Bradley Saga Day 62, World Cup “Second Acts” Revisited

U.S. national team coach Bob Bradley met with U.S. Soccer honchos on Thursday to discuss Bradley’s future. (His contract runs through the end of December.) No decision appears to have been made, however, which means “Bradley Saga 2010” is now on Day 62 since the end of the U.S.’s World Cup run.

If you read my latest Planet Fútbol column on Wednesday you saw that my task this week was to examine the history of coaches who led the same national team at consecutive World Cups. Is there something to the idea that national-team programs can get stale if the same coach sticks around for two World Cup cycles?

The recent history isn’t exactly glowing: The two coaches who led the same teams at World Cups ’06 and ’10—Italy’s Marcello Lippi and France’s Raymond Domenech—both flopped in South Africa, and the U.S.’s lone repeater (Bruce Arena) went out in the first round in Germany ’06. From 1994 on, only one of the 12 coaches who repeated has done better the second time around (Norway’s Egil Olsen in ’98).

The results of my survey: Of the 49 coaches who have repeated in the history of the World Cup, 24 fared worse the second time, 13 fared better and 12 went out in the same round. (I failed to include Sweden’s Lars Lagerbäck in my previous analysis and have now added him.)

But as some readers pointed out, simply measuring results by “better” or “worse” the second time around was probably unfair to some coaches. Argentina’s Carlos Bilardo won World Cup ’86 and reached the final in ’90, so it’s hard to call him a failure. So I decided to run the numbers again on World Cup “second acts,” only now I measured how a coach’s second act compared to the average finish of that country in the history of the World Cup. (If you went out in the first round you got 1 point, 2 for going out in the second round, and so on, until the World Cup winner got 6 points.)

If a coach finished within .25 points of that country’s average in his second term, I considered that to be the “same” performance, not “better” or “worse.”

The results of this survey were a bit more favorable to second-term World Cup coaches. Of the 49 repeaters with the same country, 22 fared worse than the national norm, 18 fared better and 9 fared the same. (Recent results were still pretty poor, though: Only 2 of the 12 repeaters from 1994 on have fared better than their national norm: Norway’s Olsen and Romania’s Anghel Iordanescu in ’98.)

Of course, this way of measuring success has its own caveats. If Bradley were to return for 2014 and have the U.S. go out in the second round again, he would be considered to have performed better than the U.S. World Cup average finish (1.778 per my method above). Would U.S. fans consider that to be a satisfactory finish? Should I just get a life and stop analyzing this stuff? (On second thought, don’t answer that.)

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND

Not a complete listing, but here’s the best of the games on TV in America this weekend:

FRIDAY

• Kaiserslautern-Bayern Munich (Germany), 2:30 p.m. ET, GolTV

• Inter Milan-Atlético Madrid (UEFA Super Cup), 2:45 p.m. ET, FSC

SATURDAY

• Blackburn Rovers-Arsenal (England), 7:30 a.m. ET, ESPN2

• Chelsea-Stoke City (England), 10 a.m. ET, FSC-Plus

• Schalke-Hanover (Germany), noon ET, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com

• Manchester United-West Ham (England), 12:30 p.m. ET, FSC

• Columbus-Dallas (MLS), 4 p.m. ET, TeleFutura

• Internacional-Botafogo (Brazil), 5:30 p.m. ET, GolTV

• Toronto-Salt Lake (MLS), 7 p.m. ET, MLS Direct Kick

• Chivas de Guadalajara-Pumas (Mexico), 8 p.m. ET, Telemundo

• Seattle-Chicago (MLS), 10:30 p.m. ET, MLS Direct Kick

SUNDAY

• Bolton Wanderers-Birmingham City (England), 8:30 a.m. ET, FSC-Plus

• Aston Villa-Everton (England), 11 a.m. ET, FSC

• Racing Santander-Barcelona (Spain), 1 p.m. ET, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com

• AC Milan-Lecce (Italy), 2:30 p.m. ET, FSC

• Mallorca-Real Madrid (Spain), 3 p.m. ET, GolTV

• Bordeaux-Marseille (France), 3 p.m. ET, FSC-Plus

• América-Necaxa (Mexico), 5 p.m. ET, Univisión

• Chivas USA-D.C. United (MLS), 10 p.m., ESPN2