In case anyone missed it, Benny Feilhaber is still in the best form of his professional career.
Sporting Kansas City’s recent five-match slump notwithstanding, Feilhaber hasn’t fallen off in the talent or fitness categories – and he showed that on Friday when Sporting broke that winless streak with a 3-1 handling of previously-streaking FC Dallas.
Feilhaber’s two goals, his ninth and 10th in league play this season, told only part of the story. (Still, wasn’t that free kick for Sporting’s first goal a pretty, pretty strike around the wall?) He also put on a ball-skills clinic from the No. 10 spot, leaving would-be defenders scrambling to recover after one cutback or another.
Let’s repeat: Feilhaber is in the best form of his career. That means he’s better than he was in 2007, when he scored the game-winning goal against Mexico in the finals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup. He’s better than he was in 2010, when he showed off his playmaking skill at the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
And he’s better than he was in 2009, in the Confederations Cup semifinal, when his play set up a goal in the Nats’ 2-0 stunner over top-ranked Spain.
Still, the response from U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann, as the U.S. get ready for the CONCACAF Cup playoff against Mexico for a spot in the 2017 Confed Cup, continues to be:
(Insert appropriate stony silence here.)
“There are other ones ahead of him,” Klinsmann told reporters ahead of the team’s 1-all draw with Panama in July at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kan. And apparently, judging by Feilhaber’s continued snubbing for recent friendlies and the provisional CONCACAF Cup squad, there still are.
But is that really what’s going on? Are there really that many attacking mids out there who are having the kind of year Feilhaber is having, enough to keep him from even landing a spot on the roster?
The standard line – and it is not without its merits – is that Klinsmann gave Feilhaber a shot at the 2014 January camp, that he didn’t do enough to rate, and that everyone concerned ought to just move on already. The subplot of that narrative is that even if Feilhaber is good enough for the Nats, there’s nowhere to put him because the playmaker’s spot is already taken by team captain Michael Bradley.
That sort of thing happens all the time. Many and strange are the ways of managers, and Klinsmann’s results with Germany’s 2006 World Cup team and the 2013 Gold Cup-winning U.S. squad show that he can assemble a squad and get good things out of it.
Even so, Bradley isn’t Wolverine and he’s not always in top form. Having an experienced, proven — and in-form, if nobody has mentioned that part lately — commodity around in case of unfortunate events wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Because taking the whole situation at face value still raises questions – and furthermore, because going, “Oh, OK” would make for a really short column – one has to wonder if there’s something else going on.
Maybe Klinsmann – playing under the name “Jay Goppingen,” of course – has Feilhaber perma-captained on his MLS fantasy team, and can’t afford to lose his production by calling him up.
Fine. We’ll stick to serious maybes, then.
It’s been suggested, and in good faith, that the 30-year-old Feilhaber doesn’t figure in Klinsmann’s plans any more because he’ll be 33 when the next World Cup is played in Russia.
Thing is, assembing that 2018 squad isn’t the job at hand for Klinsmann. Winning the CONCACAF Cup, securing a Confed Cup spot for the U.S. – and denying one to Mexico, which is just as important if the Nats really want to make serious plays for the best dual nationals – those should have “on fire in the middle of the desk” priority.
More on that point later. Let’s move on to the dreadlocked elephant in the room.
It’s no secret, because Feilhaber has made it no secret, that he doesn’t like Real Salt Lake defensive mid Kyle Beckerman. All signs point to that being mutual – and Beckerman is one of Klinsmann’s mainstays.
What coach wants to deal with that sort of tension in his camp?
Trick question, that. No coach wants to have to play peacemaker, to manage personality conflicts – but the good ones understand that players don’t have to like each other. They just have to put the loathing aside long enough for the work to get done, which is what professionals do in all sorts of fields all around the world every day.
Maybe Klinsmann is of a mind that nobody’s going to tell him what to do – especially not the U.S. fans whose soccer intelligence he has publicly disparaged.
In this scenario, he’s a puckish Teutonifornian Yoda, and his own counsel will he keep on who is to be called up. (Unfortunately for Feilhaber – and the national team – there’s no ghostly Obi-Wan around to advocate for him.)
If pure stubbornness is behind Klinsmann’s decision, it doesn’t make him look decisive. It makes him look like a four-year-old, irrationally sticking to a loudly declared but ill-chosen course of action – “I am SO going to ride my tricycle up that tree, down the other side and across that water over there!” – because backing down would feel like a loss of face.
No matter which of the above rationales holds most true, the underlying reason is that Feilhaber isn’t getting called in because Klinsmann is under no pressure to find a winning solution for the Nats in competitive matches until qualifying begins for Russia 2018.
The snubbing is just another reminder of the unpleasant truth that, with a contract extension through the next World Cup cycle already secured, Klinsmann could start an XI of department store mannequins, Cub Scouts and those people who hand out cheese samples at the supermarket – and he’d still have a job.
(Stop with the “Any of those would be an upgrade over Timmy Chandler,” cracks, please. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s mean. Sort of.)
In pretty much every other country that aspires to soccer success, coaches whose clubs underperform in coninental competitions get canned. Thanks to the perplexing generosity of U.S. Soccer, Klinsmann – the only tenured coach in the world – doesn’t have to coach for his job just yet.
He has no urgent reason to take the CONCACAF Cup seriously, just as he had no urgent reason to take this year’s Gold Cup seriously. He made the appropriate noises about the tournament’s importance, of course, but his actions – especially playing toy soldiers with his central defenders, instead of sticking with a proven tandem – screamed otherwise.
Then again, maybe all of this is has just been a long, daring – if risky – con at the expense of everyone else in CONCACAF, with Feilhaber cast in the small and not-highly-coveted role of Collateral Damage Guy.
Maybe the U.S. will annihilate Mexico at the Rose Bowl next month, then cruise through World Cup qualifying while making some serious noise in the Confed Cup. (Calling up Sporting KC center back Matt Besler for the CONCACAF Cup is, it must be said, an encouraging sign. Credit where it’s due, even if Besler never should have been left off the Gold Cup roster.)
Maybe this is where all of that success in meaningless friendlies gets matched by crunch-time victories in competitive matches.
And maybe all of that will be driven by The Others Who Are Ahead of Feilhaber. If that’s how things play out, I’ll wax Klinsmann’s lightsaber myself. But for now, a lot of the hopes that were raised so high when he was hired are still sinking, slowly and inexorably, like a tricycle in a Dagoban swamp.
