Crocker Goes Full Saudi, Inter Miami Gets Dramatic

First, I think I need to make a quick apology for how sporadic Soccer Eagle has been over the last week. My 5-year-0ld brought home preschool cold germs, the most insidious of all the cold germs, and I've been slowly trying to work my way out of a succession of symptoms. The lack of a post Friday and the tardiness of your Tuesday drop is all down to this bastard of a bug.

Even now I'm writing through a brain fog that means I shouldn't be held responsible for anything contained in this edition. I'm pretty sure the stories I'm about to dispense upon actually a happened, but there's always a chance they're NyQuil-induced hallucinations.

We sally forth!

Jetty Crocker: US Soccer Sporting Director Bounces For Big Money

Recent Best Soccer Show guest Doug McIntyre dropped the first of two big Tuesday bombs with his report that US Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker is leaving the federation for a job with Saudi Arabia two months before the World Cup.

The timing seems mildly disrespectful to the federation Crocker has led on the sporting side for three years, but with the World Cup so close, the Welshman's role in preparing US Soccer for the tournament has mostly run its course. Mauricio Pochettino and the players are now fully in control of how successful the World Cup is for the USMNT on the field. Crocker is a lame duck, though his final grade can't be handed down until—and is extremely dependent upon—the stage at which the US's exit the summer's big event.

If the Saudi's are offering big money (Saudi Arabia will host the World Cup in 2034) and Crocker isn't locked into helping American soccer because of a national loyalty to American soccer, then I wish him good luck on his new endeavor.

Crocker did some good things: He helped recruit Emma Hayes and Mauricio Pochettino, he played a big role in the design of the new national training in Atlanta, he tackled the immense and intractable problem of entrenched problematic structures in the youth game (but didn't solve it, because duh), and he just generally tried to make American soccer better. I'm not going to ding the man unnecessarily for failing to tame Cerberus. He took on a hell of a job and should be able to leave with his head held high.

The one beef I have with Crocker is that he let himself be led around by the tail back in 2023 when the Fed decided to rehire Gregg Berhalter as USMNT head coach. Crocker took ownership of the choice at the time and went in-depth in describing the rigorous process used to narrow down a double-digit-sized list of candidates only to land again on the guy who had led a young USMNT to an okay 2022 World Cup performance that was famously marred by the fallout around Giovani Reyna's behavoir in Qatar.

Here's what Crocker said in the aftermath of Gregg's return in a story by Paul Tenorio at The Athletic:

“Everything from psychometrics (the science of measuring mental capacities) to abstract reasoning tests, logical thinking, to tests where candidates had the opportunity to prepare for certain elements around strategy and what they would do, how they would evolve the team, and then certain tests where they just literally had to deliver under pressure on that moment in time,” Crocker said. “It gave us an opportunity to get real rich data, and then it took us a period of time to sit down and effectively tune all of these numbers, but what I’m delighted to say is on every step of the way, Gregg scored phenomenally and we’re really excited to have him here.”

What we know now is that Jesse Marsch thought he was close enough to getting the job that he turned down an offer at Leicester. Whether Crocker was really that enamored with Berhalter or if there was internal pressure to reinstall Gregg (maybe because of the Reyna accusations and fallout) is not clear. I thought at the time that giving Berhalter another cycle was a bad idea and take no joy in the fact that only a year after showering Gregg with praise Crocker fired him as head coach.

And so the Crocker era is over. The big question is whether the Fed will look outward for a replacement or stick with one of the in-house candidate. Per McIntyre, assistant sporting director Oguchi Onyeau, head of women's head of women's development Tracey Kevins and USSF's COO, Dan Helfrich, will assume Crocker's duties in the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

A soccer reporter friend of my pondered that a host of famous names might angle for the job. I wonder if the cast of ex-US internationals currently making loud noises with their mouths on how every aspect of American soccer is broken really want a job as demanding and thankless as the one Matt Crocker was doing.

Messi & Friends Gets A Little More Messy

How about this for an out-of-the-blue lightning bolt of a shock on a Tuesday afternoon?

At first glance, especially when the news hit socials through Tom Bogert, it appeared like Inter Miami had made the shocking decision to fire their MLS Cup-winning coach just seven games into their title defense season.

Sure Inter is going through a post-Barca boys adjustment period, but they've not been nearly bad enough to justify sacking their manager.

The space of time between Bogert's bomb and the above press release hitting inboxes was just long enough to allow for a mote of speculation about why Mascherano got the axe.

According the release, however, the Argentine made the decision to depart of his own free will. If you're as tempted to be suspicious of that framing as I was, here's Apple TV's Michele Giannone backing up the team's narrative with his own reporting:

Wow. Successful coaches just don't just up and skip out on their teams seven games into a season. As tantalizing as it is to speculate about what led to Mascherano's decision, he has a right to privacy and it would be inappropriate to make wild guesses.

There are plenty of jokes out there about the power structures in Miami. Ones about Messi serving as de facto coach and Mascherano being little more than a figure head who takes orders from his former teammate. While I certainly believe Messi has a massive influence on how Miami plays, I don't doubt that Mascherano made the big decisions that a healthy amount of last year's title run is down to the work he did as coach.

Guillermo Hoyos takes over as first team head coach for the moment. You can bet that Jorge Mas is already making calls to find Inter Miami a proper big name manager that can lead the club through the remainder of the club's title defense season and first season in that glittering palace on the western edge of Miami.

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