IT’S BEEN a tough couple of weeks here in America, one which has shown deep divisions within our country. But I do think there is one thing that Americans of all persuasions can come together on in complete agreement.
Jürgen Klinsmann sucks as a coach.
Klinsmann’s response to criticism, in the aftermath of USA FC’s appalling two-step misstep – first losing to El Tri in Columbus, followed by a 4:0 pasting at Costa Rica – was to tell reporters that his critics don’t know anything about the game.
“The fact is, we lost two games. There is a lot of talk from people who don't understand soccer or the team. What you need to do is stick to the facts. Soccer is emotional, and a lot of people make conclusions without knowing anything about the inside of the team or the sport.”
Which is interesting, of course, because it plays upon the whole “idiot American” complex that U.S. soccer has spent most of the past 26 years trying to rid itself of. That’s right, we here in the United States don’t know anything about the game and how it’s supposed to work. Never mind that, you know, the professional league in the U.S. has the 6th highest attendance of any league in the world – higher than Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, or what have you. Never mind that the one World Cup held here is the most attended and widely considered the most successful of such tournaments of all time. Never mind that the Copa América, when held in the U.S., drew more than double the attendance of the previous rendition of the tourney in Chile in 2015. For a country that doesn’t know anything about the game of soccer, we sure do seem to like it.
And we obviously don’t know anything about soccer here, because the fact of the matter is that in any nation on earth where they do take the game seriously, Jürgen Klinsmann would’ve gotten himself fired by now. That he hasn’t speaks to the level of patience and the relatively modest set of American expectations. Hell, Dunga got fired last summer about 10 minutes after Brazil lost to Peru and got ousted from the Copa América Centenario. Mexico went through four coaches during their traumatic and dysfunctional qualification campaign for the 2014 World Cup. In places where they “know about soccer,” they also tend to be knee-jerk and pessimistic and believe that the sky is falling after every bad result. Jürgen Klinsmann has had it easy for most of his tenure, working dual roles as both the head coach of USA FC and the technical director of the national federation. He’s been given far more time than anyone else, in any other high-profile footballing nation, could ever expect to receive given the results that he has produced.
Well, the time is up. After last week’s World Cup qualifying debacle, which saw the U.S. lose its first two games of the CONCACAF Hexagonal, Sunil Gulati and the rest of the USSF had finally seen enough. Klinsmann is out, having been fired today from both positions.
And you have to put these two games in proper context here. These are two games against the two best teams in this part of the hemisphere. In the U.S., you are judged by how you stack up against Mexico and against Costa Rica. You play El Tri in Columbus, where you have dominated them in the past. Just totally, completely dominated them. “Dos a cero” has become a rallying cry for the U.S. soccer faithful because of this. Columbus is every bit the house of horrors for El Tri that their home grounds, the Estadio Azteca, has been for the Americans. You have the mental edge and confidence and swagger on your side – factors which should never be discounted – and what does Klinsmann do with this?
Oh hey, let’s play a back three! Sure, we’ve never played this before, and we have no idea whether or not it would work, but what could be better timing for going into some experimental art house period with the team than when they’re playing their biggest rival in a World Cup qualifier?
What the actual fuck?
But Klinsmann does this sort of shit all the time. He plays guys out of position, he switches things up for no apparent reason and you never have any idea what the team is going to look like. It’s all a big mystery, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when it doesn’t work – which it often doesn’t, and which often shows itself to be a problem right at the start of the game.
Somewhat predictably, this shift to a
And here is where something very, very important comes into play which people haven’t really thought enough about. During a break in the action, Michael Bradley and Jermaine Jones – two of the senior players on the team, one of whom is the captain – go over to the sidelines and tell Klinsmann that this cheeky new 3-in-the-back formation doesn’t work worth a damn, at which point the formation gets changed to their usual 4-4-2 and then, lo and behold, the U.S. suddenly starts playing well! How about that!
