I agree with much of what was said in the above post. Arena was very hard done by key injuries and a big lack of depth. Yes, Donovan's moment to moment form hurt. This, for the most part was out of Bruce's control. There was little he could do about midfield depth. Next step was going to be Ralston or Zavaghnin. There was maybe a little more he could have done defensively, but we were down to Berhalter and Chris Albright at that point. However, Bruce hurt his case by keeping Eddie Johnson and Clint Dempsey on a short leash that year, afraid to roll them (mainly Dempsey) out there to sink or swim until it was too late..
LOL. 846199896080310273 is not a valid tweet id So according to Klinsmann's biographer, Erik Kirschbaum, he didn't get fired because we were at risk of missing the World Cup, but because there was a mass conspiracy against him, by the media, MLS, & the "business interests" in the league. What a clown.
It wasn't until his preparation for the world cup that I realized how poor a coach he was. At that point I jumped on the Donovan thread and started pointing out some obvious problems. Prior to that time he got pretty good results, although I tended to believe they were more in line with the quality of his team than anything special he was doing as a coach. However, his player selections for the world cup were a joke and his training sessions had more in common with the Bataan death march the world cup preparation. The one thing he did well in Germany was introduce more advanced fitness methods from US. At world cup he seemed to think significantly increasing the work load of very fit players would make the even better. As anyone with a clue knows, this isn't how it works. What happens is players break down which is why we suffered from such a rash of hamstring injuries in Brazil. The big clash with Donovan was probably due Klinsmann's disastrous fitness camps. Donovan always worked very hard at keeping his body healthy (guy played a tremendous amount of games each year) and likely wasn't to enthusiastic about letting a clueless fitness fanatic break it down. I think Besler (Notre Dame grad, so no dummy) was a player the somewhat puplicly clashed with Klinsmann over fitness. The so-called group of death was over also over rated. The competition was held in the America's which should have given the US a big advantage (Costa Rica won their group where Italy and England got knocked out). Furthermore, Ronaldo was not healthy which meant that in addition to having to play on the other side of the world, Portugal were nowhere near 100 percent. Ghana was in disarray do to non-payment issues and again players were traveling to the Americas. Germany played with one foot off the gas as Low was certainly not going to try to embarrass the guy who help get him the national team job - especially when they had the group won and it made more sense to rest everyone for the round of 16. We barely eked of a group would should have easily come in second and should have given Germany the type of fight they got in Korea. Only reason the Belgium game didn't turn into a complete embarrassment was because Howard stood on his head and played one of the best games in FIFA history as keeper. So we got the number of points that would be reasonable (especially considering soccer has a big element of chance), we did so playing like completely over matched minnows with a lot of good fortune on our side. We had the best team in our region yet played more like Honduras than Mexico or even Costa Rica. BTW, despite all the talk about how well Klinsmann did as coach of the German National team the reality is that Germany needed penalties just to reach the semi's as the host nation - something I believe they have done every World cup since 2002.
luckily is does not matter. His reputation is shite, especially in Germany. Notice how BL teams jumped at the chance to hire him?
The first game was. Italy will always be a great American moment. Ghana was a weird match. Seemed like the world was against us. Gooch PK. Ghana diving and faking injuries. And of course, Reyna turnover (which there are still several Pizzagate believers on this board who are convinced he was not injured on the play and just faked it out of embarrassment). The first game may have been worse than we portray, the other two were not as bad. It wasn't a 1998 collapse, but 0-2-1 coming off the previous WC, the 'world ranking' and the expectations that Donovan and Beasley were going to take the next step, there was disappointment for sure. We probably played as well (or poorly) as we did in 2014, with the results going the other way. Funny game that soccer.
