Marsch accuses Berhalter of being boring
He's technically right, but Berhalter should not change in response.
Jesse Marsch does a podcast with Jimmy Conrad and Charlie Davies called “Call It Want You Want.” On yesterday’s episode, Conrad played a clip from Gregg Berhalter’s roster announcement. It was the part where Berhalter compliments a few players he had to leave off the roster.
There seemed to be little remarkable about the clip. But then Marsch says — or shouts, really — “So did you want me to respond to that Jimmy?!” Jimmy did, and Marsch responds, loud and exuberant:
“I mean, Berhalter just put me to sleep. He’s got a great squad! He should be like. Man, I have some weapons! I can’t wait to get this team together. We are gonna- We are excited for Jamaica. We are gonna go after this game. We’ve been together for some time and we are excited about the options we have.” And then he went on like this for a while.
I disagree with Marsch. I think his suggested speech would have been a great thing for Jesse Marsch to have said. But if Berhalter had said it, and in the cadence Marsch was advising, everyone would think he was on cocaine.
It’s best Berhalter keep talking in his normal, calm way. Any attempt of his at galvanizing the television audience with noisy emotion will only alarm them.
There’s a bigger picture concern too:
If we’re going to allow people in our community to be like Jesse Marsch, we need to allow people like Gregg Berhalter to keep being the way they are too. Otherwise we lose the balance and everything spins out of control.
I’m glad Marsch has a podcast where he covers Berhalter — it’s the exact type of uncanny thing that makes sense for American soccer — but we can’t let him use his platform to create more Jesse Marsch’s. One is plenty.
One is plenty, amen.