Former New York City FC head coach Patrick Vieira has left his role as manager of RC Strasbourg in France's Ligue 1 and is now reportedly a candidate to take over the United States men's national team.
Michele Gianone of TUDN reports that Vieira "ended his relationship as Strasbourg coach and is in negotiations with US Soccer to be the new coach of the United States national team." Doug McIntyre of Fox Sports also reports that US Soccer's sporting director, Matt Crocker, is "primarily targeting high-profile European-based candidates" for America's next men's soccer leader.
Those two reports combine to make it seem like Vieira is a pretty serious contender to come back to the United States and take over the national team, replacing a fired Gregg Berhalter after the USMNT didn't advance from their group at this summer's Copa América.
Would this be the right hire for the USMNT? Around here, we know some things about Vieira's time with NYCFC, having watched it up close, so we're going to focus on that period as we evaluate Vieira's candidacy.
Let's do a run-through of what the coach did well – and not so well – during his time with NYCFC to see what kind of case shapes up for Patrick Vieira, USMNT manager.
The NYCFC transformation
Vieira completely reshaped how NYCFC played once he arrived at the club. The club also transformed him: This was the place where the World Cup-winning midfielder for France, and Arsenal legend at club level, got his senior-level coaching start after time spent learning the craft with the Manchester City youth academy.
Vieira changed the New York City team stylistically from the moment he arrived, giving it a clear attacking identity: A 4-3-3 shape and a focus on possession and deliberate build-up play from the goalkeeper forward.
The system he implemented and his approach as manager turned things around for the expansion team. New York City finished the 2016 and 2017 seasons in second place in the Eastern Conference — in 2017, the team was second overall in the Supporters' Shield race. When he departed halfway through the 2018 season to take over OGC Nice in France's Ligue 1, he left behind a New York City with a record of 8W-4D-3L, with 28 points after 15 games.
Patrick Vieira MLS Record
| Year | GP | W | D | L | PTS | PPG | GF | GA | GD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 34 | 15 | 9 | 10 | 54 | 1.59 | 62 | 57 | 5 |
| 2017 | 34 | 16 | 9 | 9 | 57 | 1.68 | 56 | 43 | 13 |
| 2018 | 15 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 28 | 1.87 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Total | 83 | 39 | 22 | 22 | 139 | 1.67 | 147 | 120 | 27 |
His success with NYCFC also played at least some part in dispelling the long-held notion that international coaches couldn't succeed in MLS. For a while, conventional wisdom said that the league and its strange roster rules (which sometimes change in the middle of seasons), and reliance on domestic players, couldn't mesh with the approaches preferred by coaches from overseas.
That didn't ring true while Vieira was in charge in New York City, as he made the most of his rosters and was unafraid to trust young players, be they from college soccer, from the NYCFC Academy, or from the far reaches of City Football Group's scouting network.
Vieira was the coach of New York City when they started integrating Homegrown signings into the First Team. He raved about James Sands when he was just a 16-year-old and gave him his first taste of professional soccer by playing him in a packed stadium in Ecuador when NYCFC traveled to face Emelec during the 2017 preseason.
He also is familiar with Gio Reyna and Joe Scally, who were both in the club's academy during the Vieira years — and which gives him a very direct connection with the two USMNT regulars. Vieira was in charge when the team signed Scally to his Homegrown contract with NYCFC in March 2018, and Scally refers to Vieira as a huge influence on his career in this interview with The Athletic.
The NYCFC stuff not to like
Vieira also can be remembered for how his NYCFC teams performed in the majority of the highest-profile, highest-stakes games they played: Terribly.
Vieira's two trips to the MLS Cup Playoffs featured some extremely lopsided losses. In 2016, a Sebastian Giovinco hat trick propelled Toronto FC to a 0-5 road victory at Yankee Soccer Stadium in New York City's first-ever home playoff match.
In 2017, the meltdown occurred on the road, with a heavy 4-1 loss to Columbus Crew that included a sending-off for Alexander Callens and a late-match capitulation that put NYCFC in too deep of a hole to dig out from in the second leg. Knockout soccer wasn't Vieira's thing with NYCFC, as his teams also went 0-for-3 in the US Open Cup, losing once to the New York Cosmos and twice to the Red Bulls.
Vieira was also criticized for his rigidity, and how he made his teams stick to his system even when they faced different looks from defenses — like when, say, the relentless high press of Jesse Marsch’s Red Bulls exposed Vieira's NYCFC possession-and-precision-passing teams on multiple occasions.
Then there's how things ended with Vieira at NYCFC. In May 2018, reports circulated in widely-respected French sports outlet L'Equipe that he was in talks to leave the team midseason to take over at OGC Nice. Vieira insistently denied the OGC Nice reports, and tried to say he traveled to France not to negotiate a new job, but to tend to "a personal family matter."
That turned out to not be the case when his departure from NYCFC, to take the coaching job at Nice, was announced in early June 2018.
Will he fit with the USMNT?
Vieira has never coached a national team, and has had mixed success while coaching at the club level. His time at NYCFC, when he won 39 of 83 league games for a win rate of 46.99%, remains his greatest success as a head coach. The most games he's ever coached for a team remain the 90 he oversaw for New York City.
What has always been mentioned with Vieira when discussing his coaching: He commands respect from his players, both in how he leads, and in who he is and is known for being. He's a legendary hard-nosed player who won the game's biggest competitions. The fact that hasn't had much success as a club coach doesn't necessarily mean his brand of leadership and soccer couldn't work with the USMNT.
Speaking of his brand of soccer, here's another thing to consider about Vieira: He was hugely complimentary of Gregg Berhalter as a coach when the two competed in MLS and Berhalter was in charge of the Columbus Crew. Vieira spoke admirably of Berhalter and highlighted how he shared many of the now-ex-USMNT coach's philosophies. If Vieira were to be appointed, he might actually be a figure of continuity, in terms of how his USMNT sets up and sets out to play.
Appointing Vieira would give the United States a big name to lead the soccer program into its biggest tournament. As a coach, his lack of national team experience and knockout tournament experience could be detrimental, but he does also tick a lot of the other boxes US Soccer cares about.
Would he be able to shape this highly-talented generation of young American players into as strong a side as possible, capable of making a deep run in 2026? It would be unchartered territory for him as a coach, especially given his poor tournament record, but he took an NYCFC in its infancy into unchartered territory when he set it on course to become one of the more successful teams in MLS.
If nothing else, his hire would guarantee maximum spiciness whenever his USMNT faced Jesse Marsch’s Canada.