This was posted earlier on the Klinsmann coaching thread, but it bears resharing . . . Klinsi's Wikipedia page has been edited, probably by Kirshbaum and it is probably the most favorable spin job you could imagine . . . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jürgen_Klinsmann#United_States 2018 World Cup qualificationEdit The U.S. notched a 1–0 win over Czech Republic to open the new 2018 World Cup cycle on 3 September, their first ever win over the Czechs.[citation needed] On 5 June 2015, Klinsmann guided the U.S. to a dramatic 4–3 win over the Oranje in a friendly in Amsterdam and another friendly victory over Germany five days later.[51] The United States men's national team entered the final stage of the 2018 World Cup qualifying cycle, known as the "Hexagonal", in November 2016 having compiled an outstanding record for the year up to that point of 12 wins, four losses, and one draw. Klinsmann had continued to evolve the team by bringing in emerging young players such as Christian Pulisic, a teenager who had earned his way into Borussia Dortmund's starting lineup, Jordan Morris, 2016 MLS Rookie of the Year, and Gyasi Zardes, forward for the Los Angeles Galaxy. The luck of the qualifying draw saw the United States men's national team face the two highest ranking CONCACAF teams, Mexico and Costa Rica, to begin the Hexagonal. Despite losing these two matches, the United States men's national team still had eight matches and a potential 24 points available to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Historically, only 15 points have been needed to qualify and Mexico qualified for the 2014 World Cuphaving earned only 11 points in the Hexagonal. Nevertheless, U.S. Soccer Federation officials removed Klinsmann as the U.S. men's national team manager on 21 November 2016, replacing him with Bruce Arena, who had been previously dismissed as U.S. men's national team coach after his team failed to move beyond the group stage of the 2006 World Cup.
I was at that game. And I have to admit, watching the play live, as it unfolded, it sure looked like he was not injured. Only when I got to see the replay, it became more clear that he was not only injured but fouled.
... and his entire defensive back line was abandoning him and moving into more difficult passing lanes. Not 1 defender provided him support in the defensive 3d of the field. But that's been debated ad nauseum in the past...
Surprised? No. Chagrined? Yes. For myself, the most irksome aspect of Jurgen's tenure was his absolute refusal to ever accept a shred of responsibility for specific structure or actions or play of his team. Heck, he almost never even had the testicular fortitude to set out a basic "the buck stops here" responsibility.... He let's his son and his biographer, for crap's sake, take the hit of having their name behind his words of contempt. His problem was MLS? His problem was the absence of promotion & relegation? It's hilarious, in a sad and pathetic way.
Favorited by one of the Klinsmann clowns on our side of the pond Ben Fast, who no doubt completely believes this bull$hit. Pretty much standard narcissistic personality disorder... he should run for office!
What did Klinsmann actually do well? Recruiting. Player management with some of the kids in our pool that needed a boost. If he was just a motivational speaker and cheerleader, he'd be pretty darn good. 846348685961236481 is not a valid tweet id
bobby wood jordan morris and yedlin are jk's biggest successes...kind odd all 3 missed arena's first official match...not saying its not coincidence...still weird though considering these guys would def not be where they are without JK.
It's pretty obviously coincidental. Yedlin and Wood are starters, and Morris got injured in his last MLS game. I don't know, I don't want to give JK too much "credit" for his recruiting. He also tried out Julian Green, Terrance Boyd, and shoehorned in John Anthony Brooks early (which was a good decision). It's not like every player he touched turned to gold. I'm glad that JK seemingly ramped up the dual-national recruitment policy because I'm interested in all Americans in the world getting the opportunity to represent us, but I don't think it means all that much. His job was to win games against lesser opponents consistently, and against better opponents when possible. He didn't take us to the next step w/r/t top teams, and he didn't beat lesser teams enough. So long.
Nothing wrong with giving Klinsmann his due. He was quite good at giving chances even to marginal players, when they were playing abroad. Even Fafa and Stanko got the call.
