The Donovan cut. The constant call ups for Wondo. The getting schooled by CONCACAF minnows. The Besler exclusion. The over reliance on Brooks and Chandler. And the fact that the USSF is paying 3 times as much as BB was making is the icing on the cake.
That's fine, I didn't want Bradley after South Africa either because I'm not a fan of having the same coach over multiple cycles. But there were a lot of people against Bradley from the very beginning. I remember Michael talking to the media about it during the confed cup. It was basically nonstop for his entire tenure.
Don't act like you don't have bias. Every one has their own bias. It is the dark side of one's opinion.
I'm just happy Klinsmann is the polar opposite of Herrera. Herrera defended himself and his actions because he said he felt like the press was criticizing him with no reason and even dragging his family into it. Moron.
The other thing that hurt Sampson is, as he approached the WC, he realized we weren't good enough so he started looking for players to add. That whizzed of the Lalas's and a few others on the team that felt they were entitled to not only have a shirt but to start. That poisoned the whole experience and you notice only the guys who sucked it up like Cobi and Heydude had good tourneys. That is why I always just have to laugh at the clown Lalas who always seems to get a job no matter how incompetent he proves himself to be over and over again ragging on Klinsmann and others when he has never taken responsibility for the petulant behavior of his and others that helped destroy that team. Harkes is another one, but at least he has kinda accepted his own role in his exclusion.
That is because he was hired by Sunil to do 2 jobs at once and it was clear when the extension was made that it was going to take longer than 2.5 years to complete job 2 inn particular. That is why Klinsmann isn't going anywhere as long as he qualifies for Russia until after that WC. Unless Sunil goes first, maybe.
I will say this in defense of Gulati's decision to bring Klinsmann on board: I think it has helped make the USMNT coaching gig a more respectable position for other high profile coaches in future. It will be a lot easier for a Bielsa to take the position if he is taking over from Juergen Klinsmann than if he is taking over from Sigi Schmid or some other obscure American. Not the be all and end all of reasons, but a small consideration in the plus column.
Of course, if he isn't performing on either job 1 or job 2, then there's a case to be made. I mean, seriously, how much progress have we made on revamping our development and youth squads? As much as I love the Hyndeman's and Steffan's of the world, I have to ask whether we are making progress in improving the programmatic infrastructure from top to bottom. (I am happy to be proven wrong, since I honestly don't have a super solid answer to my question and am likely to be wrong)
I think quite a bit of progress is being made there. If you watched the U-20's this summer, I do think that is the proto-type for what Klinsmann wants to implement at the full NT level. Right now we don't have the talent to do that, but that team does. Now, will all of those kids progress? Who knows, but right now they have players for all of the positions and they played a pretty attractive game throughout most of their tourney. Ramos is involved in both places too. It was always a straw man that guys like Lalas and Bruce hit Klinsmann over the head with that somehow we would immediately be transformed into a proactive team. Obviously that is his goal, but it takes time to develop the players to do it.
Good post. The point that most JK supporters ignore is that for as much as they want to claim JK has set US soccer down this golden path, well..prove that's the case and not something that was already in motion before JK. There were smart people involved in US soccer pre JK...it didn't take JK's "genius" to suddenly/finally get things rolling.
Good point. For so many years that Italia 90 generation had practically zero competition for their places on the team. I imagine it got to the point where quite a few of them felt they were uncuttable, and I certainly didn't envy Sampson for having to deal with them in the twilight of their careers.
It was worse for Bradley. There were the normal roster questions as with Klinsmann. Then there was the ridiculous Michael Bradley nepotism debate. To top it off the Freddy Adu fan club couldn't understand why their savior wasn't starting. It was probably worse for Sampson too proportionally. Between dropping Harkes from the WC roster entirely for reasons that came out 10+ years later and the '98 WC debacle, no one thought he could coach. In fact Sampson had to wait for four years after '98 before his next position.
Yep, that U-20 team was a delight to watch, for sure. if that's the future of US Soccer, sign me up, for sure.
