great strengths. It particularly stands out because it seemed to be one of Bruce Arena’s great weaknesses. Arena sticks with players when they are long past it and it seemed to be one of the central disappointing factors in 2006. Most obviously, his insistence on sending Claudio Reyna out there on one leg and his refusal to choose between Bobby Convey and Demarcus Beasley at left midfield, even though Convey was clearly the more in form player. Arenas seemed incapable of owning up to this and dumping one of his guys, so he stuck Convey at left back to make room for Beasley and this ended up being a critical vulnerability that the Czech Republic used to jump to an early lead in their opening match. I don’t see Bradley making similar mistakes in his second run as manager.
Chance for Failure: The United States is at this moment not better than Mexico in terms of talent on the field and they are clearly better than everyone else in CONCACAF. This means that they are very likely to challenge for the Gold Cup title, and should qualify for the World Cup easily. We have all been witnesses to how much of a knife edge on which one’s World Cup fate truly rests. The worst scenario imaginable for the US is World Cup Qualification, Semifinals in the Gold Cup, Out of World Cup in Group Play. The difference, in short, between the worst scenario and the best scenario for the next World Cup cycle for the USA rests on the outcome of somewhere in the neighborhood of three matches. As the future is uncertain, and the ball is round, this seems like a fate that cannot be reasonably controlled.

The USA did not make a change at manager because there simply seems little reason to make one. The added investment in bringing in a manager like Klinsmann promises no real hope of improved results given the situation that the United States finds themselves in. If you could pay $10 to enter a coin-flipping tournament or $50 to enter a coin flipping tournament, where the prizes at the end were exactly the same, it would be obvious to anyone faced with this choice that the only control you have in how much money you take from the tournament is the initial choice not to waste an extra $40 for no real reason. The US is a coin flip to win the Gold Cup, and they are a coin flip to be a final 16 team in a world tournament. If you believe, as I do, that no manager can change those two facts, then the decision to retain Bob Bradley presents itself as obvious.

Written By Steven Maloney (80 Posts)

Steven Maloney is a regular contributor for Glorious Football. You can follow him on Twitter @stevenmaloney. Like Albert Camus, he fancies himself as having learned his morals "on the football pitch and in the theater." His football writing interests are in the institutional structures and strategies of world football, as well as the ways in which contemporary politics enters into the world of football and vice-versa. His most cherished memories of the game are of being in Holland for Euro 2000. In the interests of full disclosure, he supports Arsenal, the United States and DC United.