It was a 3-6-1, and if you can make it work, you're a tactical genius. He didn't have a false nine. He had McBride, an old Wynalda and Joe-Max Moore to play. Those (mostly the first two) were true 9's. McBride being our last effective true nine, although ol' Charlie Davies could've been if he hadn't gotten into that car.
Short answer: Yes, look up all the 'RoboBob' stuff...the nepotism threads, all the 'eurosnobs' who thought the guy was a joke of a college soccer coach and a rube. Arena was a 'god' for a while and never really had the hard fall because of all the silly hype going into the 2006 WC and his downfall was quick and obvious. I cant speak to the amount of dislike for Steve Sampson, his firing probably wasn't even mentioned in your local paper at the time
Klinsi has earned every single ounce of the vitriol he has gotten. He is a very average coach with a much larger than average mouth and ego.
basically it comes down to factions being loyal to previous managers, some mistakes, and a little xenophobia/nativism.
I dont buy this, sorry. I am not loyal to anyone but the USA team. Dropping Landon, ignoring Feilhaber, insisting on Bradley playing an attacking position: these are not the signs of a good, healthy coach.
Hahaha! Let's talk xenophobia and how minorities are treated in "sophisticated" Europe, instead. My point is that nobody should be preaching about that...and we should especially not hold up Europeans as paragons to emulate.
I love how Jurgen Klinsmann... -Spouts Euro preference at every opportunity -Made Andreas Herzog, Matthias Hamman, and Bertie F#cking Vogts the core of his coaching squad -Made the Bundesliga-disgraced Jermaine Jones the totem of our squad -Played Fab Johnson every minute he could despite Fab having kind of a poor tournament -Had the balls to pick Tim Chandler and John Anthony Brooks - who had only played horribly for us, over veterans who'd got us qualified... while acknowledging that MLS players were best suited to the travel, heat and cultural obstacles of a Latin American World Cup. -Had even more B and C grade Germans in his final 30 -Incredibly, picked an 18 year old German 4th division player over LANDON DONOVAN... And I'm guilty of nativism. P.S. This is the USA National Team, remember...
Come on, let's not do this again. We just had like 10 posts removed from a thread for talking about stuff like this. That said, I disagree that xenophobia/"nativism" plays a role in the vitriol. I think people view JK as arrogant, and I think he doesn't explain his decisions very effectively, which contributes/does not ameliorate people's perceptions that he's arrogant. This isn't a case of a group of "Know Nothing" posters.
And? They're good coaches. Who would you rather he picked? Who just happened to be our best player in the WC. Or played Bradley every minute he could despite Bradley having kind of a poor tournament. Brooks scored and Chandler didn't play. Cry about it. Like who? Wrong. No shit. I do. This is the USA, where a huge percentage of the people living here have immigrated from another country.
Without going through the tiresome job of disputing you point by point - when the counterarguments are clear as day to yourself and knowledgeable fans - I was underlining the pretty obvious point that if anybody's been "nativist" here it's Klinsmann. And he's coaching the USA team - we're not out of line for being interested in the success of our own development systems and products.
The only clear thing is your inability to not exaggerate every the points you try to make. Which takes longer than 4 years to fix. If you have contempt for your own development system and products then that blame falls squarely on the inability of the MLS/MLS teams for not prioritizing it in the past.
Bradley's was worse than Klinsmann. Arena never got it until the very end. I think the Euro glamour factor and the amorphous buzzwords about improving US soccer are what helps Klinsmann. It's easy to call for an American managers head and then demand a big name European manager to implement systemic changes. But when that theoretical big name European manager is in place and things go poorly, it becomes more difficult because people can't separate the idea (big name manager to implement changes) from the individual (Klinsmann).
seems i touched a wee nerve. Thought what I said was rather benign. factions loyal to previous managers = the Bob Bradley fans who where pissed at the firing and treatment BB were instantly anti klinsmann. some mistakes= we all know them and just saw them. a little xenophobia and nativism = Coach should be Murican. How dare this carpet bagger tell us what for? all these things existed to create the vitriol that the original post was referring to. I'm not saying its all been unearned.
Coaches are always treated harshly by their fan bases, especially on internet message boards. I'm a St. Louis Cardinals fan and a lot of that fan base has always hated Tony La Russa and hates Matheny now. (I personally think Matheny is a buffoon.) TLR won three World Series (two with St. Louis, on top of another NL pennant and tons of playoff runs) and Matheny got to the NLCS his first three years (one pennant). College football is even worse. It's just the way it is and it's the price of the party. It's a tremendous opportunity and big money and it can't all be sunshine and rainbows. For my money Sampson got the most hate on a "per fan" basis. I always thought him a fool for trying that bizarre 3-6-1 and cutting Harkes out of the blue. Once I heard about what really happened in that squad (Harkes's extracurricular activity) I gained a lot of understanding for Sampson.
If he deserves the vitriol he receives for parring the course, as others have said, then yes...others would have deserved just as much.
I don't see Klinsmann as taking more heat than Bradley, for instance. But if he is maybe, at least in part, it's also because he's getting paid so much more than Bradley or any other U.S. coach ever has?
I remember us losing our collective minds when Bradley got extended after WC 2010 as a lot of us just didn't think it was a good idea to keep a coach for more than one cycle. The Arena 2002/2006 dichotomy no doubt had something to do with that. I think we were all incredibly harsh on him after that because we didn't think he'd earned that second cycle. I know this colors my views of Klinsmann now - hell, he got a second cycle extension before his first cycle was over.
I think the criticism Bradley endured was far more unreasonable that anything Klinsmann has had to deal with. His tactical decisions were constantly berated, despite the critics rarely, if ever, providing concrete descriptions of why a tactic had failed and what would been better. Instead, people simply complained incessantly about the so-called "empty bucket," even when we weren't really playing one. It was rather ridiculous most of the time. Bradley was a competent coach, even if he lacked the charisma so many on this board and elsewhere seemed to yearn for in the coach. Well, we got charismatic, and look how that's worked out. Bradley was always a better coach than Klinsmann, but whatever, famous, right?
I honestly thought (and maintain) that we by the time Bradley was fired it was time for us to move on, though at the present juncture you'd be very hard-pressed to maintain that Klinsmann hasn't led the side to lower depths than Bradley had at the very same point that he was fired from. Some above call that nativism.