(I snipped your post to reply to one aspect of it) This just isn't true. In 2014 we got out of the toughest group in the tournament, and we were starting players like Graham Zusi and Brad Davis during the group stage. Granted, the soccer we were playing wasn't great by any means, but that is just a very obvious example of the fact that we don't have to have world beaters on our team to get out of the group. Now, whether or not we have a team right now that can past the Round of 16 (which seems to be our issue) is another question entirely.
The USSF hired Arena and fired JK because the trend line made it look like the US would have no product out on the World Cup pitch. Let's see what Arena's team looks like in 12 months for the World Cup before proclaiming that 1 game in Mexico on 3 days rest indicates that the coach plans on bunkering in Russia. The track record for Arena is decidedly non-bunker in big matches, as he showed in the 1999 Confed Cup vs Germany, the 2002 World Cup with his very aggressive opening vs Portugal and the team's terrific performance vs Germany in the QF, and the assertiveness shown vs Italy in 2006. Arena's teams are pragmatic, but don't generally curl into a shell.
Mexico were 9th in ELO rating coming into the game, and they were playing at home. So it's a very tame statement to say it's akin to playing a top 5 team on a neutral field. They had a few guys out, and so did we effectively because of the quick turnaround and altitude. We weren't allowed to make it our strongest squad. An official match is more of a test than a friendly, almost inherently. You don't know the team's motivations and priorities on the other side in a friendly. It's progress to regress back to the team we used to be at our previous best against particularly tough opponents who played organized and countered under control. That's not farcical football. It's a lower level of what Atleti or Mourinho's Inter did in achieving major success in Europe. Heck, Portugal pretty much won the Euros that way. It shouldn't be a principled thing so long as you're carving out legit chances throughout. You can just laugh at the opponent passing the ball around aimlessly before you take the ball away from them and create a better chance. The U.S. just needs to get better at taking the ball away to raise their possession stats to mid 30's and in turn have superior chances to their opponents. Sort of akin to what Tab did to Mexico in u-20's, only with better execution after we receive the ball. On the senior level that comes with more all-around players who can win the ball. I think we have them in the pool. We just need to take advantage of the time before the World Cup to integrate them. And it was kind of a myth that Klinsmann built up and played pretty football. Nothing pretty about the style in the World Cup, Gold Cup, and qualifiers. It was rubbish ball.
Cam was all over the place. Gonzo was in the middle heading balls clear. Didn't see him making forays forward or covering out on the wings much.
Klinsmann was fired for results on the field, not for the players he chose. The team had been on a slow decline since 2014, losing certain games it never had before. This all came to a head during the debacle in Columbus when the team was so unprepared we had to watch two US players scream at the coach to fix things and ultimately the team quitting on him in Costa Rica. Now that Gonzo went public with his bombshells this week, it seems clear there were numerous reasons JK's time was up and none were related to whom he rostered.
I agree, he was never pulled wide like what happened in Columbus but I think we now know the players had no idea what their responsibilities were in that game regarding the formation. Huge difference in this one where Gonzo himself said he had been training for this specific role since he got to camp.
Klinsmann was a very defensive coach regardless of the rhetoric. On the field, he often played Michael Bradley as his most attacking midfielder and it was not particularly unusual for him to line up a single forward in front of him. It's hard to play more defensive than that. I have no issues with defensive strategy. Let's just not pretend that Klinsmann was some attack-minded coach throwing caution to the wind. In Brazil, with games on the line, we played some of the most conservative soccer I've seen us play in decades. Now, maybe in that situation it was warranted.... just as it was in Mexico.
And sure, ignore Gonzo. Listen to Philipp Lahm: "The experiment with Klinsmann was a failure. We were only working on our fitness in training. He didn't care much for tactical stuff," he wrote. "It was up to the players to come together before a match and discuss how we were going to play."
I'm sure JK coached Gonzalez to play like shit in Columbus. I'm pretty sure ball watching and losing his mark was practiced in training. I can't respect a guy for talking about his ex coach when he was part of the reason a game was lost.
