Let's talk about Jurgen (serious discussion only, please)

This seems overly harsh to me.

1) No matter the call ups, he will always get complaints.
a) Few Wingers- he intended and expected more of a possession oriented where speed was less important than skill on the ball and where wide attack came from the outside backs. The wingers were Johnson, Castillo, Dolo, Parkhurst. He intended Chandler in there instead of Parkhurst and had to go to his second string. Maybe that was a mistake, but not a huge one.
b) They system is desinged to control the middle both with possesion and defensively. That means three players that can play 2 way with ball winning and physicality. Complain about that all you want, decide another way is better. But its not a bad strategy with who we have.
c) Jones not played in as a 6. Its a grass is greenier scenario- as is not havign Lichaj. We have no idea if they are better options. Its wishful thinking. I read somewhere that Jones issues are being sometimes out of control. I've seen that. For what JK wants, thats a bad problem for a dmid. Second, Jones is a better two way midfielder than Edu. So if those are your three best midfiedlers, then it makes sense to play Jones as a two way mid rather than dmid, especially if he is sometimes erratic.

2) Conditioning. The style of play that JK is requiring the players to play takes great physcial condition. They are constantly attacking and pressuring on D and it requires lots of high energy off the ball movement on O. I think coming to the conlusion that it was JK's conditioning program that wore them down and not the system of play that is being used is biased. Its much more likely that his conditioning program is preparng them for hard and high energy matches. And that style wears them down- not the training.

3) I didn't see anything wrong with the tactics. I saw lots of problems with execution and limitations that the US player pool has regarding playing this style of soccer. The plan is develop the style while finding and developing the players. That in the future the two should meet and create somethign special. I think right now, we have a style of play that highlights the US player pool deficiences. Its expected. I hope by the WC, that players have improved and hte player selection and player pool has improved so that they are more closely aligned. But I don't think that will truly happen until after this WC and the younger kids who have been playing this style for years... are the mainstay.

Overally we are at teh top of our group. The US style is more attacking orineted. It plays at the bigger teams instead of constantly trying to pull of an upset. It tries to go toe to toe rather than punch up... It matches the vision stated coming in and hopefully it produces the long term results while not sliding backwards. So far it seems to be doing that. I hope progress continues.

 

There is a Klinsmann coaching thread for these kinds of subjective "rag on Klinsmann" conclusions. Are you hoping that someone would take each of your subjective conclusions and refute them with another set of subjective conclusions.

If you watched the match we went down to Guatemala and attacked and dominated them. We should have had at least 1 more goal on Jozy's score which was called back. We should have had a penalty on Jozy's mugging that was not called. They played hack-a-Jones (6 fouls called but should have been another 6) all match and we never lost our composure. Yes, they snatched a point on a brilliant perfect free kick at the end.

We are leading the group after the first 2 WCQ. Jamaica just managed 1 point at A&B so relax we are fine.

 

(referring to the Guatemala game, as this has really been the only 'serious' game so far: )
What surprised me and scared me somewhat, is that after 10 months of going forward and three weeks of intense practice, we looked like a team that has had zero training sessions together. We resorted to playing long, 'kick ball' soccer from the get-go. It was devoid of cohesion. A positional mess and the ball only seemed to move forward and backwards, never was there a period of lateral passes in order to dictate (the tempo) of the game.

I haven't figured out yet whether this was Klinsmann's game plan or if we were watching a showing of mutiny where some of the core players were executing a style of soccer they thought would be better suited to CONCACAF away games than what their coach had come up with for them.

 

I strongly disagree with this. There were moments were they did all of thse thngs very well. Then whole spells where it seemed like the forgot how. Mostly by Edu, Goodson, Boc, Dolo, or Howard sending wild clearances or long balls forward. Edu just clearned one ball all the way to the opposing keeper on one instance when he was completely unchallenged. It was weird.

Its still driving me nuts when the team is possessing the ball well in the back and he work it back to Howard and he just boots it foward for a 50/50 ball.

But there were also moments, usually with Donovan, Bradley, Jones, Johnson, and Dempsey coming back- where they won it, collected it, and moved the ball laterally, backwards or vertically as needed to move possession up to the attacking third... very clean and composed. Then some disconnect or foul (that seemed to always result to a american football field goal) would result.

