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

Bielsa would have been a fascinating selection for our national team. I am still ok with JK, but Bielsa would have been the real unknown. A consummate tactician and student of the game, a thinker rather than a talker. That could have been either a Thermopylae battle or a Thermopylae before the war.

 

in other news, chocolate is different from vanilla

 

Do you seriously think USMNT played exciting football during the Arena and Bradley eras? I know they did vs lower talent...I hope you aren't going just off of that. I mean Italy has always been a great team, but they are no where near exciting football.

 

we would never be able to get him and he wouldnt want to come.

 

This game was exciting. Or was this one of the lower talent teams the US played against?

 

how many times did mexico hit the crossbar? how much possession did we really have?

its time to get with the big boys and move upwards. stop playing around with the small fries. think higher of ourselves and up our game.

 

Yes, Bielsa is the shit.

Except I'm not sure even he could build a fluid, dynamic attack out of the players we have right now. Dempsey in particular would not be capable of the sort of meep-meep running his systems require on both sides of the ball, and Bielsa (the Mike D'Antoni of soccer who claims to not really care about defense) probably wouldn't have the answer for our issues in the back other than to press as hard as possible in midfield. I sort of feel like Bielsa running his system properly would require second-tier guys like Robbie Rogers and Edgar Castillo to see increased roles, and I'm not sure that's the answer. Putting Beckerman and Orozco in just to fit Klinsmann's preferences certainly wasn't.

It's not that we have bad players, just tweeners who don't have enough dimensions to their respective games to play these elaborate systems with consistency. And even our most well-rounded attacker, Landon, is more suited to a simple transition game than slowly probing the final third.

 

Ummmmm..Did you want Bob to pick Gomez while he was an MLS benchwarmer...Or to pick Fabian Johnson before he even knew he was going to play for the US?

 

I have no idea how this could effect the hex, but if we didn't get a Finals seed when "ranked 4th", we are never getting one.

 

The main problem I have with Jurgen isn't necessarily him it's his fans who think he's some kind of offensive coach when his tactics really have proven otherwise.

You don't play with three DMs and call yourself an offensive coach. The continued ignoring of players like Benny F., Sasha, Mix, ect who could make his 433 formation more offensive really proves this.

His teams also seem to produce slightly fewer scoring chances than Bob's to me anecdotally and statistically. I compared the 2010 year to this point in the year to this year and the average shots on goal breaks down like this.

Bob's team= 5.4 shots a game
Klinsi's team=5.125 shots a game

I may do a more detailed analysis later, comparing goals and maybe adding in more years worth of data but really what this shows is that we really need to call out people who proclaim Klinsman a more offensive coach than Bradley because the evidence really doesn't back that up.

 

The players not taking their shots has something to do with that though. The offense is creating chances and then there's no evidence for it because they're trying to create a tap in.

 

I just think we score more goals now in the first part of 2012 than we did in the first part of 2011.

It was evident we needed a change.

We shall see how the cycle goes. it might go worse but it wasnt getting better with Bob. And thats ok.

Its tough to run more than one cycle.

We will see how it plays out.

 

The genius of el Loco Bielsa is that he adapts his system to the players he has. With Chile, he had wingers, great attacking options, fast, young players who had awesome ball control and could turn on a dime. So he used a 3-3-1-3, and the philosophy was, for each goal you score on me, I'll score two on you.

What he's doing now with Athletic is very different. He's using a 4-1-2-3 with them, similar to what Klinsmann has tried the last two games with the USA: Llorente as the main scoring threat down the middle (USA got Gomez or Jozy), and Susaeta and Muniain as the wide forward/attacking mids who constantly switch positions.

 

Good point. 10 of the 11 starters against Guatemala -- the most important game of the 5-game series -- also started key tournament games (WC and GC) for BB during 2010 and 2011.*

I'm also concerned that, when push came to shove and JK needed to get results, he fell back to relying on veterans more than I've seen since Arena in 2006. The starting XI vs Guatemala averaged 29.3 years old. Only 3 players were younger than 29 (Bradley and Johnson are 24, and Edu is 26). THAT is an old lineup by professional and international standards. When has the US fielded such an aging lineup?

I'm not at all against veteran players. Indeed, I'd like to have several starting and several available on the bench. But this 5-game series, and more importantly the road qualifier at Guatemala, were played with an oddly constructed squad of over-worked older players and under-utilized younger players. The older starters were worn down and the younger subs were not trusted with significant game time. I don't see how that helps either the older players or the younger players. I don't see the vision or planning in choosing that roster or in how that roster was used.

In September I'd like to see a more useful, balanced, forward-looking roster with quality starters starting and quality subs getting opportunities, too, for a truly useful bench.

