I always remember what someone posted here about 8 years ago. The observation was that if you leave a bunch of young Brazilian kids to play with a ball they will work on ball control skills and tricks. If you leave a bunch of young American kids to play with a ball they will try to shoot goals. I experienced this once myself. I was coaching a youth team in an urban location and before the game a kid wanted to kick around the ball. As a good soccer missionary, I let him and encouraged him to play while I set up. The kid immediately was trying to shoot goals and put it in the back of the net. It's in our culture. I don't know if you have kids, but I can guarantee you that if you abolished every U-9 and below youth program in the country, 99% of those kids will go into track, baseball, football, and basketball. They will not be fooling around with a soccerball teaching themselves ball control skills.
That's not the point. Passing is like the dark side of the Force - it's not better, but it's the fast way to get powerful. Coaches who want to win rather than develop talent will emphasize passing, particularly in full-field 11 on 11 games. Or even worse, "passing" for 11 year old youths means being (1) big, (2) aggressive, and (3) fit, because so many passes are really 50:50 balls. So you end out developing a team of strong fit drones with no creativity. Then we end out missing out on the chance to develop creative players with good ball control skills. This is why playing on smaller fields is so important. This is why unstructure pick-up style play is so important.
I would have agreed with u years ago but I had a revelation 6 months ago that illustrates the rise of futbol. My son has recess and the kids choose what games they want to play in that 45mins. About 6 months ago my son tells me that 90% of the time the kids choose futbol, followed by basketball, dodgeball and football in that order. WOW! That was music to my ears on many levels including the unstructured play he needs so really he has been playing almost 2 times a day weekdays for 3 years and it shows.
Its the little things. I go workout and park in a lot at the community center next to the after school sitting program for kids 6-10 with working parents. They're always on the play sets, playing kickball, softball, but every once in a while they play pickup soccer and 70-80% are pretty good, probably playing some sort of organized soccer in the past. 5-10 yrs ago they never would have done that. Never saw it before. The other day a kid came out of the building carrying all this stuff for a cookout and was kicking a soccer ball to play with the other kids, he was good and every once in a while stood on the ball to keep it rolling away with his arms filled with rolls and bags of chips. The little things, the 'culture is changing.
You won't find the article because he hasn't done dick to change the youth system here. And furthermore, anyone who credits Klinsmann with reviving the German youth system is a moron. The Germans started to revamp their approach at the youth level following the disaster that was Euro 2000. That was 4 years before Klinsmann was ever hired in any sort of coaching or advisory capacity. There has been exhaustive discussion in the past on this topic and seasoned posters based in Germany have banged their heads against the wall until they are unconscious trying to explain this fact to individuals who refuse to listen.
U.S. Soccer Curriculum by Cluadio Reyna and Dr. Javier Perez Short version of curriculum: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...fpayux&sig=AHIEtbQuGzCRNeeq0c6bq0jHKwRfKwlPcQ Full version of curriculum: http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-beta
Jurgen is on board with all of this. and closely works with Claudio. Jurgen brought the American way of thinking for fitness to Germany. Now Jurgen is bringing the German way of thinking about football to America. Nastiness. thats it. I dont think Jurgen did a lot for the youth program. I never heard that one before. He did facilitate changes in Germany. In fact they were in an uproar over the changes.
Lets be honest here. Jurgen introduced sports psychologists to the German national team. And while there was indeed an uproar over that, that is pretty much all he "introduced". He did call up a lot of young players, which caused quite a bit of a stir. Especially when they didn't perform well early. But those young players were the product of the revamped German youth system that had taken root 4 years before he was ever hired.
Not just sprots psychologists but also the way to do physical training too. but that was enough to cause enormous criticism and hate. I think he deserves credit for weathering the storm. he isnt a messiah but he is a great addition to our national team and we should have some positive results because of it. I think people on one side expect too much. and on the other they just are going to hate him no matter what happens good or bad.
I think US Soccer would have been better served hiring him as a technical director in charge of all of the youth national teams. I personally think he's a lousy coach, and even worse at talent evaluation. But someone to revolutionize the system of play we use at the youth levels. The way we train at the youth levels...sure...I wouldn't mind him in that sort of capacity.
You're entitled to your opinion. I'll expand upon mine. Michael Orozco Fiscal, Edgar Castillo, Robbie Rogers, Brek Shea (sorry folks, he's just not ready for this level), Tim Ream, Maurice Edu. Players he's ignored completely despite them being better than the aforementioned lot....Eric Lichaj, Sacha Kljestan, Jonathan Spector, Zak Whitbread. And there are even more guys that have been underused during his first 9+ months in charge. He often times uses three defensive midfielders in his lineups, playing them out of position just to get them on the field. His insistence in using Paco Torres (a player who is most comfortable as a deep lying playmaker) against bunker defenses, rendering him completely useless shows a frightening naivete to basic tactics. He was completely out-coached by the Guatemalan head coach in the last qualifier and had absolutely no tactical answer. Make all the excuses that you want, but the fact that the German media gave all the credit for Germany's tactics to Lowe, and the fact that Bayern players called Klinsmann a tactical mess seems to have a pretty strong ring of truth when you look at his total inability to properly utilize our player pool.
