Jurgen said plenty of positive things about the league and its growth. This is naive. We've had players flocking to Euro academies for many, many years. They choose to go based on opportunity, dreams, family and their agents. Compound that with the states being largely untapped and an increasing number of foreign scouts here and the number going abroad has increased. Pulisic, McKennie, Sargent, et al, didn't go abroad because of the German. If you follow them you know its been the plan since they were little kids. Never mind that Jurgen helped get Cameron, Yedlin, Shea, Agudelo, Morris, Besler, Zusi and Omar Euro deals/opportunities. Zusi didn't impress on trial. Besler turned down offers. Omar blew out his knee on trial. Agudelo decided to hang in Manchester for 8 months and look into Cyprus real estate. Shea bombed. Morris' mom bought him a dog so he stayed home. Blaming Jurgen for a failure of a generally weak generation is about as ridiculous as claiming Pulisic/McKennie went abroad and were successes because of him, because they simply did what he told them to do.
+1. The pipeline from MLS to Europe dried up because of catastrophic failures to properly scout and train players born between 1990-1995. By their very birth years one already knows Jurgen had zilch to do with it. The youngest of these lost generation players were 15/16 when Bob was fired. At that point the damage in scouting failures was already done and the bulk of development failures were as well. Those failures rest w/MLS/the fed itself and the whole infrastructure in place during the Sunil years and a few of the years before it. It bears the fingerprints of a ton of people, known and unknown, rather than any one pseudovillain.
Nope... it is just plain stupid. It has been about 8 years since he was hired. Big time teams/leagues are scouting our players like crazy and the numbers being spent on them are beyond what we have ever seen. CP broke down the door and has been an inspiration to those coming after him. His success is probably top 3 of the most influential things that have happened to US soccer. He is doing what LD chose not to do 20 years ago. The only thing holding US soccer back from improving is the insular nature of our federation and horrible structure from MLS down to youth programs. The reactionary response of hiring Arena to be the anti-klinsman and Berhalters over use of MLS players has played a major role in the USMNT dropping off from where it had been under Klinsmann. Fortunately, the kids are ultimately going to make it impossible to ignore them. Interestingly, the biggest improvements in MLS over the last 5 years were their reactions to Klinsmann's presence and kids bypassing MLS... aka, competition!
Another ex-player says JK was right on the mentality of American players: “I think Jurgen (Klinsmann) touched on it a lot. A lot of the things that he spoke about were true,” said Beasley. “The mentality of American players, it’s once you get to a certain level, you think you’ve done it all, you think you’ve done it all and that’s it. That’s what the problem is. https://sbisoccer.com/2019/08/damarcus-beasley-believes-mls-needs-promotion-and-relegation
My hate for Klinsmann is an eternal flame, love for Bease is much the same. I wouldn't agree what Beasley's saying is THE problem with American players is... but it's certainly a recurring problem, from the core of '94 vets on the '98 squad to Jermaine Jones. Is it possible, though, that our pool of international caliber players has been too small to expect we'd produce many individuals with that "global soccer legend" mentality? Never feeling they've arrived, or self-satisfied? Always desperate for greater success? That has to line up with incredible ability in the same individual. Don't you think Michael Bradley would be "that guy" if he had the physical gifts, and maybe Tab had the gifts but not the mentality?
Eh, certain posters hate Green because he’s associated with the JK/LD issue. They’ll never forgive him for something that’s not his fault. I think he’s a MLS/B2/Championship ceiling player like many in our pool (including several who have been called into every camp). Hard to bang a drum for him but doesn’t deserve the scorn he gets here.
To me our problems include the bridge from U20 to MNT goes through pro ball and we are requiring too much career progression to promote our own best prospects, effectively putting their club choices and coaches in the driver's seat of what should be our decision, and placing a road block right past U20 success before they can get to the NT quickly this fritters away our U20 advantage we push ambition too much and thus have several (10??) big league/club signees in loan hell or on a bench at a team that won't use them this fritters away another chunk of the talent pool who have nice resume stops but a new team every year, inconsistent playing time, etc. players don't do like they used to and calibrate moves to what will get them playing time and prepare for the NT -- oddly enough the template is Freddy Adu -- grab the $ and the biggest name possible right now we elevate club playing time over what is actually done with it and right now there is too much MLS mediocrity on the roster. that is not so much a slap on selecting MLS, as it is saying that since effing when did 3G 1A for a season in MLS make you a midfield dangerman (Mihailovic). or 3G 3A (Roldan), who I guess for that 2 assists more earns the right to double pointlessly at forward as well. it's not the 10 goal guys (Zardes, Jozy) killing us. it's the scrubs who should have had about one cap and been gone. "MLS" deserves its shot alongside everyone else. but we used to have a higher bar of excellence within MLS to get there. despite being in a clear youth rebuild period, experimentation is now very light despite mediocre results the selections and lineups seem done in the coach's head and non-responsive or glacially aware of actual field performance. half a year to sort out who is useless. that's only true if you let what's in your head override what you see on the grass, which takes 1-2 games max. the idea should be keep who plays well when given a chance not who you thought would play well and let's give them another chance last, the rosters don't seem guided by tactical considerations. like if we're down 1-0 to Mexico who is your bench to change that. height? speed? crossing? like you're assembling a workable tactically diverse bench and not just assembling your favorite trusted hustle players.
[moved from another thread] There are many posters who are so angry with Klinsmann that they state this repeatedly. Out of the many things to criticize Klinsmann for, I don't think this is a reasonable one.
Klinsman didnt do anything to set the program back. The problem has been the complete mismanagement since he left to undue the progress he actually made.
im probably too salty to rationally discuss the current USMNT but can you please explain what Klinsmann did that set back the program decade? - verbal diarrhea? - bad in-game tactics? - saying that our best players shouldn’t be playing in the minor leagues? these are all areas I’m happy to discuss but I can’t see how that set back the USMNT program past his term. the only thing I can think of is that he started the whole attractive attacking / possession soccer as quintessentially American concept and I do think that has been very damaging to the USMNT.
just to be clear, what exactly did he do to kill the American spirit? his insistence that we we play attractive attacking soccer rather than a defense first and then counter with fury? If so, I’m with you but that trend was accentuated by Berhalter.
He only killed the spirit of our soft players. We needed to weed those out for a long time. We've got right now what you and all the other clowns wanted. It is kind of annoying to listen to you guys complain when got what you asked for.
Continue to presume to know what I wanted. Jesus Christ. I wanted an experienced national team manager with a track record of getting teams to punch above their weight.