It was the 25th of June, 2011 and the US Men’s National Team had just dropped the Gold Cup Final to Mexico by a score of 4-2. In front of 93,420 spectators in Pasadena, California, El Tri ripped the trophy from the grasp of the Americans thanks to four unanswered goals. It was a heartbreaker of a performance from the Americans, who had scored twice within the first twenty-five minutes of the match. They lost their focus and their lack of mental toughness was exploited by a Mexican side who refused to be killed off by the concession of two early goals.
It was a failure. The USMNT fell short of their goal in an embarrasing, agonizing, seemingly inexplicable way at the hands of their bitter rivals. After shocking the world and beating the mighty Spanish on the way to a runner-up finish at the 2009 Confederations Cup and leading the National Team out of their group at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Bob Bradley heard the crescendo of his detractors finally reach its peak as he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by Jurgen Klinsmann on July 29th, 2011.
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Perhaps I’ve waited a day or two longer than I should have to start writing this piece due to the predictable, outrage-fueled traffic surge that would have found its way here if I had published a scathing indictment of Klinsmann and his team’s performance immediately after they crashed out of the Gold Cup. If I had let the tension of four years of the emotional roller-coaster that has been Jurgen Klinsmann’s tenure break open and soak this column with anger, I’d get a lot of clicks. However, I would also be contributing to the “Angry Villager” mentality that has plagued many fans of US Soccer since Klinsmann took the reins, as well as exhibiting to the lack of rationality that has poisoned our system from the over-hyping of promising young players by fans all the way up to the reactionary and preoccupied mentality that our top officials have showcased, such as in their decision to treat Bob Bradley’s firing in the way that they did.
But I’m also not here to defend a guy who has under-performed in competitive tournaments, has a penchant for doubletalk and groan-inducing platitudes, and consistently makes seemingly unintelligible decisions regarding tactics and personnel.
In a nutshell my job is to break through the facade of Jurgen Klinsmann’s decorated resume, deconstruct the perception of the Jurgen Klinsmann aesthetic, and unravel the many results, players, formations, broken records, highs, lows, benchmarks, transgressions, and head-scratching moments of the Jurgen Klinsmann era in an attempt to answer one question:
Is the US Men’s National Team better off now than it was four years ago?
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Four years ago today, Jurgen Klinsmann was hired as Bob Bradley’s replacement. He promised to push, cajole, prod, drag (if he had to), etc. the entirety of the United States’ soccer landscape forward. He specified that he would bring an attractive, proactive style of play to the USMNT, and cultivate the Latino influence on the American soccer community into a team with an identity, who played with flare, and who compete on the highest level.
In 2011, he was shiny and new. He was a welcome change of pace for many on both the inside and outside of US Soccer’s circles. Bob Bradley’s measured pragmaticism in both his coaching and media presence had become boring. Organized and industrial defending, unabashed reliance on athleticism, and structured counterattacks–the tenets of Bradley’s regime–were embarrassing and shameful to a country with a footballing inferiority complex seemingly as old and maddening as time itself.
So when Bradley was fired and Klinsmann was announced as the new head coach the following day, no one raised an immediate eyebrow. The prevailing opinion was that Bradley’s tenure had run its course and that it was simply time to move in a different direction with someone new at the helm. Of course that direction had to be forward, and the USSF and Sunil Gulati had Jurgen Klinsmann pegged as the man who could move US Soccer upward and onward.
His resume echoed that sentiment. During his stint as the head coach of Germany, Klinsmann laid the foundation for the future of German soccer, implementing his philosophies from the youth systems all the way up to the senior squad. Those philosophies were considered radical by many, and he ruffled many of his established players’ feathers by dropping them for promising youngsters. However, his choices led to a 3rd place finish for Germany in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and current Germany manager Joachim Low gave much of the credit for their 2014 World Cup win to Klinsmann and the efforts he made to evolve the German soccer landscape. So roughly ten years after Klinsmann left, Germany is the pinnacle of world football, and some very smart people give him a lot of credit for that.