They seem almost there but missing players in every position and some cohesion in the final third. I think Cam helped that a lot in the second half... in terms of composure... Edu was still a mess of good and bad and Jones was erratic with the good and bad.

But I think as a whole, there was as much good solid play as there was bad throughout the match. I would like to see it less even where teh good overwhelms the bad.... but that didn't happen.

 

He claims to be rabid about methodically and continually evaluating players in terms of everything from performance to fitness to leadership, and staff in terms of the former and the latter. How things change for the next camp will be an indication of whether or not this is true. The trouble spots are pretty obvious.

 

Jurgan has never convinced me... His Germany run at the world cup with germany its safe to say that he got that far because the team played in germany and lets face it the crop of players that make up the national team are far superior than the us team.... he was the wrong man for the job his club performance as a coach was nothing special.... He has an idea of what he wants he just cant find the way to implement his idea.....

Now US Soccer thought marcelo bielsa was asking for to much money and then discarded him when he said he wanted every one coaching in the youth teams out and replaced with his people... at the time the federation was protecting Novak thomas rongen and a whole crop of INFERIOR COACHES...

Marcelo Bielsa has a proven track record both with argentina and club teams.... his latest run with a crap out fit in spain shows with out a doubt what he has shown ever since day 1 he started coaching, he nurters talent knows how to work with what he has and is a winnning coach... he even spoke english yet the federation was coco for cocopuffs klingsman....



I have no doubt we will qualify from concacaf but man it wont get pretty after that, and i wont be surprised that under klingsman we lose to mexico home and away....

 

This is after my second viewing of the first half. Agreed, there were moments were we did all of those things well (not very), but altogether those were maybe three moments last for maybe 90 seconds in total. The other 45 minutes we were playing long balls, we were poorly playing it out of the back and we were unable to reach Gomez; Jones' right wing was non existent (but this again resembled Klinsmann's way of playing Williams on the 'right').

Same here, but half the time the defenders are not making themselves very available to receive the ball (back). You would like to think this is something Klinsmann would have worked on for the past three weeks.

Strongly disagree.

 

I havent' seen it a second time. So it may be that the second half was more helter skelter than I liked. How did you watch it a second time since it was on PPV? I wanted to and couldn't.

I remember the second half starting well and I remember moments of wtf? Not just long balls but wild clearances and poor long balls. Some long attacks are fine to open thing up and limit some of the high pressure. But they were pretty wild. I also remember Johnson, Dempsey, Bradley, LD doing a solid effort in trying to possess but restricted by Edu ( a lot) and to some extent Jones and the backs.

Did I nail the culprits correctly or did you see it coming from everyone? My question is why and I wonder if it was personnel related.

 

ok i need to go back and watch again. i didn't think it was a bad approach to the game. just not enough in the final third.

 

This is the long term view. Difficult to argue with this as the objective, and I agree it is going to take more than a cycle to see if the player pool catches up to the new playing style. There's certainly the risk it won't, but I'm happy with taking this path.

In the meantime, it's appropriate to ask if Jurgen invited the right players into this series -- given our player pool realities -- and then selected appropriately after he did.

In general, I believe the BigSoccer community is very good at second-guessing these types of decisions after the fact -- when we have actual in-game observations to support our arguments. This second-guessing minimizes two very real challenges faced by the coaching staff: 1. imperfect information on player form in advance of the camp, and 2. variability in player performances in actual games.

The fact that we had a few bodies on the subs bench rarely used is a result of challenge #1, and I actually view it as a positive sign that the coaching staff saw in training that form was not up to snuff for those players and sat them.

The fact that we had in-game errors like Gooch being turned against A&B is challenge #2. A few of you saw this risk clearly in advance. Some of you even vocalized that (in advance). Congrats to you. But the rest of us thought perhaps a season of Europa-league level play might just mean Gooch was back.

And let's also keep in mind -- Gooch didn't start that game. He was the #3 CB option who only came in after the Torres injury forced a sub. It was either him or a newbie to qualifying pressure in Cameron. It also means Jurgen rated an unproven Torres as a better defense option to start on the defensive line than either his #3 or #4 CB. So Jurgen probably had a good idea of the risks, but at that point in the game it's a risk he had to take.

