Well my point was that JK's "challenges" were empty words. Made for some good sound clips for the rah-rah "you tell 'em!" crowd who eats that stuff up, but at the end of the day JK was like any other coach. He had his favorites regardless of league. And some inclusions were far more questionable than others.
Every coach makes stupid decisions. Arena failed to make the WC and couldn't even get a draw while Jones, Fabian, Chandler, McKennie, Williams, Miazga, Cameron and Lichaj were all basically told you're not good enough. But Zusi was. And Tim Ream. But the emotion and vitriol isn't tied to it as it was to Landon, where almost the entire landscape hated Jurgen, personally, from that day forth and every bit of analysis was pushed thru the Landon fiasco lens. And Arena gets off lightly because he's American. It was the main reason. You can use the search engine to see it if you like. There's only about 20K posts proving it. Even Garber went after Jurgen for it in an emotionally unstable press conference.
You can also search for the threads in 2006/07 and see many people were opposing having him as our coach even back then, considering his lack of experience.
Except I never said he was the root of all problems. I said a lot of his rhetoric was empty sports talk, which goes for coaches across the board, not just him. I think far too much is made of some grand feud between Klinsmann and other elements of U.S. soccer, and not enough attention paid to his actual NT results. I have no preference between Klinsmann and Arena. I think they're both of a very similar level as far as coaches go. Maybe Klinsi and his more youthful energy (compared to Arena) would've been better for the hex in hindsight, but I totally understand why he was fired. And I think he would've been fired sooner if we had the "people yell at you in supermarkets" culture he spoke about.
The Klinsmann Effect is the division and animosity he creates. We'll be living under the effects of those for a long time, we're not Germany or Bayern to recover with his departure.
Our fractured culture amplifies that animosity all the more. Even discussion of Pulisic, rare bright spot that he is, often has people at each other's throats around here.
MLS, Garber, MLS media, fans who hate JK, etc are much more divisive than anything JK ever did or said.
Indeed, and you won't see me defending Arena's decision to send out Beasley and Zusi as outside backs against Honduras. But Klinsmann made that sort of run-of-the-mill error as well. The Donovan omission was something else on top of his ordinary mistakes, and it was on an entirely different level. Off the top of my head, I have trouble thinking of a less defensible personnel decision by any World Cup coach in recent years. Maradona snubbing Zanetti for Otamendi in 2010 (for example) or the aforementioned Walcott inclusion were bad, but not as bad. Assuming that the subsequent reaction from US fans was due to irrational nationalism requires ignoring the level of incompetence that was involved.
I’ve thought about a thread with this question but thought it was obvious. Maybe we should do a poll. I personally don’t think Klinsmann did or said anything that controversial and people over reacted again and again and again. I’d add that Klinsmann cares about and has done more for our national team than MLS and Garber.
I thought our 2-0 loss at home was more embarrassing and could have had a worse scoreline. Followed by two of the most pathetic games the US has ever played at Honduras and T&T.
If you think about it honestly Bruce wins only with Stacked teams. If saddled with Journeymen I would take Porter Marsh or nearly anyone else. At least JK was going in a different direction. Any time such a change is effected there will inevitably be ups and downs. My problems is/was that Arena was never going to be a savior. Only had one star... That star far outplays, out-thinks, out-moves and out-positions his teammates.
That's not really the issue. When it was Jurgen coaching, any failure/problem was put on him. It was a collective witch hunt by the soccer establishment. When Arena ultimately failed, suddenly the problem is our players, our league, our system, our development, etc. Now everyone is crying for change. Yet when Jurgen mildly hinted at those same issues the same soccer establishment ignored him, said he was essentially clueless, Garber told him to fall inline, yet now here we are with most acknowledging those same issues. You yourself have admitted this. You thought the problem was Jurgen not using our deepest/best player pool ever. You then said if a guy like Arena couldn't succeed with that same pool, you'd have to admit Jurgen was actually right. So here we are, the players aren't good enough. And when you start asking why that is you naturally return to the systemic problems Jurgen brought up. And that's the biggest threat to the establishment, hence the war against Jurgen.
Ha! however you measure Klinsmann he was a failure. A new age guru who thinks Donnie Moore can rip phone books by virtue of positive thinking. An embarrassment of monumental proportions. Allerdyce, Hiddink, (why not SGErikkison?) are cut from the same euro genius embarrassment cloth. They win with talent and lose without it. So could any of us.
Understanding why doesn't need to feel like Jurgen was victimized though. For one, still a lot of people are blaming Arena. And two, when a second coach fails with the same group, then it's more likely that the issue is the players. Occam's Razor. We don't need a premise of personal bias to understand why the difference.
Klinsmann invited a fraud, a charlatan, a fake, to address our team before a world cup qualifyer v Jamaica (the Brad Evans goal) why? Because Jurgen actually believed Moore had special powers that Dempsey and Howard should channel. Embarrassing. Over reaction by me? only if you already agree that euro half-wits have no business guiding our national team.
