It's old news by now that Greg Ryan is the new head coach of women's soccer at University of Michigan. He officially accepted that position on Friday. What you might not know is at that he is in Vancouver this week helping Even Pellerud and Team Canada prepare for the Olympics.

I talked with Greg about the work he is doing for Canada, his new job at Michigan and though I've pretty much managed to stay out of the "he said/she said" of the World Cup aftermath, I had a few questions about how he handled things that I hoped he could clarify.

How did it come about that you are in Vancouver working with Even Pellerud and the Canadian National Team as they prepare for Olympic Qualifying?

Even and I have a great relationship from the time that I started working. We’re peers and colleagues and friends. When I would come to Vancouver to scout his teams, he would take me to dinner. When he came to scout, I would take him to dinner. I know his assistant coach and the general manager very well from being at events all over the world. He contacted me about coming in and helping out. We haven’t established whether that will be just now and again or a little more consistent. We’re just working together this week and seeing how things go. He’s kind of organizing his staff for the Olympics.

What’s the scope of the work you are doing with them?

This week I’ve been watching and learning what they do and seeing where I can fit in to helping them whether it would be a scouting assignment or an extra set of eyes from another international coach or in actually being more hands on in training. As you know, I’ve just taken on the University of Michigan job so I have my hands full there as well.

How will that fit in with your job at Michigan? I assume you are a little behind the game in recruiting, having just taken over.

Recruiting for this year is already over. The kids that the past coach recruited signed today. This year that’s done. Obviously we do need to get to work on the next couple of years in terms of recruiting, but you know you can only get so much done in 24 hours.

At Michigan, we are really looking at a pretty long-term plan in terms of getting the right players into the program and trying to raise the standard. Right now, we have the players we have and they’re working very hard and they have great attitudes, but clearly, my ability to recruit both domestically and internationally will need to work for us to really be able to take it up another notch or two.

You met your team this past weekend. How did that go?

It went great. It was fun and I think they are excited about the change. We’ve had some training sessions this week. My assistant coach, Dean Duerst, is also a U-18 National Team coach for the U.S. and he’s an assistant for the U-23 team. He worked with them this week while I was in Vancouver and then he’s in Spain next week with the U-23’s and I’ll be working with the team. We’re off to a good start. We know we have a long ways to go. This isn’t the U.S. National Team. I don’t think I will only lose one game in three years, but that’s okay.

How are you feeling about moving back into college coaching and specifically the Big Ten?

I feel good about it. I love coaching. I knew that as soon as my job was up with U.S. Soccer that I would land somewhere coaching. I’m excited about it. I love working with players. I love helping players develop and grow. I feel like I had that same situation at a different level with the U.S. team in that we had so many young players come through our program that had opportunities to step up. I think Michigan is similar, just not on the same level. They’re still young kids. It’s a very young team with a lot of maturing and growing to do. I like that process.

Has your experience with the National Team made you a better coach?
Definitely. Both as an assistant coach with April, I think I learned and grew a lot. You know, the NCAA puts a lot of limits on your coaching in terms of number of days. I feel like in the last five years, I’ve probably coached more than most coaches coach in ten years at the college level, especially with the residency programs - three out of four years when I was with the National Team. Any time you’re out there on the field every day training and traveling the world scouting, it’s just a fantastic developmental opportunity.

Without doing a whole rehash of the World Cup drama, I have a couple questions going back to China. Do you feel like you had the team prepared for the World Cup?

As well as we could be. Given that many of the young players had never been in that environment with the number of people in the stands, with the pressure, with the media, with the sponsors clamoring for their attention. I think as much as we could be prepared, we were prepared.

What kind of responsibility do you feel for how they played in China and for the loss to Brazil?

I look at it like we played 55 games and we had one stinker. In that game, we scored an own goal and had a red card by half time. That’s just soccer. Anybody that knows the game understands that when you have a red card early in the game that things aren’t going your way and you score an own goal on yourself early, things aren’t going your way. And to be honest, I thought Brazil was just better, not only because of those circumstances. So as a coach, your job is to put a team on the field that you think can beat your opponent and it’s up to them to try and do that. On that night, Brazil was just better. I feel great about what I did. They’ll never have another coach that plays 55 games and loses once. I’m serious. Wait and see.