_________________
* This would be the point where one could say it's a rearranging-of-deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic type situation, but that would be hyperbole and excessive pessimism. There is no disaster facing the US. Just the threat of continuing mediocrity.

 

Again the statistics really don't show that at all.
Through the end of June we are averaging 1.6 goals a game.
Through the same period last year Bob averaged 1.1 goals a game.

The difference between both tenures basically amounts to the Scotland game where we scored 5 goals. Take out the top scoring game from both tenures and and Klinsman's team scores .1 more goal a game. Bob played Argentina, Spain, Paraguay, and Mexico in an actual competition. Klinsman Played Brazil and Italy. Obviously Bob had the tougher schedule.

The bottom line point I'm making is that all this talk about Klinsman playing attacking soccer is pure crap. His teams shoot about the same and score about the same as Bob's teams.

He's not reinventing anything. He's playing the same boring soccer that Bob played but because he has a European name and plays a few more Mexican league players some of you guys act like he's something he's not.

 

It is a bit apples and oranges since he did not have to qualify, but I wonder if anyone feels like doing the research to see when prior to the WC, he first started really playing the Young Guns in Germany?

 

Using football-lineups.com for lineups and wikipedia for ages, it looks like Klinsi's primary starters at the 2006 WC averaged 26.9 years and his 4 primary subs averaged 25.5 years. He had a nice mix of guys age 28 and older (Lehmann, Frings, Klose, Ballack, and sub Neuville), mid-20's guys (Metzelder, Borowski, Kehl), and younger guys age 22 or younger (Lahm, Mertesaker, Podolski, Schweinsteiger, Odonkor).

JK's 2005 Confed Cup team was similar, though some names were different (Huth, Deisler, Asamoah, Kuranyi, Ernst).

I don't have easy access to lineups from JK's early friendlies.

 

wait we played exciting soccer during the bradley era?? must have been during the parts of the game that i slept through

 

You slept through the Confed Cup games vs Egypt, Spain, and Brazil, and slept through the World Cup games vs Slovenia and Algeria?

Narcolepsy?

 

Heck, and the Italy game up until the red card, was a very good match as well at the CC.

 

And the Mexico GC11 game and Ghana WC10.

 

Do you honestly think Bradley wouldn't have called in Johnson once he was available?

Klinsmann LBs have been Johnson who wasn't available for Bradley, Chandler who turned down a call up, Castillo who Bradley tried and wasn't very good, Torres an out of position midfielder like Bradley tried with Beasley, and Bocanegra who was played there a lot for Bradley. Bradley also used Lichaj who we really could have used the last few games, hell even Spector would have been nice to have. The only reason Bornstein played in the Gold Cup final is because Dolo got hurt, he was already on his way out, even before guys like Johnson and Chandler were available.

 

On the topic of whether Bielsa would/could introduce a new style to the team, after a year of closely watching him work, I think I can say with some confidence that he would.


I can tell you this, the process would look ugly. Athletic has some wonderful young players sought after by the world's biggest clubs. Bielsa implementing his system at times looked horrid at the beginning of this past season.

I am both a huge fan of his and of Athletic, and there were times I had to remind myself to have a little faith. Athletic is probably the most English-influenced club in La Liga, and our play is infamously direct. The previous manager Caparros was even more direct than most Athletic managers.

Even with very skilled players like Llorente, Martinez, Muniain, Susaeta, and Herrera, we often looked like fish out of water as we transitioned to a more possession-based, on the ground style. We got off to a poor start, and it was not until we tied Barcelona that people really started to believe this transition was even possible. It was Bielsa's "Slovenia" game. Even after Barcelona, the team did not look truly comfortable until about midseason.

Again, this was a skilled team being coached by a coach almost universally regarded as one of the best there is. It took months.

One other thing I am sure Bielsa would do is not just try a lot of players, but try a lot of players in a lot of different roles. You would see midfielders in defense, forwards as full backs and central midfielders, wingers as central midfielders, etc. He would not just turn over every stone, he would force players into different positions that would have many fans screaming here. For example, I would almost expect Bielsa to convert Bradley into a central defender. This forum would go bananas.

Finally, Bielsa not caring about defense is one of the more nonsensical things I have read here. He may be certifiably obsessed with defensive shape and execution, and Guardiola said, after the 2-2 tie, that Barcelona had never played a team that gave them less time on the ball than Bielsa's Athletic team did that day.

Given the difficulty in the transformation process at Athletic, I am unsurprised the US is not yet playing attractive soccer. I do not believe Bielsa would have them playing attractive soccer, either.

 

Don't worry that wont happen.

 

I believe if Bob was still coach if would taken him more time to call Johnson.