The U.S. equalizes and controls play for most of the second half, only to lose on a header from Rafa Marquez late on a corner – a combination of a brilliant finish, terrible man marking from the U.S., lack of communication among the defense and a set-up which made no sense, as the U.S. had no one marking the posts on the corner. This is a sloppy, disorganized mess of a play – but as I say, it still took a pretty great finish from Rafa Marquez to result in a goal. But this is what happens in soccer. Scoring is often a mixture of both the ridiculous and the sublime.
The bigger issue here, of course, is the fact that the U.S. basically conceded the first 20’ of the game to their opponent, got themselves in a hole and were thus chasing the game, and why were they doing this? Because Klinsmann decided to be cute with his tactics. And when asked about it after the game, Klinsmann said basically that it didn’t work because Bradley and Jones – the two guys who said “get this back three nonsense out of here” – didn’t play it right. He goes and throws two of his vets, including his captain, under the bus in the press. It’s true that Bradley didn’t play worth a damn, but you don’t go throwing the captain under the bus, outing him in the press like that. Players take their cue from the captain. That’s a pretty good way to get yourself in trouble as a coach. It was at that very moment that I knew the Costa Rica game was likely to be a disaster.
Which it was, as the U.S. got crushed and deserved to get crushed. Honestly, they looked like they were trying to get Klinsmann fired. Another guy Klinsmann felt free to throw under the bus after the Mexico game, John Brooks – who was, without question, the best player on the pitch for the U.S. in the Copa América – perhaps unsurprisingly made a whole series of comedic errors in the central defense which led to easy goals for the Ticos. But he wasn’t alone, of course. The entire back line was a shambles, the central midfield was a turnover machine, and the U.S. created one good scoring chance in the entire match. Once this game got to 2-0 early in the second half, the players quit on Klinsmann. They flat-out quit on him, and quite honestly, you cannot blame them for doing that. You look to the guy on the bench for guidance, for leadership and for decision-making, and instead you’ve got this guy slagging you in the press and calling you out while showing himself to have a tin ear for tactics. Who needs that?
Klinsmann had clearly lost the locker room, and when that happens, you can’t go back and put it back together. And unlike club football, where the solution is always just to throw money at the problem, you don’t have that option on the international level. You cannot go out and buy another center back or central midfielder (even though nations have certainly tried). You have to dance with what you brung.
And if you’re a player, why would you want to play for this guy? Remember, international soccer is something which players do on their off time. They play professionally for nine months, and they shoehorn in a couple of weeks here and there, when a lot of their teammates essentially get in-season vacations to rest and heal up, and they go jetting across the globe to play for their country, often for very little compensation if they even get compensated at all. (Time and again, most often in Africa, you hear stories of federations not paying players for their international duty and creating needless strife.) Guys do this out of loyalty and because it’s a huge honor to be capped by your country. They take it very seriously. But if your coach shows himself to be arrogant, selfish, and a tactical amateur, then why do you want to go through with that? Why do you want to put yourself through more games, risking more chances of injury? At that point, it isn’t worth it.
Gulati really had no choice but to fire Klinsmann, at this point. At zero points and -5 spread, all of the margin of error for USA FC is gone. CONCACAF has 3½ places in the World Cup, with whomever finishing fourth in The Hex having to play a logistical nightmare of a playoff series against an Asian team in order to reach Russia in 2018. The apologist could say “oh, it’s fine, just win the four remaining home matches and there is 12 points right there, which would at least get you into the playoff, and then scrounge up some draws here and there on the road,” but given how generally bad this team has played in the past couple of years, I wouldn’t make that assumption. This team lost to Jamaica at home in a Gold Cup semifinal. This team lost to Guatemala earlier this year. This team shouldn’t lose to Guatemala ever under any circumstance. And like I say, the margin for error is gone. You lose the next game at home to Honduras in March and you’re toast. There was no more room for “wait and see” here, since there was no guarantee Klinsmann could rally any enthusiasm at all from the players he would have at his disposal.