You ignored the fluke circumstances part. Thats how we advanced in 2014. This team can not outplay good teams, it can't even outplay average teams. We completely bunkered against Ghana. Completely bunkered in the 2014 Pre-WC friendly against Nigeria. If we came up against a Serbia or Colombia, we'd have to do the same thing. We wouldn't be able to outplay them with these current players.
I don't get people talking about how we didn't field our best team in Mexico. It wasn't far from what we might see in Russia depending on circumstances. Explanation: Howard is getting up there in age and just had groin surgery and Arena was worried about him kicking balls and re-injuring in Mexico so he played Guzan. It hardly seems unreasonable that Guzan could be starting in Russia. Cameron was our best player, motm. Brooks has been pretty fragile and will be expected to go all out for Wolfsburg in a tough BL season this year so who knows what kind of shape he will be in for Russia. Gonzo and Cam seem like a reasonable pairing taking also into account that Arena and Gonzo know each other well and Gonzo is peaking in his athletic abilities to my mind. While Klinsmann was trying to move Bradley around from 10 to 6 because he has a hard time reading the game behind him at the 8, Arena gave him 3 cb's behind him. Problem solved. That means we need a 3rd cb and Ream would not unreasonably be on the bench in reserve in any case if that formation became a fixture for us. I don't think anybody is suggesting we have a better wb than Yedlin. He is arguably our best bet. On the other side it seems a lot of people are convinced Beasley was our best bet against Mexico. People around here go on and on about Acosta so I assume he is considered our best bet at cm by conventional wisdom. Pulisic is surely one of our strongest players. Wood was on everybody's list of cf's. American soccer now's poll was "who would you pair with Wood in quali's?" as if Wood were a given. What is it exactly that people are going on about when they say we didn't field our strongest team? No, please don't answer that. We aren't going to have technically our strongest squad in Russia either. Every team, unless they are extremely lucky, always have personnel missing among their strongest players. People say it would have been different with Altidore in Rio. No, because that means Portugal would have Pepe and a healthy Coentrao and we lose. So returning to Gold Cup. Play more guys, not the same ones as we played in quali's, and we have a better chance of filling in the cracks that pop up in Russia.
I think a question we should ask is should we add the additions or not after the group stage? Part of me says no... let's give the guys on the fringe a chance to win it all.
Bruce's job is to get this team playing as well together as possible. Part of our needed overall stylistic trend since the dawn of this century has been to move from a British/Nordic style to a Continental/South American one. To go from Northern Ireland to Paraguay. The last manager made an immediate impact by getting us to play out of the back on the ground instead of long and vertical. Pretty much that was the end of the progress. Bruce will push his team as far as they can go relative to the competition. The peak LA teams controlled the game, the ball, and created stylish chances from open play... because they were superior to the competition and that was the best way to maximize their chances of getting a result. If he thinks the best way to win is to press he will do that (see the Germany game from '02). If he thinks the best way to win is to control our defensive half and counter he will do that (see the Mexico game from '02). Now that judgment can be off, and it is far more pragmatic than visionary but it's a step up from erraticism. If it is correctly applied it will reflect the progress of our pool and the way the game is played. One of those trends happens to be the compactness between the lines and the defensive responsibilities of attackers.
Old-fashioned? You give the advanced and objective metrics a break. They are a useful tool in this day and age to remove bias.
fw's: Agudelo, Sapong, Dwyer, Morris mids: Roldan, Acosta, McCarty, Arriola, Nagbe, Saief, Rowe, Zardes, McNamara backs: Villafana, Morrow, Hedges, Miazga, Spector, Besler, Lichaj gk's: Hamid, Gonzalez, Bendik
JK's lack of emphasis on tactical preparation with the US is something that has been documented as back as the Strauss article. Probably depends on how well the group stage group does.
Or the time in Costa Rica when the rest of the line stepped up and he ran backwards and kept the assist-man onside.
Yep. It is unbelievable. A better response to the reporter would have been "we did a very good job of being organized and we were prepared, they still had a lot of good tight crosses, but we were lucky!"
I'd agree it is better not to come public with these sorts of comments. Just pointing out that it has been a theme of Klinsmann's coaching career to be questioned on his tactical preparations, all the way back to his time as German national coach when it was widely accepted that he delegated that part of the job to Löw.