Some quotes from Sunil Gulati. The entire quote sheet will be up on US Soccer's web site later in the day but for now here are a couple of quotes that I'll put up on here.
On the review process:
We weighed up everything that took place principally in the last 45 days… and partially over the last couple of years. The highlight of those two years of effort and training and preparation is the last 30 days in China.
I’m not going to point to any one fact or any one individual decision. Obviously coaching decisions impact games and all of that was weighed in but I’m not going to try and put a percentage on any particular result or decision.
On hiring a woman:
Obviously we have the national team led by April Heinrichs for a number of years and prior to that we’ve only had men coaches. We will certainly be talking in the next two to three weeks with some female candidates but we’ll have the best coach we can for the national team. If that’s a woman, that would be terrific.
On the different levels of expectations between the men’s and women’s teams:
We do bring a different level of expectations and standard to the women’s program. My guess is that if we would have gotten to the World Cup final in Germany, aside from the immediate disappointment, we would have said ‘Wow. That was pretty terrific.’ Whereas in our women’s program because of the excellence that group has achieved over time, the expectations are much higher and frankly the players and our fans and everyone else knows that we’re not going to win every game but the expectation is that we’re going to be competing for a gold medal virtually every time we’re in a competition.
On Greg Ryan’s 45-1-9 record:
Greg’s record over the last two years is very good in terms of the winning percentages it’s probably the best we’ve had. All of our coaches because of the dominant status of our team obviously have very high percentages but even within that, Greg’s has been very, very good including against top-level teams.
The end of the process, which is the Beijing part of it and those 30 days there for a number of different reasons, it’s not just about one result obviously it’s the only loss Greg has had depending on how we view penalty-kick competitions in tournaments but I think we also were concerned about some of the performance in games we may have won or tied as well as the overall assessment of the program was and based on all of that we came to a decision that we wanted to make a change.
4 comments:
For reasons evident in my prior posts on this issue this particular quote was a reassuring one to see:
On whether Hope Solo will still be considered for the U.S. Women’s National Team:
SG: “Regarding Hope, the answer is, ‘Yes.’ Hope is not suspended from the team. Hope would be invited to the Residency Program next year. Any further discussions or decisions about Hope would be up to the new head coach, but there is not an issue with the Federation in any way, shape or form about her participation. I have talked with her. Dan has talked with her. So, from our perspective, she is absolutely eligible to play for the U.S. team.”
Looks like Solo won the war. Will we ever hear from Greg Ryan again....?
It will be interesting to see how the so-called team leaders react now that they have basically been called out. Maybe now that gutless bunch have enough rationale to "forgive" Hope.
John
FC Uptown, Solo hasn't won anything yet. The commanding field general was just removed.
There's no guarantee that the next person in charge won't be allied with the team leaders who sanctioned her exile. And, we have to remember that Ms. Wambach is "the team" right now. If she and Solo can't play nice, I think Solo will still be the odd one out.
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