Olympic qualification is more or less right around the corner (starting at the end of March) and U.S. Soccer’s preparations were in full swing this past week with a training camp in Florida.
I spoke to U-23 coach Caleb Porter for this piece giving a snapshot of where things lie with the prepartions for the CONCACAF Tournament in March.
There’s no question that there is plenty of talent to go around at this level, and that the U.S. should have little trouble making the Olympics. But you never know – just ask Thomas Rongen – how things can go down and the perils of qualification.
This camp wrapped up Thursday evening, and the schedule is for at least two, possible three more camps before qualification. The next one is going to be in January in LA, with a trip to Central America tacked on the end of it for a couple of friendlies.
Over the past two years I’ve talked to Porter a good bit, and he’s a very sharp guy. Here are plenty of leftovers from our conversation.
On securing players for the qualification process…
“We’ve already started to make inroads with the clubs, the players abroad that of course we need to make sure we have a good connection and a plan as well of how we’re going to approach some of the guys that are with the full team, guys that are overseas.
“At this point we haven’t made final decisions on when we’re going to ask for guys but we’re well aware it’s a unique situation, and that there’s a chance we may not get some guys, and we’ll be prepared for that.”
On how this week has gone…
“Very pleased. Obviously with every camp that we have, we want to move the group forward and to do that you have to look at guys, so that’s a big part of it, getting to look at the player, personnel, look at where guys can play, how they fit in the system, style, just to leave the camp with the better picture of where you’re at personnel wise.
“Also you want to build the team together. Part of that is the bonding, laying the ground work of the culture, how you’re going to do things, and the expectations, training, and all the things that go into putting the team together.
“Part of that too is training, getting them to understand the way you want to play on both sides of the ball, imprint the concepts of the style of play, introduce the system, and get them used to some of your training activities that you use, so that at the end of the week they have an understanding of kind of where you’re looking at them, the system you’re playing, how you like to do things in training, and obviously as a team, we feel like we’ve really made great progress in all those aspects.”
On getting to coach the team up close this time around…
“Until you start to develop those relationships, until you get in front of the guys out on the pitch in training, until you can start imprint the way you want to do things, it feels almost like you’re detached from it. It’s been a great week, really enjoyed it, I think we’ve made good progress.
“The way I look at it, it’s phase one, and phase one is cup qualifying, phase two is the Olympics. Right now, I’m the U-23 coach, they are U-23 players, we expect to qualify, it’s not a matter of if but when. But we have some work to do. Right now we have to be focused on the next three and a half months and make sure we really push this thing along, so when we get into qualifying we’re really gelling as a unit and we have a very clear process in how we’re going about it with the guys.”
On where things stand with the player pool…
“Right now we feel good about the group overall. There’s a lot of things that still are left. There’s still a lot of things that need to be sorted out, but we definitely have a clear picture of where we’re at with the personnel…We do need to start to settle on a group so we can start to develop a cohesive unit. And to do that you have to have continuity, so there will be less and less variation of players as the camps go on.”