After the 2006 World Cup, Sunil Gulati made his first attempt to hire Klinsmann, but was rebuffed. The USMNT had just crashed out in the group stage, and Klinsmann wasn’t interested. Bradley was always the second choice to replace Bruce Arena. He was the consolation prize and he was treated like it for much of his time in charge. Bradley was trite with the media, he was pragmatic, and he drew the ire of many for continuing to call up his son Michael-who was not the player then that he is now.
He certainly wasn’t as charming and laid back as Klinsmann is with the media, and he didn’t come with the automatic criticism-insurance policy of an extremely decorated European resume. So when word got around to Gulati and the USSF board that Klinsmann was available and interested, a Gold Cup final loss to bitter rivals Mexico was the perfect “ugh, finally” moment. Finally, mutual desire and helpful circumstances collided in a way that brought both parties together after over five years of cat and mouse.
Unfortunately, the Klinsmann era got off to a rough start. One win in his first six matches in charge drew some reactionary criticism, and many were worried that he wasn’t living up to the immense hype surrounding his hiring. Then, in February of 2012, Klinsmann led the Yanks to a shocking 1-0 victory in a friendly against Italy. The USMNT had never beaten Italy before in the history of the program and the match was played on Italian soil, no less. By the end of 2012, the USMNT had achieved their best winning percentage of any calendar year and picked up a result against Mexico in the Azteca. The results spoke to Klinsmann mapping out the player pool and putting some of the pieces he wanted where he wanted them.
However, Klinsmann’s promise of sweeping change hadn’t yet fully taken hold. Caleb Porter’s U-23 team failed to qualify for the 2012 Olympics in London after somewhat miraculously being unable to beat El Salvador in their final group stage match in Nashville, Tennessee. Players like Freddy Adu, Brek Shea, Juan Agudelo, Joe Corona, and Mix Diskerud were unable to produce enough fire power to get the job done.
In the face of this disappointment, Klinsmann suggested that discontinuity across youth levels in terms of style, systems, tactics, and attitudes were to blame rather than the players. In fact, many of the players on that 2012 Olypmic team have since featured under Klinsmann, with Brek Shea and Mix Diskerud becoming regular contributors in the squad.
More recently, Youth National Team squads have shown significant improvement since Klinsmann took over, with the U-23 squad taking third place at this year’s Toulon Tournament, and the U-20s reaching the quarter finals of the World Cup before losing on penalties to eventual champions Serbia.
Part of this success has been thanks to Klinsmann’s ability to persuade dual-nationals to play for the United States. Since taking over, Klinsmann has recruited several German-Americans who have made significant contributions to the USMNT. Fabian Johnson, John Brooks, Timmy Chandler and Julian Green were all members of the 2014 FIFA World Cup squad that made it out of the group of death, as was Icelandic-American recruit Aron Johannsson.
In terms of presenting the trajectory of the United States Men’s National Team as skyrocketing, and turning the aesthetic of American soccer from one of consistent underachievement to one that is a movement worth getting behind, Klinsmann’s tenure has been-as a whole-wildly successful. The friendly wins over major European teams in 2012, the 2013 Gold Cup triumph and victories over Germany and Bosnia in the midst of a 13-match winning streak, finishing World Cup qualifying at the top of the Hex, and looking unstoppable in the lead-up to the 2014 World Cup suddenly changed fans’ attitudes toward the team from cautious optimism peppered with more than a hint of cynicism to genuine excitement at the prospect of consistently attractive football, an expectation of winning, and unified hope that the 2014 World Cup had the potential to be very special.
Unprecedented outpourings of fan support, community events, and media interest were proof enough that the 2014 World Cup was unlike any other in history for Americans. Suddenly, not only were longtime American soccer supporters liberated in their fandom, but everybody was a US National Team fan. Almost overnight, soccer hit the mainstream in the USA. In the opening group stage match, John Brooks became a household name and an American hero with his late, game-winning header and emotional celebration, Michael Bradley became a widely panned scapegoat (that’s when you know you’ve made it), and Tim Howard became the Secretary of Defense, gracing social media in the form of popular memes.