Overall, easy for us to second-guess with 20-20 hindsight, but I don't see the same level of Jurgen criticism that most here do.

 

In order to play this system well and break down the bunkers we run into, we have to spread the play into the wide areas of the final third more. Donovan and Dempsey are not those kinds of players; often the only times we've seen threatening play from this area, it has been Gomez peeling out wide, leaving few options in the box.

After Shea was arguably one of the better performers in JK's sluggish early matches, it was surprising to see that he hasn't kept his place in Jurgen's seemingly ironclad group of regulars.

Beasley was player I was glad to see pulled off the scrap head when the new staff took over. Don't know why he isn't good enough now, considering the only thing he's done in the six months since his last call-up is put together his most consistent club season in years.

The lack of our few talented wide players in the roster is a concern; does Klinsmann seriously think Donovan and Dempsey are 4-3-3 wingers, especially at their advancing ages?

Strangely enough, I think Castillo should have been given a shot in these roles higher up the field, even as I agree with you that he's an inadequate left back.

At the end of a European club season in which (for a change) most of our top players put in 30+ starts, it's absurd to run them ragged for 3 weeks, in the South, in June.

In a tight series of friendlies (against two cupcakes and a U-23 team) before these qualifiers, most of the top players went almost 90 in each game. If we truly learned anything in the 2011 Gold Cup, it's that that's an absurd management strategy in this climate - and again, these were easy friendlies. If this was meant to breed "cohesion" in the team's play, it sure didn't show in the real games.

Last point is the most important. We obviously had better players capable of playing better football, but it never amounted to much, and indeed Guatemala seemed to create more dangerous chances. Overall, Klinsmann's teams have created relatively little offense.

We need either two strikers or one of Dempsey or Donovan assigned to play in the hole. There's just no plan for what to do in the final third unless Bradley and Jones can push up and attempt through balls and combos with the wingers, and against Guatemala, they couldn't do that.

Jozy and Herc seem like they would be a very complimentary partnership (have they ever played together before? Slovenia in the World Cup maybe?) and both are on the best form of their careers. Why not even (if the 4-3-3/4-5-1 is sacrosanct) play one of them as a winger while dropping one of Donovan/Dempsey into midfield?

These were your best points here.

JK seems to think that simply plugging Mexican league players into the lineup arbitrarily will result in more tiki-taka. Torres being on the field has resulted in a few neat little touches and sequences, but as with the rest of JFT's time on the field for the USMNT, it's amounted to very little. He's just not good enough right now to consistently do the stuff he does at the international level right now

Castillo is a sorry left back, but as I said earlier, I think he would interesting as an advanced winger.

No way should Boca and Dolo have been relied on this much in this succession of games when we have so many other young defensive players emerging. Even if Chandler wussed out, Lichaj and Ream should have been tried in some of these games.

Probably harsh but definitely true.

Yeah, I'm sure he's not bringing much to the table, but I don't think the major problems have been his doing.

As far as 100% control, Klinsmann definitely has that at least with the senior team, and I don't know what good assigning him an assistant would do other than potentially cause locker room discord.

I'm not so sure we're through to the Hex until I've seen us take one of the home games against Jamaica or Guatemala. The Costa Rica result from October lingers in my mind, and the same issues from that game are still present today.

 

Come on now. Our performance was good against Guatemala. We were bossing the game but didn't capitalize on that, wasteful on some of our chances and then played too cute rather than pound them. The defense held well, inspite of Guatemala's few dangerous chances - that's normal in this level - I don't think they could have scored against us. Unfortunately, again, Tim Howard has been inconsistent for us.

There are valid issues to complain. I think JK will figure it out what's best. I agree with lack of wingers though. That was the position occupied by LD and Jones late in the Guatamala game. I think bringing Lichaj in the squad as LB could free up Johnson and maybe Castillo to create havoc on the wing and move LD to the right side, perhaps LD plays better there. Man, what is going on with LD? He's got head issue.. truly no one is perfect.

Even if we're not improving to the level delussional fans expect our team would be now. I like that JK is trying something different. One must look at the big picture, and be patient. The core players are mostly the same in this cycle, so JK can only be successful as much as BB did. BB was not perfect when he was with us, so there's room for JK to improve the team. Still the same players. Don't get me wrong, I am optimistic for the immediate future, the new reinforcements was pleasant to see. We need more, hopefully Chandler would commit. Right back needed an upgrade.

