Sam Allardyce, the USMNT and the price of boredom

Sam Allardyce is angling to be the USMNT manager. Big Sam has his flaws, but at least he’d keep us entertained.

One of the less heralded, but more galling results of the U.S. men’s national team’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup is the simple, excruciating fact the team won’t play a meaningful game for two years. That’s a long, long time to stew in the juices of our failure.

But perhaps we have been given a minor reprieve, for into those juices has waded the sizable presence of Big Sam Allardyce, who has begun over the past few months angling for the vacant USMNT manager job.

With the attention of the U.S. soccer community turned to February’s presidential election, and (again, because it bears repeating) with no meaningful games to be played for literal years, the appointment of a new USMNT manager can, should and almost certainly will wait.

But let us imagine for a second the intriguing prospect of Big Sam, USMNT manager. We were deprived of the opportunity to see Allardyce on the international stage by a controversy of truly unparalleled stupidity, but such are the whims of the English FA. Mercifully, the U.S.’s recent failure in Trinidad might have given the world a second chance.

The reaction among U.S. soccer types to this idea has been decidedly mixed. Some balked at the arrogance of a man who admitted he doesn’t know “an awful lot” about the USMNT in the very same sentence he suggested he should be the one to turn the program around. Others expressed excitement, suggesting the sort of lackluster performance that sealed the U.S.’s World Cup fate would never be tolerated under Allardyce.

This is a dumb, unprovable claim — the same was said about Bruce Arena in reference to the USMNT’s final performances under Jurgen Klinsmann — but there’s nonetheless something charming about the prospect of one day getting to watch Allardyce sweating effortlessly through his suit jacket on the touchline of the Azteca, bellowing at Christian Pulisic to stop fannying about in his defensive third and clear the ball.

This is a deliberately unfair characterization of Allardyce, but that’s all part of the fun, for he presents a very rare, confusing combination of competence and buffoonery. He is in many ways a visionary, one of the most forward-thinking managers of his time. He also lacked the foresight to consider that offering advice to shady businessmen on how to bypass FA regulations might get him in trouble with the FA.

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But for all his faults — and they are many, and mostly very funny — he’s a good manager, and would arguably be the most accomplished coach ever to take charge of the USMNT. Allardyce might not be the sexy name many USMNT fans are hoping for, but the sexy name many USMNT fans are hoping for doesn’t exist. This is international soccer. The bar is low.

This isn’t to say the new (or current) president of U.S. Soccer should hire Allardyce, but it is to say that in the two years until the USMNT manager, whoever he is, leads them in a competitive match, we’ll have plenty dumber discussions than this one. Goodness knows we have nothing better to do.