Tab Ramos is certainly “interested” in the US national team's recently-vacated head coaching job, but won’t yet say if he’s been tabbed as the interim boss in the wake of the team’s shocking failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
The USMNT legend attended Sunday’s 0-0 draw between the New York Red Bulls and Atlanta United in his native New Jersey, and spoke to Metro about both matters.
“It’s a sickening feeling knowing that we don’t matter for the next three or four years,” Ramos said of the stunning turn of events last week that left the United States out of the World Cup for the first time since 1986.
“It was very hard back in the ‘80s to get people to recognize that we play soccer. Sometimes it feels like a slap in the place that we have to go dig ourselves out," he added. “One thing I know about us is that we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves us back in 1989. We’ll do it again.”
Media reports have suggested that Ramos, currently the US U-20s head coach and youth technical director, is the US Soccer Federation’s leading choice for a caretaker manager for the coming months while a long-term hire is determined. He declined to address that possibility on Sunday, however.
“That’s something that I can’t discuss at this point,” he said of the interim post.