I don't think JK was very good. I think Bruce ended up "worse", but that's not really important. What's important is the fact that JK's flaws (e.g crazy lineups, no Landon, heavy reliance on fullbacks despite our pool not producing them, etc.) were used to excuse Bruce's flaws (e.g tactical inflexibility, massive over-reliance on old/experienced players, lack of experimentation, etc.). No coach is going to be perfect. But we shouldn't excuse one coach because another coach has flaws. Nobody says "The 2006 WC failure isn't a big deal because Bob Bradley's teams consistently gave up early goals." Then why is "Bruce relying on old players is fine, because JK alienated MLS!" a valid excuse? Consistently, when someone would raise an issue with Bruce's lineups/tactics/player selection, the argument would come back to JK's mismanagement of the team... Jurgen's management has no impact on whether a CB pairing with Omar Gonzalez is going to work against teams with fast attackers. Jurgen's experimentation with many Euro-based players has no effect on Bruce's decision to start Zusi over and over again.
I can think of a number of reasons to discuss this now. I think that 3/4 of those that answered the poll (probably close to >90% of those who post on USAM and USMN&A) were wrong on the initial questions as well as many thoughts they used to support them. It also appears that most of them have learned little from this experience. My observation is their view on things have stayed the same and what has transpired was due to a few scapegoats... Gulati, Bradley and Altidore. We need to move forward, but if we move forward with same thing, we will remain stuck where we’ve been for the last 20 years. We need to do things differently across the board... more access to play for young players (underprivileged included), improved coaching from mls down to the youngest ages, better scouting, more competition, etc. As far as coaching goes, the criteria I hear the most are great tactician, American, and knows the player pool. I personally don’t think any of those three are near the top of the list of what we need right now. The complaints I recall against Klinsmann were Didn’t get results (or play well and proactive as he promised)in matches... some important, some with importance arguable not a good tactician, excluded LD, do things different than he preached Played players out of position picked players based on league they play in, too much focus on fitness, sh!t on mls (which really means saying mls isn’t ideal league, they should extend their season and shouldn’t play during fifa window, ignored unproven mls players), Arrogant and condescending Overpayed All of this meant anytime they didn’t win or play well (both required), people were demanding for him to be fired... irregardless of who would replace him. It wasn’t about the team but a personal feeling toward the person, which isn’t a valid reason. I grouped these into three categories where the top is reasonable (but overplayed by many), understood but misplaced, and ones that don’t really matter or I flat out disagree with. The only result that was really disturbing was the Mexico loss at home. We played them tough and a few mins and set piece goal away from a draw, but still a loss. Having streak of 4 wins in Columbus (or more dramatic if described as 15 years) doesn’t really matter. Streaks end all the time. It is unfortunate, but bound to happen. Losing at Costa Rica was bad but the mantra of the team quitting is overplayed The 2015 GC was incredibly exaggerated as many players were missing and lineups were experimental. We’ve lost the gold cup before and there wasn’t near the outrage. We’ve won and most don’t care. This next section is misplaced in what we need, an over attachment to a player, and those who think we need a Boy Scout leader as a coach. As I mentioned below, I think tactics is very low on what we need as a coach given our pool. I’m not going to get into an LD debate, but will simply state he was our most talented player ever, lots of controversy surrounding him in the prior 18 months and flawed player who was inconsistent in what could be expected from him in and across games. It was a risky decision, but once we got out of the group, it was no longer a mistake to me. Not taking responsibility and disagreeing with fans attacks on him aren’t high on my list of things I care about. I also agree with JK that a lot of US fans are very naive and attacks on his son are very disgusting. Playing players out of position is a minor complaint in this sport and only highlighted how one dimensional most of our players are. Pushing them to expand their skill set seems more like a positive. The rest is just irrelevant to me. His comp and could care less about his arrogance/condescension. I don’t see anything wrong about his comments about mls, have seen others say the exact same thing, and I agree with all of them. I didn’t see him ignore any mls player who clearly could have helped the team or didn’t bring baggage with them. His controversial selections almost always included younger players with lots of potential. We absolutely need to be a fitter side and the arguments about our fitness in the past miss the mark. Our competition plays 40+ games a year and is also prepared for the WC. There is no way we are going to able to compete playing 70% of the games or not being at peak fitness. People demanded getting rid of JK to replace him with someone who had many of the similar traits and other problems. Arena didn’t get results, not a good tactician, played players out of position (to a much worse impact), picked players based on league (in a much more limiting way), arrogant and condescending. On top of that he made divisive comments about what it meant to be American and them made selections consistent with that (coincidence or not) that very much limited our rosters. He over rotated players and got a result (luck?) and overplayed players and looked flat. Arena dismantled a core of players by getting rid or or not playing Jones, FJ, Chandler, and Cameron to be replaced by Villafana, Gonzalez, Zusi, and Nagbe. He catered to players and put them where they wanted to play and was ineffective... Bradley isn’t a dmid, Nagbe can’t control the midfield and FJ is wasted in midfield if he doesnt have players to combine with. As I said before, I didn’t think we need a tactician the last two cycles or the coming one. We need a guy who has experience at the highest levels that commands respect from the players. He needs to have an eye for talent. He needs to want to and be willing to work with young players. He needs to demand the players continue to raise their games and go about it in a professional manner (if a player can do that in mls, fine, but most wont be able to). He basically needs to take what JK did well and build off it. Which is in contrast to many people who want to make out his time as a complete disaster and throw everything out.