John Hackworth in the new U.S. U15 Boys National Team head coach. The Federation announced the appointment on Thursday, which came two months after Hugo Perez was relieved of the position.

Hackworth inherits the 2000 age group, the next birth year for the U17 World Cup cycle, with his second stint as a head coach with the U.S. youth national teams. Hackworth, who was fired as head coach of the Philadelphia Union in June, led the U17 Men’s National Team from 2004 to 2007.

Even though he is coaching a younger age group, Hackworth’s job description is not much different. He is tasked with identifying and developing an age group to pass onto the U17 MNT coaching staff as well as develop players for the full national team in the future.

The U.S. has not struggled with those first two tasks, but it has struggled with the latter one. Players being pushed from the U17 MNT up to the full team has been a slow procedure with the U.S.

“At the end of the day, it’s a long process, and you’re not going to see the results of that for many years,” Hackworth said in his introductory Q&A on ussoccer.com. “For instance, this last World Cup, I was watching some of the guys that came through our youth national teams and I personally had the opportunity to work with them.”

Hackworth’s previous work at the youth level has been checkered with a variety of players. He coached Neven Subotic, Omar Gonzalez, and Jozy Altidore at the 2005 U17 World Cup. However, his 2007 U17 World Cup was not nearly as successful in player development with Greg Garza and Brek Shea looking like the most promising prospects from the 21-man roster.

While the U.S. is waiting to see if anything shakes out from the 2007 U17 MNT squad, the rest of the world powers in soccer have already emerged with a star. Toni Kroos (Germany), James Rodriguez (Colombia), Eden Hazard (Belgium), Mamadou Sakho (France), David de Gea (Spain), and Danny Welbeck (England) all played at that same World Cup and are easily considered among the best in the world at this point.

That problem is beyond talent identification though. It is part of incentivizing player development and depending on clubs to nurture talent past the YNT expiration date. U.S. Soccer still is not there. It’s stuck in trying to figure out how to make everything work in a jigsaw puzzle with an upside down pyramid.

That’s why this hiring was important. The U15 age group is the first team that gets extensive time on international trips, which leads to exposure from noteworthy clubs. The opportunity to push the best players in the U.S. system should fall to a coach who is willing to recognize that talent as well as lend advice when parents are looking for what’s best.

Hackworth shouldn’t and won’t be judge on game results. He will be judged on if he makes the right call on where a player should go to develop at the club level when the time comes.