Bob, Villa, and the Future

In the "better late than never" department, my thoughts on this past weekend's news regarding Bob Bradley's interest in Aston Villa.

There's a couple of ways to look at this.  First, there's the route that a lot of major sources have taken, taking an on-the-spot quote and turning it into "news".  If those quotation marks aren't indication, let's just say that I don't exactly enjoy pieces that basically revolve around an innocuous remark, such as the all too frequent "Player X Thinks ______ " and the like.  What else did people really expect him to say when put on the spot like that in an interview?  "No, the EPL is not for me"?  Bob is a coach whose future is still very much up in the air, not to mention someone who would like to manage at the highest level, so why wouldn't he say something along the lines of "It'd be a great opportunity that I would be interested in"?  Unless Bob was completely set against taking the job, why would he shut any doors?

That was essentially my first reaction to the swarm of stories that came out over the weekend about Bradley's interest in Aston Villa.  Sure, a simple quote like that makes for great headline fodder, but the fact that the statement was made in the midst of an interview and was followed up by his informing us that Villa have yet to reach out makes me think it really was little more than a "sure, why not?" type of comment that people are reading too far into in an effort to glean some kind of clue about Bradley's future.

But I can't blame them.  After all, this is one of the closest things resembling news with regards to the USMNT head coaching position, so of course people are going to put it under a microscope.  With Sunil Gulati and company playing this one pretty close to the vest, the only other primary source of information is Bradley, and thus every single thing he says is analyzed. 

Could this be more than just a random comment, though?  Bob's reign has been marked by pensive calculation and planning, not spontaneity; could this just be yet another calculated move to address the next big challenge in his coaching career?  Could this perhaps be an effort to add a sense of urgency to whatever negotiations or discussions are going on between he and the USSF, showing Sunil Gulati that his interest in other positions might make him available for a limited time only?  We'll find out soon enough.  One thing's for sure: Bradley and Gulati will meet on Thursday to discuss the former's future (per Grant Wahl).  This meeting may have planned weeks ago, or, who knows, it may be the product of this weekend's "news" about Bradley and Villa.  Again, it's hard to say since Gulati and his colleagues have been pretty quiet since the World Cup, but I wouldn't rule either of those possibilities out completely.

At this point, all I'm hoping for is some kind of decision, and soon.  It might come this Thursday, it might come in a couple of weeks; regardless, I'm just hoping that this awkward semi-lame-duck situation doesn't carry over to October.  With the Gold Cup creeping closer and closer, I want some kind of direction for the USMNT, and I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way.

The longer we go without any real news, the more I think we're headed for a repeat of 2006-2007, where US Soccer goes with Bradley after failing to land a big name.  But I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, so those suspicions could be completely off.  I don't really care if I end up being right or wrong; I just want to know what's going to happen so that I can move forward from this topic and, more importantly, so that the USMNT can move forward towards 2007.