Donovan Cut - is this the end of Landon?

I take no solace from your logic. First, CONCACAF qualification is a far cry from Ghana, Portugal and Germany. Second, the Italy friendly was two and a half years ago and featured an entirely different set of players, including Bocanegra, Cherundolo and Teal Friggin Bunbury. No idea what that game has to do with the price of tea in China. The fact that you "don't see anything different in the next couple of weeks" is mind-boggling.

 

It might. But a team is more than the sum of its parts, which is why I think Klinsmann's reasoning is that at this point in time, Donovan adds less individually than he subtracts by being there. Which from the outside sounds absurd, but I keep going back to some early posts in this thread that indicated the decision had to do more with team cohesion and chemistry than anything else.

 

It can, when you consider dynamics that go on behind the scenes that we're not privy to.

 

Huh?! Donovan has certainly done more than Bedoya or Davis or Green or Chandler or Brooks or AJ or Wondo and maybe even Zusi to help this team qualify this cycle. This revisionism has gotten out of hand.

 

1. lol, please tell us about yourself, Mr. Internet tough guy. Who are you to criticize Landon Donovan?
   Extent of what? Are you saying "tough guy" Jergen can't work with a guy who has scored more World Cup goals that Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi and Didier Drogba put together? Landon has scored more goals in the World Cup than Jurgen too.
   Well, many of us would like to do well in Brazil and would like a bit of an explanation other than the one that Jonathan Klinsmann offered in his text.
   Good, well , that's fine, some of us were hoping for a better roster heading to Sao Paulo.

 

If Klinsmann thinks that Donovan, who has excelled on successful US teams in the past, is too much of a character problem to bring to Brazil, then that is evidence of Klinsmann's poor leadership. If you don't like the things he says publicly, then talk to him. Don't discard one of your most effective attacking players because he seems weird. That's a coach's job.

 

Don't get me wrong--Would I have had Donovan on my squad? Yes.

Am I ready to admit failiure at a WC because he's not on the roster? No.

I am bummed Donovan is out, but I think JK has his reasons....and I am giving him the benefit of the doubt here. If he fails though at teh WC, no doubt Donovan not being on the roster will be one of the reasons many fans will use as why we failed.

This is a huge decision amde by him, and I am trying to be optimistic about it as much as I can. I am hopign it won't make much of a difference, because we made it this far without Donovan is my point.

 

Fair enough

 

Interesting take on all of this, basically pointing out and taking a guess that it's Donovan's mental shortcomings which has kept him off this roster.

http://cornerofthegalaxy.com/2014/05/28/falling-americas-greatest-player-missed-plane-la-galaxy/

Edit:
What we are dealing with here is a clash of cultures. A clash of understandings about what it means to be mentally fit. For Jürgen Klinsmann, belief in one’s self is key. Asked what success in Brazil would require, Klinsmann said “we need to make the players understand it is all about mind games. Every game becomes 50–50 and will be won by the team who is better prepared and believes in themselves more.” And for Jürgen Klinsmann, that means toughing it out. He once had this to say about the way soccer players are treated in this country:

“We don’t have the environment telling them nicely, ’OK you had a good week, but next week has to be better, and the next week again. Here it’s: ‘Oh, take a week off.’ No, don’t take a week off. If you take a week off as a programmer at Apple, you missed the train, you lost the job. You can’t afford it.”

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum is Landon Donovan’s take on mental fitness:

“We have a sort of stigma that being in a difficult mental place is not acceptable. …We should ‘pull ourselves up by the bootstraps’ and ‘fight through it,’ and all this, and it’s a little peculiar to me, that whole idea, that if someone’s physically hurt, we’re OK with letting them take the time they need to come back, but if someone’s in a difficult time mentally, we’re not OK with letting them take the time they need to come back.”
​

 

The ages-old Jock vs. Nerd battle.

PS: In highly intellectual work, like working for Apple or Xerox or Microsoft, you're given a lot of free time if you're one of the main gurus. It's understood that one minute of brilliance is enough from you. I have friends working in all three places, and when they stop producing, they are encouraged to go away for a time, to settle their minds.