The only time we will see a true leap in progression for our beloved MNT, is when the youth system evolves to produce tough, wise and ballsy players. I think we are already producing good prospects, only few had risen to the top, most were lost. We need more Dempsey's out there. He is showing hopefuls a different path. The right and proven path . Kids should look up to him.

 

Jurgen Klinsmann, adequate. Not as bad as the OP thinks he is, not as good as we wish he was.

 

Will he improve upon that "adequate" label across the next 25 months (assuming he holds the job that long).

Will any improvement JK is able to make as a coach/manager himself lead to the "satisfying/needed" team results as the US progresses (assuming once again) through enough rounds of this WC competition?

 

I have my doubts.

We have to blame the coach, but it seems our playing style is the same as always been.

 

huh?!? Does anyone else agree with this? We go from direct to more possesion. Long ball and aerial to playing it out of the back and on the ground. Very rigid and slow off teh ball movement to quicker and creative. From slow ball movement to 1 and 2 touch.

I don't see how anyone can say this is the same style as bradley and this is from someone who thought Bradley's tactics were sound if uninspiring.

 

Me neither to be frank.

 

And therein lies the question. Will his master plan start to bear fruit in the next 6 months for us to be successful in the hex and beyond. Will this team suddenly click? Or, will the results at Bayern start to look more familiar as time goes on.

He's trying his best to put a best 11 on the field. I'll give him credit for that. I'm just not sure playing guys out of position because they are one of our "best" gives us the optimal chance for results.

 

DMB, Kljestan, & Lichaj would have possibly made a positive difference but for me the Feilhaber theory isnt really justified. Dont see how he's a better option than Zusi. The real travesty is imo that Corona beats out Zusi on the squad likely so he can be cap-tied and Jurgen doesnt even end up using him to cap-tie him. Zusi is definitely a better player than Corona at this time for me. The Corona over Zusi decision proved costly in terms of the Guatemala match for me, Lichaj aswell. We needed more midfield options to be possession and attack oriented. With Lichaj, we could have used Johnson in the midfield and had a good possession-oriented, technical midfielder on the bench to be subbed in and help us towards the end which I thought we needed desperately that last 20 minutes.

 

The Antigua goal was not the last one scored in the game, Gomez scored a few minutes later.

 

I'm not satisfied with what I'm seeing of Jurgen. He clearly had no idea about CONCACAF teams and his player selections are awful.

 

I agree. Going back to Bradley post SA/Brazil friendly/Camp Cupcake and pre Gold Cup, he was looking to do similar lineups. Remember, folks were disgusted with him for Argentina for trotting out Mike, Jones and Edu (and clearly one of those spots was going to be for Holden, until his injury). He too was clearly trying to optimize his lineup to get his most talented players on the field. As always the LB and RB were playing significant roles pushing forward (we saw the debut of some German guy named Chandler who looked promising) as Donovan and Dempsey tucked in and a single forward. It was rather ugly, as we had to try to overcome the Holden and Gooch (he had a lot of small injuries that were not publicized until after GC) injuries in Spring 2011. In addition growing pains of players like Ream and Agudelo, and limited club playing time for several starters.

I don't want to get off topic as per the OP, but to me, especially without Torres or any other wide midfielder, this looks the same as last Spring.

 

We played well and "different style" in just one game vs Scotland most recent. Lets look at the last few games ,because now this are the games that count.

In the last three games we were static waiting for the ball to hit us, instead of runing to meet with the ball, Result we are forced to hold the ball to long and forced to pass backwards to defense to Howard then he kicks it out of bounds. So we ended up with nothing and lose posession of the ball.
Be are back to numerous unforced errors, passes going nowhere.
There are some exceptions ,but being this is a team sport at the end of the day the quality of our play is substandard .

 

If Jesus Christ was the USMNT coach some one would complain. Give him a chance. If we got rid of Jurgen who would you replace him with, Arena? Some other coach who uses the bunker in and counter attack style. Give him a little time we are in a transition period. And in all tranistions it takes time,