Thus concludes a frustrating, stop-and-start tenure for Klinsmann, who came in talking big about how he was going to transform American soccer and make it proactive and attacking and exciting, but whose successes mostly stemmed from the time-tested American footballing ethos of pragmatism and mental toughness. Don’t go promising one thing and then getting your nose bent out of joint when people complain that you’ve failed to deliver on it.
And guess what? There is nothing wrong with pragmatism and mental toughness. I’m totally cool with that. It’s a results-oriented business, in the end. Ask the Portuguese which means more to them: all of the beautiful football they’ve played in the past 20 years which amounted to nothing, or the tenacious and resourceful approach which brought them a championship at Euro 2016? And you can still be exciting even in that context. I watched the better part of all 64 games of the World Cup in 2014, and the two most exciting games of the entire tournament involved the U.S. – the 2:2 draw with Portugal and the loss in OT to the Belgians in the Round of 16 which was one of the nuttiest, craziest, wackiest World Cup matches I’ve ever seen.
 |
| God damn it, Wondo ... |
But one of the things about that particular match with the Belgians, which I wondered about at the time, was that I felt like, when it came to tactics, Klinsmann got it wrong. His team turned into a donut, with a big gaping hole in the middle of the pitch through which the Belgians sent one rampaging attack after another. Wondo’s missing of a sitter in stoppage time cost them a victory, to be sure, but this game could have been 8-0 if Tim Howard hadn’t put in the most heroic goalkeeping performance I’ve ever seen. Klinsmann got brutally out coached in that game by Marc Wilmots, of all people, whose lack of tactical prowess on the Belgian bench got him fired this summer after they looked completely confused and clueless in the Euros.
And this happened time and again. It’s hard enough for the U.S. to match up with teams who have superior talent, but it’s made even harder when you get out coached. Klinsmann got out coached by a temp last October in the CONCACAF playoff with El Tri, his team unable to adjust to a very simple ploy from the Mexicans of bunching three center forwards and having them interplay with one-another. Boom, quick goal for Mexico, you’re down 1-0 and you’re chasing the game. I went to their match with Colombia this summer at The Pants in Santa Clara, when Los Cafeteros scored so fast that I’d not even reached my seat. Boom, quick goal, you’re down 1-0 and you’re chasing the game again, and no point, in the rest of that match, did I nor any of the others who had made the trip with me down the peninsula think that the U.S. was going to figure out how to get back in the game. They never did. His idea for combatting Argentina was to run out a bunch of tired old retreads in a lineup that screamed “we’re parking the bus and playing for penalties.” Boom, quick Argentina goal, you’re down 1-0 and you’re chasing the game again, this time with a team on the field that is incapable of even getting a shot off, much less scoring. I’ve seen this movie and I know how it ends.
Klinsmann apologists like to point out that they lost games to the Belgiums and the Mexicos and the Argentinas of the world because they didn’t have the talent – which is true, I suppose, but the U.S. didn’t have the talent in 2010 and 2002, either, and did a whole lot better in the World Cups in both cases. If anything, Klinsmann can’t use the ‘lack of talent’ excuse, since as technical director, his role is supposedly to develop that talent. He has, in fact, done a really good job beating the bushes for players overseas and finding Germans and Mexicans and Icelandics with American lineage who are eligible to play. Some knuckleheads may have a problem with this, but if the rules say you’re an American then, by God, you’re an American. The U.S. talent pool presently has players plying their trade right now with clubs in the Premiere League, the English Championship, the Bundesliga, the Eredivisie, Serie A, Liga MX, etc., etc. He has more talent as his disposal than any American coach in history, and he’s trotting out a team that’s losing to Guatemala.