If he was so out-coached against Guatemala we would of lost that game. Klinsmann is a really good coach and we are lucky to have him, but some people are just ungrateful. I still get nightmares of Bob still being our head coach and playing Bornstein at LB. Also you say that Spector and Whitbread are ignored? Spector has been called in by JK he wasn't called in for the May/June camp because he was injured for a while so he wasn't in shape. And Whitbread seriously? He is a really good CB and would probably be starting if he was healthy, but he can't stay healthy for more than 2 weeks so there is absolutely no point in calling him up. Sacha is behind Bradley, Jones, Williams, Edu, Torres and Beckerman in the depth chart, so that's why he doesn't get called it. Make all the excuses you want about Jurgen being a bad coach because in really he is a really good coach and a legend who has accomplished almost everything a player can possibly accomplish, he is full of valuable knowledge that will help the US team. Please come back and complain about Jurgen being a bad coach if we loose any of the WCQs in September and October, and are in danger of failing to qualify for the 2014 WC.
I just wanted to touch on this post for a second. Firstly, you used arguably one of the best players in the history of the game (C. Ronaldo) to forward a point about ball skills. Secondly, you used a completely unproven young Brazilian who does tricks named Neymar as a point of comparison. No one knows how he would fare doing 20 step-overs versus a (more) competent opponent, yet. Ronaldinho I don't really have any problem with in essence, but there seems to be a common issue that appears with these examples: Your idea of ball mastery seems to directly derive from the number of flashy tricks that a player does on the ball. This seems to be a completely and utterly worthless metric to judge an individual on. Beyond this, I find it very interesting that anyone would claim that Portugal is so beyond Germany in this department when they aren't exactly overflowing with players that have Ronaldo's level of competence on the ball. Just a few nits I felt the need to pick.
A) We should have lost that game and were lucky that we didn't B) We were the superiorly talented team and we were thoroughly outplayed that entire game. C) A+B= Jurgen was outcoached. This statement might have been true two years ago, but based on the way that he has played the past couple of season's for Anderlecht, he absolutely is ahead of Edu, Torres and Beckerman. As far as Williams, Klinsmann plays him as a right wing (out of position, thank you for making my point for me again) so he isn't even in the conversation as someone who Kljestan is competing with in the center of the park. Just because a person was a legendary player doesn't mean that they will be a great coach. In fact, the exact opposite is typically true. History doesn't support your argument. That said, I already said that he would be useful as a technical director, establishing a set way of doing things in our youth national teams. Which covers your "full of valuable knowledge" argument. Don't worry. I will be. The fact that we struggled against might Antiga and Barbuda at HOME and were completely outplayed by Guatemala on the road should have more fans a little less interested in what Jurgen did as a player and more interested in what he's doing as our coach.
Klinsmann has brought the real merit system to the team and raised the expectations for the players' role at their clubs. Whereas the last two coaches always said that they were only going to bring players in that were playing, that wasn't always true. It seemed to be the "same 'ol, same 'ol" where players were called in to the team and starting regardless of whether or not they were playing. Klinsmann sat Bradley and Altidore when they weren't playing and contributing like they should, and gave players like Brek and Herculez deserved chances. No more of the 'entitlement' spots ... you have to earn your spot. And the players are responding to Klinsmann's challenge to them to be honored with call ups and to try to be the best players on their club teams. These are all positive contributions by Klinsmann even on top of bringing back sound fundamentals that were lost in the Bradley era.
Ummmm....There have been plenty of call ups under Klinsmann where the player wasn't currently getting minutes with his club. And Michael Bradley was called up, and featured in Klinsmann's first game despite not having his club situation sorted out....sooo.... I just find it funny how Klinsmann gets credit for doing thing that he absolutely isn't doing just because he's foreign.
I am talking in the current world, not a perfect one. Does the USSF have the money to afford a world class coach?
In a perfect world Martin O'Neil would be a perfect coach. And so would Peter Reid, or anyone else for that matter...
I don't think that Martn O'Neil would have cost all that much back in October. He signed a $9.4 million deal for three years at Sunderland (that's by today's exchange rate). So we're talking about $3.1/yer. Klinsmann's on about $2.5/year. Not that much of a difference.