Even before Brazil, you and the team were taking hits in the media for the style of play. It wasn’t pretty enough and so forth.

The level of opponents in our group throughout the tournament was much, much higher. If you look at being able to possess the ball better … I mean certainly, our style of play that we’ve played over the last few years was not kick and run game, but I think we got into that in the World Cup because of the pressure that certain players felt. I think Aly Wagner’s injury took a player off that might have been able to help us settle down and hold the ball. I look back and say everything we were trying to do was to get our team to settle down and play, but the level of opponent and the pressure of the event got to some of them. It’s a game of 11and if all 11 aren’t in sync, it doesn’t look very good. I even look back in Greece in the Olympics. I tell you, I only think we played one good game the entire tournament and that was against Germany in the semi-final. I didn’t think it was very pretty. I think we played very poorly in most games. Japan was an okay game, but other than that I thought the team was sub-par.

You did an interview for the FIFA website and you made a comment that your detractors have rallied around. You said, "Back then, you could get away with playing little passes all over the field and have success doing it. But in the modern game, a team that just knocks the ball around the middle of the park is going to get killed doing it.” It seems that from that comment you’ve gotten a reputation of not valuing possession soccer. Is that a fair assessment of you coaching philosophy?

That’s people that don’t actually understand the game. What I meant by that was, in the old days, because many of the teams were subpar you could play five and 10 yard balls all day without stretching the opponent and play through them. Anywhere in the modern game around the world you’re going to see teams that are using the long ball to play behind a flat back four to be able to stretch the defense back, not only to create more chances, but to create more space in front of the defense. You’ve got to have a more varied attack. That includes some long passing and some short play. We worked on those things for three years straight and had great success with it. I don’t think anyone would have typified our game as a long ball game going into the World Cup.

Of course not everyone who has an opinion about it now was watching before the World Cup.

That’s fair. We don’t live in a soccer culture. We don’t have people who have grown up with the game and most of the people that comment on it don’t actually understand it.

At the time everything kind of imploded, you were quiet about what had been going on behind the scenes, but then you came out in December with more information about what led to the goalie switch. Why?

Initially, when everything blew up, if I go public with the stuff Hope does then I’m putting Hope in a very bad light right there in front of the whole world. At the time I talked to her and said we’re just going to manage the best we can. We’ve got the Norway game and we’re still playing for a bronze medal and it wasn’t the time or place for a coach to go after one of his players in front of the world media. That was the initial timing. After that, I wanted to be able to clear the record and I wasn’t able to do that. The timing of my comments on Fox Soccer Channel and an article that was published in Arizona allowed me the chance, after my contract was up, to clear the record. Perhaps it was at a better time because things had settled down and it allowed the team to move on a little bit.

Were you concerned at all that it would open things up for the team, who now answer to a new boss, and put them in an awkward situation having to answer questions about your comments?

The fact that I was actually honest about it was probably helping the team because it was their same opinion and they got hammered for it in the press. The press looked at it as vindictive but I looked at it as standing up for what was right. If nothing else it brought to light some things that people didn’t know about it. I said at the time, “Look, I believe my players have this right and the rest of the world can say what they want.” If you have a player that was doing the things that Hope was doing and training the way Hope was training and saying the things about her teammates that Hope was saying and the players stand against it, I’m sorry they’re right and I back them.
What do you take away from the whole National Team experience?

I had a great time. I love my players. Even though I pushed them quite a bit, I always loved my players. I back them and I’m excited about their future. I’ll follow them and I told them I’ll be their biggest fan except of course now I’m working with Canada. (Laughs.)

Yeah, I wonder how that’s going to go over.

I emailed all of them and Pia and I’ve let them know many times, how much I think of them and how I appreciate how much they gave to the team and to me. I just walk away with a fantastic experience and a record that no U.S. National Team coach has ever achieved and to me, I just look back and say it was fantastic.

With the record in mind, is it difficult how things ended?

It’s disappointing but when you take a National Team job, you know what your last day’s going to be like. I knew it going in. I never had any illusions that I would get what I wanted or things would be the way I thought they should be. It’s not a secure position and it’s not my choice as to whether I coach the team. It’s someone else’s. When you’re a pro, you understand that every day you’re out training could be your last day. In the end, I had a great experience. I’m thankful for it and I’m excited about where I’m going. How’s that for the right thing to say?