The U.S. men’s team coaching search will definitely be international, not just domestic, sources say

The notion has gone around on social media that U.S. Soccer is only looking at domestic candidates, and lacks ambition to go higher. Multiple sources have told The Inquirer that's flat-out false.

U.S. Soccer Federation sporting director Matt Crocker was with the U.S. women's team before continuing the search for the men's team's next manager.Read moreJonathan Tannenwald / Staff

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published July 13, 2024, 9:49 p.m. ET

HARRISON, N.J. — These days, there’s a pack of U.S. men’s soccer team fans that’s as loud on social media as a routine caller on WIP. And when they start to believe something? It takes off like a rocket and doesn’t slow down.

This has happened in recent days as the search continues for the manager to follow Gregg Berhalter, who was fired after his team’s disastrous flop at the Copa América.

Los Angeles FC manager Steve Cherundolo certainly is a candidate for the job and should be, given his track record as a player and coach. But because he didn’t give a firm enough answer for popular tastes when asked about the U.S. job after his last game on Wednesday, fans started assuming he’d already been given it.

He hasn’t been, and no one has. Just as significant, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the search process have said it won’t include just domestic candidates and won’t give just a token nod to international candidates.

No, those sources insisted — pretty strongly, in one case — that U.S. Soccer is serious about looking abroad.

We won’t know the result until a hire is made, and we likely won’t hear much from anyone at the governing body until then. If the choice proves underwhelming, sporting director Matt Crocker and the rest of U.S. Soccer’s brass will get an earful.

But while the No. 1 available candidate worldwide — superstar former Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp — already has said no, it was made pretty clear that Crocker plans to give serious credence to hiring from abroad.

When Berhalter’s firing was announced Wednesday, Crocker met with a few reporters, and one quote in particular from him stands out.

“I’m 12 months into the program now,” he said. “I’m in a better place to have much more of a targeted search, where I’ll be more inclined to go hard and go early with specific candidates that I feel meet the criteria that we’re looking for.”

Since then, Crocker’s only public appearances have come at the U.S. women’s national team’s game last Saturday and at the team’s practice the day before.

Going “hard” likely will involve U.S. Soccer’s writing a big check. That brings up another falsehood that some fans have been peddling: that women’s team manager Emma Hayes automatically would get a raise to match whatever the new men’s manager gets.

When Hayes was hired, the idea was that her salary would match Berhalter’s, making her the highest-paid manager in the women’s soccer world. But there was never a guarantee that she would automatically match Berhalter’s successor.

Again, we won’t be able to make a final judgment on the men’s team’s hiring process until it’s over. Crocker has said he wants it done before the next games, a set of friendlies in September. We’ll see if he achieves that goal.

(One of the games is against Canada, whose new manager, Jesse Marsch, was a candidate for the U.S. job a year ago. He has strongly criticized U.S. Soccer in recent days, and it’s worth remembering that while Crocker thought highly of him, many U.S. players strongly wanted Berhalter back instead.)

For now, the key point is this: If someone says U.S. Soccer is looking only for domestic-based coaches, that’s false. They’re looking abroad, and seriously, and now we just have to wait to see what the result is.