Of course, that's not the sort of laxity afforded to the code monkeys. Same idea in the hard sciences: the technicians are pressured to comply with the deadlines, but the top researchers are given all the time in the world to relax and eventually produce that minute of genius. Sabbaticals are routine among university professors, often taken to write that one book that will bring the department fame and fortune.

 

I don't think so. It's more than that.

More like mentally 'soft' vs. mentally 'hard'.

 

OK, so here is my take on the whole "Forward vs. Midfielder debate.

The fact that JK sees LD as only a forward exposes a flaw in JK thinking as a coach in two areas.

1) Player selection/evaluation
2) In game tactics

I will elaborate.
in the first area I posit that flexibility is very important. The mere fact that a top flight coach is so narrow in their evaluation criteria that players are only evaluated within one positional category is ludicrous. I will put up a strawman to demonstrate. If you have two players who are wingers with the exact same attributes in all areas, but one can also play central midfield/or defense and the other might be able to, but has never played those positions before which do you take? JK argument would seem to indicate that those considerations are not material to player selection for the 23. If you are a forward, you are a forward. If you are a central midfielder, you are a central midfielder. If you are a defender, you are a defender. Now, along the defense, he adds some credence to positional flexibility between RB/LB/CB, but that seems to be it. But I see no value being attributed to Forward/Midfield or Central/Wing flexibility.

In the second. I posit that his pigeon holing of players to positions demonstrates a huge lack of tactical acumen. Translation and Transitioning of player talent to tactical gameplans is paramount at this level. Players get injured, they get yellow carded, they get red carded. Formations can be countered, in game adjustments need to be made all the time. Having the personnel to be able to adapt on the fly and being able to play different roles is HUGE. I am floored that JK is not bringing more "multi" type people. Not even just LD, Benny can play CM/DM/AM/LAM/CAM/LM and he wasn't even in the 30. Davis is very limited in his skill set. Only a LM. You got to have the personnel who can implement a tactical switch when the poop hits the fan.

So while I can argue bringing not LD is bad. I am also worried that due to how he justified it indicates our coach is not really that good.

Now I wonder about that recent change to the coaching staff. I wonder if the previous assistant who got canned knew this was about to happen and disagreed. They kept him on payroll to keep him bound to confidentiallity but I really wonder if this was planned for a while and voices that disagreed were shuttled out the door.

But that is just pure baised speculations.

Just My Opinions

PooBah

 

nicely put. this is pretty much where i am.

i might even be willing to go a bit further, and say i'm holding out for that infinitesimal chance that JK might actually have somehow hit on some sort of intangible X factor that only his unorthodox genius could hit upon (or, by utter and total accident), and his 23 manage to collectively outweigh their sum. i wouldn't bet on it, but as an eternal optimist i have to hold out hope for it, cuz i don't see any way JK changes his mind.

 

No, I see it more between "honesty and self-knowledge" vs. "giving always the right impression."

Klinsmann is the latter. If there is some substance behind that, we'll get some results. If not, it's just a car salesman act.

 

And in the 15 years LD has been doing what exactly to team cohesion and chemistry?

 

Haha. I don't know about that...but if JK does pull some amazing results...people will be quick to forget abuot Donnovan's snub.

But you and I--we're eternal optimists (did I use that right?).

I dunno about 'self-knowledge'. Yes, Donovan is doing the opposite of what many players do, keep it quiet, deal with their demons on their own.

But taht also may be a point of weakness, and he himself has even admitted he can and has been weak in the past mentally. A guy with a history of mental weakness never changes.

That's something you battle the rest of your life. Donovan is a guy that is only as good as his attitude and mental 'there' 'ness.

Even though it may seem like I am against him, I too can sympathize and am with him.

This sport isn't for everyone, and it weeeded me out as a teenager frmo greatness. I couldn't handle the mental side of the game and got burned out during a time where my game could have transitioned to a higher level where my teammates kept up.

I decided partying, fun were more important and I was mentally burned out. I took a break...and I never came back fully like I had been earlier.

Now I am not saying I was donovan, or anything close...but I can understand and sympathize how sometimes you need abreak. At the same time, I question what could have happened if I fought through it and didn't give in?

Where would I be right now? What did I miss out on?