Worth noting that all of Green, Boyd, and Brooks were called up by youth teams prior to Klinsmann becoming manager of the USMNT. The USYNT coaches and the USSF had been working on those kids for a while. In fact, it was the much-maligned Thomas Rongen who was heavily involved in all of this. I have a feeling that all three of those guys in particular would have represented the US with or without Klinsmann (Zelalem as well). Mostly because Germany's interest in all three waned. Note this nice piece by Brian Sciaretta: Thomas Rongen Recalls Bringing John Brooks to U.S. http://americansoccernow.com/articles/thomas-rongen-recalls-bringing-john-brooks-to-u-s "If Bryan Arguez doesn't get sold from D.C. United to Hertha Berlin, Brooks probably would have fallen by the wayside. I knew some players in Germany, like Julian Green, and I had just discovered Mix Diskerud. So I convinced Sunil [Gulati] to give me some money to go to Europe and look at some players. I had not made the connection yet at Hertha until I got a phone call from Bryan, who said, 'Coach, there's three Americans on this team.' And I was like, 'What are you talking about?'" Arguez was referring to John Brooks, Terrence Boyd, and Jerome Kiesewetter. Rongen used his new scouting budget to schedule a trip to watch them play. Brooks was the youngest of the three and only 16. Over the years, Rongen had assembled a long list of players based abroad—many were dual-nationals who grew up abroad—that he wanted to evaluate. As he continued to talk to people, the list continued to grow. Note this excerpt as well: In a 2013 interview with American Soccer Now, Brooks himself citied Rongen’s initial involvement as a significant factor why he decided to choose the United States over Germany. While the German national team is a tough team to make, Brooks was still very much on the radar for German youth national teams and he once played for the German U-20 team. His heart, however, was always with the United States and Rongen’s efforts to get to know him personally was a factor. For all the Rongen haters out there for the Subotic saga, his subsequent recruits have more than made up for it.
No no no I was told every single dual national ever associated with the program was to be credited to Jurgen.
I'll give him credit for Morris. But Yedlin was clearly the best RB in our pool from late in the MLS season on and had huge advocates within US Soccer. Jeff Agoos, one of the heads of development at the time, named Yedlin as his top prospect at the time. I would really love the inside scoop on his selection, since favoring MLS players was hardly JK's MO. And keep in mind that JK kept playing Yedlin as a mid, not a RB. So that's a mark against him Morris... let's go 50/50 there. On the one hand, the coincidence of Stanford training with the US team alerted JK to a fit, fast forward. And he did accelerate his Nats career. But Morris was also the star forward at a big time, championship winning college program who won the Herman trophy. It's not like he was laboring in obscurity somewhere. His path was not all that different than Charlie Davies a few years before, and Larin's the year before.
With Dad doctor on Sounders and being a star on Stanford, Morris was the best known kid in the whole college system. He would end up in Seattle and his rookie year would make him NT candidate anyway. He wouldn't have a couple friendlies goals. That's it.
Yedlin, yes, he'd have been discovered by someone else. Morris, not so sure. However, credit is given to whoever makes the discovery, regardless of whether someone else could have made it. That's why they give Nobel Prizes to the "discoverer" of some physical principle, even if 50 other people found it out the following year.
Unless you can go back in time and hire another coach in place of Klinsmann, then compare the results, we'll never really know about any of this. Does Klinsmann deserve credit for this, did he deserve blame for that - at the end of the day, he was a coach who had some successes and some failures. Aside from a few writers who apparently think we were fielding some kind of dream team at World Cup 2014 and underachieved by only reaching the elimination round - I think most people would say his tenure wasn't an unqualified catastrophic failure. And similarly, aside from a few writers who apparently think that Americans had a burning revulsion of all things related to ball and foot and it was Klinsmann who brought us enlightenment - I think most people would agree his tenure wasn't a major success, either. I do think his firing was merited - setting aside the debate of his results, he was becoming the focal point of a lot of tension and anxiety, among fans, media, and probably among players and staff themselves. It's not as simple as "he lost the locker room" and the players rebelled against him - because unlike those situations, Klinsmann did have supporters. Or, at least, players who had a lot of regard for him (Remember, for a lot of these guys, Klinsmann was the only national team coach they'd ever known - that alone would've gained him a certain measure of their loyalty). But, Klinsmann also had players who really, really, really disliked him. Couldn't stand him. Wanted him gone. Talked to SportingNews about it. Which meant a lot of strong, conflicting emotions in the locker room. If you were a supporter or an opponent, then the locker room is like having to sit down with your enemies. And if you were among the players who didn't feel strongly either way, then that locker room is like trying to sit through Thanksgiving dinner during a major intra-family dispute. No wonder players were saying they felt anxious and stressed. So Klinsy had to go. I say wish him well, good luck in whatever, then move on and never think about him until maybe 20 years from now, when we've all forgotten about it and we give Klinsmann a promotional plaque on a wall at USSF headquarters or whatever.