Brian McBride talks MLS Cup final, Jordan Morris and USMNT
Brian McBride, former Columbus Crew, Fulham and USMNT star discusses the MLS Cup final, Jordan Morris and the state of the USMNT.
The MLS Cup final presents an interesting matchup between two teams that on the surface look much alike, and yet on the pitch are likely to look very different. Toronto FC and the Seattle Sounders are two of MLS’s most well-supported clubs, and both sets of fans harbor the disappointment of years worth of near-misses heading into their first finals.
But they come into the match on the back of very different seasons — Toronto mostly strolled through the regular season and have averaged over three goals a game in the playoffs. Seattle, meanwhile, just about clawed their way into the postseason and have won four of their five playoff games by a single goal.
Ahead of the match, I had a chance to talk to Brian McBride, formerly of the Columbus Crew, Chicago Fire and Fulham, and owner of 95 caps for the USMNT, who in the buildup to the final participated in an Allstate community soccer event in Seattle held in tandem with the US Soccer Foundation’s Passback program and designed to collect and distribute soccer equipment to underserved communities around the country.
“It’s something I’ve been very fortunate and blessed to be a part of,” McBride said of the program. There’s over 1300 donations that we’ve collected throughout the year. Allstate also donated 1100 uniforms and also 4100 soccer balls, which has benefitted a lot of the soccer programs around the US. It’s been a lot of fun. A unique way Allstate makes sure they give back, the outreach and the grass roots community. And then for me, I also get to be a part of the community events. Today we’re going to be in Seattle and we’ll go out and do a little clinic, have some fun and get an underserved community some new equipment.”
As for the final, McBride is looking forward to an open contest, but suggests we’re unlikely to see another game like Toronto’s extraordinary 5-2 win over Montreal in the Eastern Conference finals. “I think it’s going to be a good soccer game,” he said. “They’re good teams that both like to play pretty open soccer. Certainly I don’t think you’ll see a game like the one in Dallas or the one in Toronto in the sense that it’s going to be very defensive. I don’t think it’s going to be a wide open game either. This is the final … all the time for both sides to prepare it probably won’t be as open as you’d expect if it was during the regular season.
The key to the game is no real secret given Toronto boast, with all due respect to new MLS MVP David Villa, the league’s best player in Sebastian Giovinco.
“The biggest thing for me is going to be whether or not Seattle is able to not allow balls into the feet of Giovinco and Jozy [Altidore],” McBride said. “And I know that [Ozzie] Alonso is a very good player, one of the best defensive midfielders in the league, but it’s a lot to ask. Him and [Roman] Torres and [Chad] Marshall, if they’re able to shut those two down I think Seattle has a great opportunity to do this with [Nicolas] Lodeiro and Jordan Morris. But for me, if I had to pick, it would be Toronto just nicking it.”
In less than half a season with the Sounders, Lodeiro has shown enough to suggest he could become Seattle’s own Giovinco. The playmaker, bought from Boca Juniors in July, was decisive in turning Seattle’s regular season around — they were in ninth place in the East after Lodeiro’s first match, a 1-1 draw with the LA Galaxy on July 31 — and has been arguably their best player in the playoffs.
But the spotlight may be shining even brighter on Jordan Morris, the 22-year-old MLS Rookie of the Year, who has improved steadily over the course of his debut season and stepped up impressively after Clint Dempsey’s year was ended with an irregular heartbeat. McBride has liked what he’s seen from the forward so far.
“It’s great to see his growth and I think he’s going to continue to grow. I think the fear was when he decided to stay in Seattle and MLS, he was going to take the easy route. But you can see that’s not the case,” McBride said. “He’s very motivated, he has continued to get better throughout the season, so I’m really excited for him. It shows that he understands that it’s not just about scoring goals and being there for your teammates. It’s also about understanding the game and learning the game, dealing with the ups and the downs and being very focused on that and I think that shows a lot of maturity so far this year and I don’t expect that to change.”
The MLS Cup playoffs have been fascinating so far, and the final has the makings of an excellent match, but the drama of the postseason was put to the side last month as the US soccer community reacted to the firing of USMNT manager Jurgen Klinsmann.
The decision was well received on the whole, certainly among the majority of MLS writers, and while McBride thinks Klinsmann improved the program in certain areas, he highlighted what appeared to be a disconnect between manager and players.
“As far as the change, I said this on ESPNFC … [US Soccer President] Sunil Gulati and [US Soccer CEO/Secretary General] Dan Flynn felt afterwards in the questions they asked the players, the questions they asked Jurgen … if they didn’t mesh, if they weren’t sort of on the same page I think there was a bigger issue. And I don’t know if that happened, but that’s the way I would look at it. It’s never great if anyone loses their job but it was a difficult spot for US soccer to be in.
But while the decision itself was hard to argue after an extremely poor start to the Hex, does Klinsmann leave any sort of positive legacy?
“I think his legacy is going to be more about the infrastructure he built,” McBride said. “He moved the behind the scenes needle a lot more than on the field as far as consistency … The improvement I’m talking about is more the amenities. The US national team having every bit of what a top class club would have, whether that’s the medical side of things, the physical training and sort of an infrastructure that is always there rather than depending on what city you go into, whether you have those things available or not. The consistency for players when they go into camps, for them to know what kind of facilities and what kind of surroundings you’re going to have. I think Jurgen was good at implementing and making sure the players have all that. And it doesn’t sound like a lot, but I can tell you it is. It’s a big deal.”
To take the team forward, US Soccer decided to look back, hiring Bruce Arena, who previously served as manager from 1998-2006, to replace Klinsmann. McBride played under Arena during two World Cups and is optimistic his matter-of-fact approach will have a positive impact on a team that seemed to lack direction in the final phase of Klinsmann’s tenure.
“I think you’re going to see good things,” McBride said. “I think you’re going to see a team that understands the way he wants the team to play. I think you’re going to see people being held accountable but also feeling a sense of place rather than … I think there was a lot of inconsistency that came out in the public that didn’t necessarily need to come out and that sort of rips at the fabric of your group. I expect Bruce to do very well.”
The concern with Arena is that he’s a backward-looking appointment, a steady hand perhaps, but not the man to revolutionize the program in the way US Soccer seemed to hope Klinsmann would. But World Cups, in both the qualifying phase and the tournament proper, are strange beasts, where the line between success and failure can be deceptively thin.
McBride saw that up close, playing in one extremely successful campaign under Arena in 2002, when the US could well have made it to the semifinals if not for an unpunished goal-line handball by Germany in the quarters (the US ended up losing 1-0), and another extremely disappointing one in 2006, when a 3-0 opening game loss to the Czech Republic was followed by a draw against Italy and a loss to Ghana that dumped them out of the tournament.
McBride thinks both experiences will serve Arena well has he attempts to guide the team to what would be his third World Cup.
“I was a part of ’02 and ’06 and I’ve had conversations with Bruce about what the differences were and I think he’s exactly right. He understands what he can let the players get away with and what players cannot get away with. The issues we had in ’06 was not coming out and being prepared for that first game. It was basically, it was our fault. There was just not enough focus on preparation and it was more individualistic rather than team and I think Bruce is one of the best at that, and we’ve seen that with most of his LA teams. You’re playing for your group, not for yourself. I think in ’06 we probably had a little bit too much playing for yourself rather than the group, which we had in 2002, where everybody felt like they were brothers.”