Expecting anything based on youth tournament results is a fool's game. The 07 U-20 team was a beast at that level and really should have at least made the semifinals that year. Szetela was hailed as a god by many on these boards, Adu actually looked like the real deal, Sal Zizzo was a terror on the right flank, Anthony Wallace seemed like a future left back for the senior team, Seitz was a strong as any keeper in that tournament, etc. They beat a Brazil team with Renato Augusto, Pato, and Jo, and then took out a Uruguay squad featuring Cavani and Suarez. Eight years later, only Bradley and Altidore have developed into legitimate senior team members, and a few of the guys from that team aren't playing anymore.
I think we should differentiate between the Big Soccer view of Klinsmann and the regular U.S. soccer fan view of Klinsmann. I think he is still very beloved among most American soccer fans. It's bizarre and I don't get it, but the general view is that he's a brilliant coach saddled with horrible players (he seems to have done a good job of deflecting blame away from himself). The U.S. soccer press is a different matter. He seems to be taking a lot of heat from them. Maybe because so many of the old guard are now representing the media.... guys like Lalas who fought in the trenches for U.S. soccer back when not that many people cared and are slightly irritated that Klinsmann seems to be getting all the credit for the team's current popularity despite the fact that many of them laid the foundations for it.
I still don't get what Klinsmann has actually done in his tenure. He's getting credit for recruiting lots of these dual-nationals, but U.S. Soccer was already laying a lot of that foundation under Bradley. Sure, having a German legend as your coach isn't going to hurt when it comes to convincing young German-Americans, but how many of those players have really done the job so far? Johnson and Jones? I still think Brooks could turn out to be something, but Chandler is not really better than many of the MLS guys that could be playing that position. Klinsmann has largely gotten a free pass up until this Gold Cup catastrophe.
I agree, but Jermaine Jones had filed his one-time switch as soon as it was available for him to do so, and it was under Bradley's tenure. Honestly, his biggest contribution has been the ability to "get" dual-nationals to suit up for the US. My sense is that AJ would have probably played for Iceland, Alvarado for Mexico, and Brooks & Fabian Johnson wouldn't be with the USMNT. Hell, I half-expect the Parker brothers to suit up for the US in this World Cup cycle. The Technical Director role fits his skill set well. But his coaching -- I seriously don't know if he's self-aware enough to realize he's Johnny Bravo; only picked for the role because he fits the suit. From the Donovan exclusion (I think it wasn't between Green and Donovan; rather Brad Davis/Wondolowski and Donovan) to the diamond with players woefully out of position, it's clear he needs a tactician on his staff (and "Weekend At Bernie's" ain't it.) And less time with dudes tearing phonebooks.
The problem here is organizational. The entrenched interests in US soccer have a more difficult time ignoring a Technical Director who is also the USMNT head coach. To take the most obvious example, if Klinsmann were only the Technical Director, Garber doesn't have a public spat with him about encouraging guys to go overseas. Garber just doesn't pay any attention to him. Moreover, the players he is encouraging also weigh Klinsmann's advice more heavily because he is the USMNT Head Coach. In the non-existent alternate universe where you fire Klinsmann as head coach but keep him as Technical Director, literally nobody would pay attention to him. So it's either both or neither.
Meh. I will disagree on Brooks and Johnson; Germany is stacked, and neither of them had the DFB pounding on his door to suit up for them. Even Johannsen was having issues with the Icelandic FC, from what I recall, so I don't know that we wouldn't have still had a good chance to get him sans Klinsmann. I don't hate Klinsmann, and I don't think he is the worst coach in the world, but having been privy to some of the German-language media reports on his tenure with Germany and Bayern, I am not really surprised at how things have developed. We need a real plan heading into qualifying, and that plan needs to be clearly laid out for the players. No more positional experimentation. Maybe we have an extra attacking midfielder who is more talented than our secondary defensive mids, but leaving the true defensive mid at home so you can play the attacking player out of position has got to stop.