It's similar to the military, and how it isn't for everyone because some guys can't handle it and come home with severe PTSD. I know me personally, I am too 'soft' of a guy to ever go to war. I have plenty of friends that are marines or served...and I can't even imagine going through just even the mind breaking boot camp and circumstances they went through. I am proud to have friends like that.

This game isn't for everyone no matter how talented you are physically, mental parto f the game is just if not more important than physical and plays a good part on consistency which seperates the good from the greatest.

 

But this all assumes that Jurgen means what he says about Donovan being exclusively limited to being a forward. Personally I think he's full of shit, and is just using that as a convenient excuse.

 

15 years is irrelevant, the question is what's been going on in recent months (maybe even since his sabbatical). And I have no idea myself, just going by things some more in-the-know posters and other players have alluded to. And I'm taking that info as valuable because on straight player selection it just doesn't make sense by any metric.

 

You can go through a whole lengthy tactical analysis if you want. But what Jurgen means when he says Donovan is exclusively a forward is simply "I can't let anybody compare him to Green or I'm going to look really stupid." The end.

 

Not everybody is the same, though, and with great gifts, also comes great handicaps. As someone who works around people who most would claim are among the most gifted, I can tell you: they are full of issues. From depression to borderline schizophrenia. Not a single one of the men and women who are taking us to the next age of genetics and biotechnology would come across as sane in a meeting.

You have to take it as a package. What you get extra on one side, you take on the other. Donovan is, IMO, a brilliant, brilliant player. A mind of the highest order that put himself to work on soccer, instead of anything else. I could see him as a top class lawyer, or maybe a mathematician, or one of those computer engineers who can improve on a chip's design on a paper napkin while eating at the Spaghetti Factory (seen that happen myself).

All those people are full of issues. Matter of fact, most wouldn't have one of them around for long.

 

That's the problem though, he can be the best player on the field at one time like he was in the WC in 2010 (our star then) and in the 2009 Conf. Cup (made Brasil look like chumps wiht his goal).

But that same guy can also disappear in a game if he's not mentally in the right place or not ready like we saw vs. Mexico. It's form like that which can be scary and can make him a liability if you put him out there vs. Wolves looking to pick any weakness at the biggest stage in the world--the World Cup.

 

As far as I understand there are a few data points on JK, the coach to consider as well:

1) Resigned as coach of German national team - but there are a number of accounts that point to Joachim Low as the brains behind that team and the coach in practice if not name. It would not surprise me if JK was given the option of resigning or getting fired.

2) Bayern - fired after team severely under performed, don't believe the facts on that need to be rehashed any more.

3) Toronto FC - inconclusive, but I don't think that you could ask a TFC fan what kind of impact JK made on that team and receive a positive review.

So, based on actual and circumstantial evidence, it could be said that JK has failed twice, maybe thrice, already as a coach before being hired by the USMNT. JK has a history that at best can be classified as "meh", and at worst it could be seen as a failure, but let's not pretend for a second that he's this trailblazing mad scientist type. Mad is more like it.

 

I wonder what Jurgen the coach might have to say about working with Jurgen the player shown in the 1990 World Cup taking a notorious dive in the WC final vs Argentina.



Basically, Jurgen wasn't touched, he decided to take a dive, embellished it and his opponent was red carded and Argentina had to play a man down for the remainder of the match.

And actually Jurgen did score more goals in the World Cup than Donovan.

 

Toronto Fc went from a solid mid-table team, to the bottom of the table, while he was there as a consultant.

Probably not his fault, though. Or only 5% his fault, at best, since consultants don't have direct input.

 

This, this, this . . .

Look at the prima donnas who were playing at Bayern Munich and what happened there.

And here is the additional thing. Landon Donovan has been in a professional playing atmosphere since 1999.
He was in the USA youth system in 1998. Teams have been built around him. Coaches have worked with him
and reaped the benefit of having done so. Most would say he is the best player ever to wear the USA shirt.

And for some reason, Jurgen decides he cannot stomach having this guy around.

And there are folks who are saying "It's all about Landon." It ain't. . . More players have had trouble with Klinsmann than coaches have had issues with Landon.