In the end, this team has not improved. Three years ago, this was the best team in the region. Given the recent spate of results, that is clearly no longer the case. The team is stagnant at best, and regressing at worst. And you can’t come in making promises and raising expectations, and then recoil when those expectations haven’t been met. Personally, I wanted him gone in 2015 after that disastrous Gold Cup, when the U.S. finished fourth and even the victories were shaky and unimpressive, and that 3:2 loss to El Tri in the playoff at the Rose Bowl was appalling for just how needlessly incoherent the U.S. were while playing a Mexican team with a stop-gap coach that seemed almost as rudderless and directionless as the U.S. was before the game. I had no confidence going forward from there, and this team has failed to meet even my meager expectations since then. I was supportive of the hire of Klinsmann when it first happened, as I felt Bob Bradley’s tenure had gotten stale, and since Klinsmann had done a good job contributing to the ‘Das Reboot’ of German football in the early 2000s, but I’m tired of all of the promises which are unkept, and I’m tired of substandard results.
But then again, I’m an American, so what do I know?
And where does the USSF go from here? The obvious candidate at the moment is Bruce Arena, who led USA FC to the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 2002 and has won all sorts of silverware with the L.A. Galaxy in MLS. I’m not really crazy about this idea, since I’d like to see some new blood and new ideas, but Arena does represent a safe pair of hands, and a compelling argument could be made here for some stability. Arena spouting off last year about how he believes all USA FC players should be American-born doesn’t help matters either – he needs all hands on deck at this point, and the fact is that in the present a whole bunch of his best players happen to have been born abroad, and the future holds the same sort of quandary (eight of the members of the U-23 squad are foreign born). Another name that’s been floated is Peter Vermes, who presently coaches at Sporting Kansas City, and he doesn’t excite me either although I admit there may be some recency bias here, since all I ever seem to hear about him is his whining about officials all of the time, which I’m tired of.
I’d like to see the USSF take a broader look here and see what sorts of candidates are out there, as there may be more good ones than they realize. Because this is a good job. Lots of resources, a stable federation, a generally patient and supportive fan base, a relatively easy region in which you play – what’s not to like about that? My ideal possible candidate who they’ll never, ever hire is former El Tri coach Miguel Herrera: the guy knows CONCACAF, he knows American soccer very well from coaching at Tijuana, and anyone who can keep getting great results with the Xolos clearly knows what the hell he is doing. He won’t get the job, of course, because of his off-field behavior, but the point is that the USSF should be looking for something more than just a run-of-the-mill MLS guy. We need some new ideas, but my suspicion is that the USSF won’t be willing to take that kind of a risk.
US Soccer finds itself in a strange place at the moment. The demand for MLS is growing, as there are cities lined up clamoring for franchises. The product on the field, meanwhile, continues to be somewhat muddled as the league still can’t figure out what it wants to be. Some of the most recent forays into big name foreign signings – guys like Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard – have proven to be massive wastes of money, but few clubs seem to be putting in due diligence in regards to figuring out the right sorts of players to be signing. The USSF also has a big mess on its hands in dealing with the Women’s National Team, who are now threatening to strike over equal pay and understandably so, seeing as how its they, and not the men, who are the brightest stars of the American game.
But then again, U.S. soccer has always been in a strange place. FIFA doesn’t like the U.S., but know they can’t get by without it, at this point. At a moment’s notice, FIFA knows they could move any tournament in the world to the U.S., hold the event there and have it be a massive success. And what other nation on earth serves as a de facto home field for another nation the way the U.S. does for Mexico, who pretty much exclusively play their home friendlies stateside? It’s a strange, strange place to be.
But I personally have always liked the fact that, on the world scale, the U.S. is an underdog in soccer. I like the fact that we’ve had to win people over, both on and off the pitch, and generally done so, be it through overachieving or through our loyal, enthusiastic, positive followers in the stands. I liked all of that, but you can still keep all of those characteristics while also improving on the pitch. I wanted to see USA FC get better and the bottom line is that it isn’t. And Klinsmann trivialized a lot of what has made American soccer good over the years. He demeaned it and belittled it, but in the end, wound up no better off than any of his predecessors. I don’t like seeing anyone lose their job, but that performance against Costa Rica was as abject as any I’ve seen from an American side in the last 30 years. We can do better than this.
