First and foremost, I want to thank everyone that's put thought, time, and energy into the questions and discussion in the Debate Thread. I want to thank UnrepentantGunner and wozzvt for their posts, as their responses have helped me think about my club management decisions from a different viewpoint than I had prior to running in this election.
In my opinion, this position is a management position in the business sense--running a National Team is far too large of a job for any one person to handle effectively on their own, so the person you put in the job needs to have good management skills. He needs to be able to develop and use resources, both computerized and personnel, and then process the information from those resources to make the decisions necessary to submit match orders and shape the future seasons of the National Team by helping direct prospect training, along with the U21 coach.
My plan for organizing the scouting department will be to organize it similarly to how Coco has run the U21 scouting. Ideally, I want to pool the "NT staff" for both the senior and junior teams, as most of the owners who care about one team will be following the other team as well, and I believe scouting needs are different during the Continental and Worlds cycles of a tournament. With a pooled staff, we can shift resources to the team that needs them more, improving efficiency. This should also minimize the number of volunteers we have who wind up doing nothing important, which will boost our long-term "staff retention" rate.
My plan for organizing the player development department is outlined here:
(122310.130). The
only reasons for my vague description of implementation are that I'm not sure myself if the benefits of an on-site federation outweigh the costs relative to using the off-site forums for the player development team, and that I want to solicit community opinion before committing to either option.
As far as game day goes, I'll gladly seek, solicit, and accept match day suggestions from UnrepentantGunner, wozzvt, JuicePats, Coco, and any other user who wants to devote time and energy to the National Team, including users who can't or don't want to use the offsite forums. Ultimately, the decision and responsibility belongs to the NT manager (whoever that becomes), but the team belongs to all 3,000+ US managers, so any manager that wishes to give constructive input deserves a forum to be heard.
Thank you again for the time you've put into reading the posts in these elections, and please vote for whichever candidate you think will provide the best future for the national team, not just in Seasons 11-12 but for Seasons 13 and beyond as well.