Landon Donovan also made worldwide headlines for not being selected by Klinsmann in the final squad, but I’m not even going to get into that. Seriously. You all know what happened…
However, it wasn’t all positive. Jozy Altidore suffered a hamstring injury twenty minutes into the first group stage match and would miss the remainder of the tournament. With no like-for-like replacement on the squad, Aron Johannsson was his substitute, but didn’t play much either due to a nagging ankle injury. Immediately, this raised red flags. How could Klinsmann not have brought a replacement for Jozy, considering the paramount importance of a player of his type to the US attack. No Terrence Boyd or even Eddie Johnson meant that the US was without a true target forward to hold up the ball and help the US break pressure and set up attacks. The next question was: why is an obviously injured Johannsson was even in the squad in the first place? Couldn’t his exclusion have granted him meaningful recovery time before his next club season in the Netherlands, and also have opened up a spot for a player like Boyd or Johnson (or maybe Landon Donovan, I guess)? On the field, the US suffered due to these roster errors. Outpossessed and outshot for the majority of their time in the tournament, Klinsmann’s men fitnessed their way to a second place finish in the group and a date with Belgium in the round of 16.
Against Belgium, Tim Howard’s 16 saves kept the US in the game until extra time, in which they fell 2-1. Those saves not only made Howard a hero, but highlighted the defensive and game-management issues present in the Americans’ game. Why was Kyle Beckerman-who was possibly the best defensive midfielder in the tournament during the group stage- left out in favor of Geoff Cameron, whose abilities as a No.6 had never been tested in a competitive match, especially against the likes of a team like Belgium? Obviously, that proved to be a bad idea.
A major positive, though, was the emergence of DeAndre Yedlin, who placed Eden Hazard neatly into his pocket for the 70 minutes during which he was on the field and subsequently earned himself both a transfer to Tottenham Hotspur and the status of an ever-present in Klinsmann’s rosters.
In the end, the USMNT’s 2014 World Cup run was looked upon as a success. Most people were happy with getting out of the group of death and coming excruciatingly close to earning a berth in the quarter finals. The fan support in the US was outstanding, the players unquestionably gave everything they had, and the world at large was impressed with how the Americans “punched above their weight.”
But a closer look revealed that some of what ended up being fatal flaws could have been rather easily avoided by better player selection which, coincidentally, continues to draw the ire of fans and analysts alike. Beyond there being no backup for Altidore, the excellent defensive work put in by the American central defenders often went to waste due to the lack of true counterattacking wingers in the squad. Later, it came out that fitness issues among the group, which contributed to the hamstring injuries of Jozy Altidore, Fabian Johnson, and Matt Besler, were brought about by an overemphasis of fitness training during the pre-World Cup camp. Various outlets reported that conditioning-heavy three-a-days were the norm, and that players weren’t happy with the fitness to tactics ratio. The idea here is obviously that the team needed to be more physically conditioned than any other in order to fight their way through a tournament held primarily in the rain forests of Brazil. However, somebody involved has to know when enough is enough, and no matter who the onus fell on to schedule and monitor fitness training-whether or not it was Klinsmann- did a poor job in managing that aspect of the camp.
Still, the American World Cup Adventure was a resounding success on the fronts of growing domestic fan support, media coverage and interactivity, the growth of the game towards full mainstream status in the US, and the reputation of the program and its players abroad. Plus, the team reached their stated goal of navigating their way out of the group of death.
So the US didn’t fail, and it would be very harsh to say that Jurgen Klinsmann failed the US.
So was the resulting criticism reactionary? Was it the product of our American, we-can-and-should-succeed-at-everything attitude which, though admirable (and awesome), translates to naivete and irrationality in terms of analyzing our performance as a team amongst and comparative to the world’s top footballing nations? To be honest, that question may be another column/project/annoying thinkpiece all by itself.
The short answer to that question depends on how high one places the reasonable standard of achievement for the USMNT. In a perfectly executed scenario, that standard is higher than what we actually achieved. Maybe, it’s even higher than what Bruce Arena achieved in 2002. However, many things weren’t perfectly executed, and sometimes that’s not something that requires blame. It’s rare that big projects come off without a hitch, and the sport of soccer, especially the FIFA World Cup, is no exception. If we underachieved, then what did Italy, England, Portugal, and Spain do?
Photo by Alex Livesey – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images
