Brian McBride, the general manager of the USMNT, is out, per sources. No exact reason has been given. The casual assumption is it had something to do with the drama that came to light after the U.S. was ousted from the World Cup.
Being the GM of a national team is unlike the role GMs play for club teams, and outside of finding more players with enough ties to America to put on the stars and stripes, it’s unclear what McBride could’ve done differently to retain his position.
However, it’s on the GM to hire a coach, and the performance of the coach can dictate the future of the GM. Normally, a GM can survive a poor coaching hire, or at least outlast it.
Yet it seems like McBride is out because of the situation with Gregg Berhalter and the Reyna family. McBride wasn’t the one who allegedly tried to blackmail coach Berhalter though, and decisions about playing time fall to the coach. Berhalter’s future is still in flux steam officials are reviewing the incident. That said, I’ll venture a guess that had he not been the alleged victim of a plot to keep secret details of a decades-old domestic violence dispute due to a lack of playing time for Gio Reyna, Behalter would’ve already been let go.
Sources have indicated that the likelihood of Berhalter returning is low, and the news of McBride’s dismissal isn’t a good omen for the coach. A complete overhaul of the USMNT’s infrastructure is less than ideal, but if there was ever a time to do it, it’s at the beginning of a World Cup cycle.
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The next WC is set for North America, which means an automatic bid for the U.S., and less stress for the people who succeed McBride and probably Berhalter. Hopefully, that will help temper the shit show, but pretty much anything would be an improvement at this point.
