A long-term plan with mixed results: how Matt Crocker’s US Soccer tenure stacked up | USA

Sportage directors live in the medium and long term. While the coaches they hire and the players they recruit deal with the ups and downs of weekly performance reviews, executives monitor and make sure the project hasn’t veered off course. With a club, the general rule is that it can take at least three transfer windows to start seeing tangible evidence of progress under a new sporting director. In international football this often takes several cycles.

Matt Crocker arrived at US Soccer in April 2023 committed to leading the program into a brave new era while recognizing that this initiative would take time to come to fruition. Turns out it never played out that time. US Soccer announced Tuesday that Crocker is leaving his post as athletic director and is expected to take a similar role in Saudi Arabia.

Because of this long-term thinking, evidence of immediate returns on his seven-figure salary job in the United States is therefore rare.

Crocker’s first main task was to determine whether to keep Gregg Berhalter for a second cycle at the helm of the USMNT after the team’s round of 16 elimination in Qatar. Berhalter had already been unemployed for four months, his contract having ended at the end of the previous cycle. Even though his decision to speak out about tense dynamics at the World Cup surrounding Gio Reyna’s playing time was the subject of an investigation by the federation, Berhalter remained in contention to return. The alternatives included Jesse Marsch and Patrick Vieira.

While critics already feared the process would drag on too long, with interim boss BJ Callaghan leading the team into the 2023 Gold Cup, Crocker vowed it would be a meticulous, “really comprehensive and evidence-based” process. So when this metrics-driven Magic 8 Ball said “just hire him again,” Crocker’s methods were immediately a cause for concern.

These concerns turned out to be well-founded. The U.S. men’s team never returned to good vibes and collective focus, as Berhalter said: “[changing] the way the world watches American soccer,” and Berhalter was fired after the United States was relegated to a home Copa América. Seven wasted months to start the 2026 cycle had now increased to 19, dating back to that World Cup loss to the Netherlands. By almost any definition, the process that brought Berhalter back but left minimal margin for error was flawed at best and failed at worst.

Crocker’s next choice, Mauricio Pochettino, had a renowned pedigree at club level – more than any other American manager in history. But this would be Pochettino’s first international post. Coaching clubs and countries have never had such disparate job descriptions, mainly due to advances in the way clubs operate at the highest levels. The wisdom of that appointment won’t be subject to a final pass-or-fail verdict until the United States exits the World Cup, and it will depend almost entirely on when that happens.

For now, momentum is scarce. In the last two friendlies before the World Cup squad was drawn up, Pochettino’s team not only lost twice big, the Argentine seemed to look back on the lessons of the past. Then again, how could anyone have expected him to do so on such short notice after more than a decade at some of the richest clubs in the world?

On the other hand, Crocker made no mistake in choosing to replace USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski. The women’s program was at its lowest point at that point in 2023, having made out of the round of 16 in Australia and New Zealand, which was the worst World Cup performance in their history.

The timing couldn’t have been better either. Emma Hayes was finally ready to leave Chelsea after more than a decade of transformation at the helm of the USWNT, and she quickly brought back the USWNT’s grit, building on a largely inherited core to win gold at the 2024 Olympics. From there, her team has gone from strength to strength as Hayes evaluates the depth of her player pool. Today, the USWNT is once again among the favorites to win next summer’s Women’s World Cup in Brazil.

To Crocker’s credit, Hayes had enough power to bring about the WNT Way to finally center women in the running of their own sport. Rather than copying the signals from the male branch and functioning identically, it has helped establish a new normal that takes into account the differences between female and male athletes.

Crocker had his own larger project upon his appointment: the US Way, a plan to help the country become a world soccer power. Like any good slideshow, the method has been divided into three categories: courses, infrastructure and player development.

For much of the 2010s, the country’s youth and lay levels have often expressed dissatisfaction with the federation, feeling both distance and indifference towards the governing body. Some of Crocker’s initiatives have already taken root. Its talent identification camps, created to better probe young talent in a sprawling country, also allow coaches of all levels to come together and connect with the federation. Coach training seems more accessible than ever, including many free resources via the federation’s website.

There’s still a lot to do after Crocker’s surprise exit. The federation’s website has a tracking tool for its journey strategy, similar to what you’d see if you placed a Domino’s order. It is still in the fourth stage of seven, which should be completed in 2028.

It should be remembered that US Soccer has been more financially supportive of Crocker than his predecessor, Earnie Stewart, or past sports leadership that was more committee-driven in nature. Hayes struck a deal that made her the highest-paid coach in the world. According to the federation’s latest tax filings, Pochettino took home more than $5 million for seven months of work in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, helped in large part by billionaire donor Ken Griffin. The soon-to-open national training center was built at an estimated cost of nearly $250 million, with the help of another billionaire, Arthur Blank.

And now Crocker is off to Saudi Arabia: one of the few programs pumping even more money than the United States into its football machine in hopes of building a contender.

During the March window, Crocker (along with CEO JT Batson) led a group of journalists on a tour of this national training center in Fayetteville, Georgia. After more than an hour spent roaming the sprawling complex, the final stop was at the indoor playground, which Crocker said will be available for all kinds of play, including staff kickarounds after (or during) the workday.

If Crocker participates in these pickup competitions, he will have to do so as a distinguished guest. Maybe his next employers will foot the bill.