Vlatko Andonovski resigns as U.S. women’s national team manager

SYDNEY, Australia — U.S. women’s soccer team manager Vlatko Andonovski has resigned from the job, a source confirmed to The Inquirer, a week and a half after the Americans crashed out of the World Cup in the round of 16.

The move was expected from the moment the U.S. suffered its earliest ever exit from a major tournament. When Andonovski walked into his postgame news conference after falling to Sweden, he knew his time was up before anyone had to ask him about it.

Though his overall record in the job was 51-5-9, his record in major tournaments — World Cups and Olympics — was just 3-2-5. The U.S. won the bronze medal at the pandemic-affected Olympics in Tokyo two years ago.­

While the rest of the world has caught up to the U.S. program, the U.S.’ top job remains the biggest one in women’s soccer. It will be appealing to a wide range of candidates from across the world. But this World Cup brought the latest evidence that coaching a national team is very different from coaching a club team.

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Club management often is presented as a much-studied science, but national team management is much more of an art. Coaches only get a few days at a time to work with their players and a few weeks before major tournaments if the calendar allows.

And while a loud caucus of U.S. fans wants their country to play a style that pleases soccer’s elite, the vast majority cares much more about results.

Andonovski invested too much energy into forcing this U.S. World Cup team into a style that did not work for it. He also lost the courage of his convictions when he didn’t make moves to spur a win after the U.S. leveled the key group stage game against the Netherlands.

Other coaches adapted their tactics on the fly to account for injuries, suspensions, and what opponents presented — especially England’s Sarina Wiegman, Australia’s Tony Gustavsson, and Sweden’s Peter Gerhardsson, all of whom made the final four.

» READ MORE: Vlatko Andonovski liked how the U.S. played vs. the Netherlands, but not many other people did

Soccer news website 90min was first to report Andonovski’s resignation, and The Athletic was first to report that assistant coach Twila Kilgore will be promoted to the top job on an interim basis. Kilgore previously was a Houston Dash and U.S. youth team assistant and a college coach before that.

Who will get the job full time heading into next year’s Olympics? The list of high-quality potential candidates is worryingly short, in part because the NWSL’s low salaries have rendered the league unable to develop coaches as talented as its players.

OL Reign manager Laura Harvey, who was the runner-up to Andonovski when he was hired four years ago, will be an obvious candidate. The two have long been close friends, and she has worked in multiple capacities for U.S. Soccer, including as a part-time assistant to Andonovski and as a youth team head coach.

“I enjoyed my time at U.S. Soccer, that’s no doubt,” Harvey said earlier this month. “The U.S. women’s national team is probably the top job in the world, if not a top three job in the world. That’s just reality. And if my name is anywhere near it, then that’s an honor.”

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She knew she’d be in the headlines, and she didn’t shy away from it.

“First and foremost, my priority is the Reign,” Harvey said. “It is really hard to block it out, there’s no doubt about that, but I’ve lived it before. So I’ve got a little bit of experience with it.”

Harvey has been incredibly successful as a club coach, winning three NWSL regular-season titles with the Reign — including last year — and three English league titles with Arsenal from 2009-12. But she has never won it all in the playoffs, leaving her with a reputation of coming up short in big knockout games. World Cups and Olympics have a lot of those, of course.

Among names beyond U.S. shores, Gustavsson likely will get a lot of attention after helping Australia reach the nation’s first World Cup semifinal. He was Jill Ellis’ top assistant when the U.S. won the 2015 and ‘19 World Cup and is well-regarded by many players from that era.

The name at the top of the pile is Wiegman, who on Sunday will coach in her fourth major tournament final in the last six years: the 2017 Euros and 2019 World Cup with her native Netherlands and the 2022 Euros and this World Cup with England. She won both continental finals, coincidentally both on home soil, with the latter delivering England its first major soccer title of any kind since 1966.

» READ MORE: England spoils co-hosts Australia’s party, advances to first women’s World Cup final

Though Wiegman has never coached in the United States, she knows the country amply well. She played college soccer at the University of North Carolina in 1989, and her current England squad has three former Tar Heels: defender Lucy Bronze, midfielder Lotte Wubben-Moy, and forward Alessia Russo.

“For me at that moment, that was life-changing,” Wiegman said this week of her time at Carolina. “So I took that back to the Netherlands and it changed me. And I just always hoped that at the moment that we could [have] an environment like what we had at that time at UNC.”

England’s emphatic win over co-host Australia on Wednesday showed she has definitely built that environment with the Lionesses. It’s the kind of environment the U.S. has long had, too. But the odds of Wiegman being able to sustain it on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean are reduced by her being under contract with England through 2025.

It’s also notable that while she is England’s coach, she still lives in the Netherlands with her family and commutes to England to do her work. That wouldn’t work for the U.S. job.

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Lots of Americans would encourage the U.S. Soccer Federation to go after Wiegman anyway and spend what it takes to get her. No matter who gets the job, money is unlikely to be an issue, so why not shoot for the highest target?

But we don’t know who or what USSF sporting director Matt Crocker wants. He was hired because his background includes women’s and men’s soccer, including a stint with England’s governing body, where he oversaw youth development. That work planted the seeds for the Lionessess’ current success.

Will he go for a pragmatist or an idealist? Will he keep general manager Kate Markgraf or end her four-year tenure where U.S. youth teams have had historically poor results? A full-scale house-cleaning would see her go.

And how much input will players have in it all? That was a big factor in Crocker’s biggest decision so far, restoring Gregg Berhalter as U.S. men’s team manager. Many U.S. players liked Andonovski’s warmth, selflessness, and tactical mind. But they knew as well as anyone that he didn’t get the job done when it mattered most.

As Crocker hasn’t done much in public yet, we don’t know if he’ll treat the women’s team the same way he did the men.

We do know, though, that the clock is running. And it’s on him right now to get moving with it.

Staff writer Maria McIlwain contributed to this report.

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