News: Bruce Arena disagrees with Jurgen Klinsmann over U.S. World Cup miss

I suspect that if he exceeds expectations they will be elated and if he comes in below expectations they will be upset.

Much like the US in 2014.

 

Don't they have any good Belgian managers?

Belgium has a team to shoot for a WC win, but no team has ever won the World Cup with a foreign coach.

 

I can direct you to the 606 thread where the Belgian poster thought it was daft and when I said it is a Tier 2 move he said, we aren't even that. I can @ him too if you like.

If you think about it Belgium has produced great players but all the have is a QF knockout under Willits. They actually have not accomplished much.

 

Soccer is like those stuffy British men's clubs from back in the day, where you didn't get accepted just because you had the money, but pedigree also mattered.

Belgium has the money, but lacks the pedigree. Everybody knows at least 6 out of the 8 QFists will be usual suspects.

 

Pulisic disagrees with another Arena conclusion!

Former manager Bruce Arena indicated after the defeat that the U.S. team didn't have great chemistry, with U.S. defender Geoff Cameron's attitude during the final two qualifying matches highlighted as one example.

Pulisic didn't believe that to be the case, saying: "I wouldn't say [chemistry] that was the biggest problem. Chemistry issues, I was fine with Geoff. He was a good mentor of mine actually, he taught me a lot of things. It's hard to say exactly what went wrong."

http://www.espn.com/soccer/united-s...ld-cup-qualifying-loss-vs-trinidad-and-tobago

 

The entire time with JK, the fans and press assumed the USA had top 10 talent; at least top 15. Everything was judged through that lens. Writers especially loved to dig up the Lahm quote and say, "look, he doesn't know tactics. Our players are under performing because they aren't set up correctly." I agreed with them; how could you not, our players were better than losing to Jamaica, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

Bring in the "best American coach", he will set up the team correctly and make the sum of the parts better than the collective pieces. Unfortuantely, Arena did with his career what Bradley did or Nagbe. At the first sign of adversity, or with a chance to really challenge himself, he opted for high paying, low pressure, MLS. Arena had the best players in MLS, and a competitive advantage thanks to the newly made up DP rule. He didn't really have to do anything innovative or even keep up with the times. He didn't have to know about what happened in other leagues or even on other MLS teams. He was the same guy who knew how to coach in 2004. Look at Wenger, he was the pinnacle in 2004, where were his tactics in the world of football in 2017? Outdated. He never had to change either, and when other teams matched and exceeded the talent he had, he failed. In 2017, we had a mostly MLS team playing competition with mostly MLS players. In 2010 and 2014, we had European based players mostly, playing guys in Central American domestic leagues.

Now in hindsight, our players were not that good. The lens we were using to evaluate JK and the team was wrong. The problem for WCQ was we brought in the one, arrogant, coach that probably was the only choice that would have failed. If JK was the second worst choice, Arena was the worst.

Will be interesting to see if JK gets a job this Summer and how he does. I think the fans in the USA have certainly changed their minds about our talent being world class. Our next coach, if we ever get one, will be working with better talent with much lower expectations. I just hope, whatever nationality, he is a coach with up to date tactical and coaching skills.

 

The short of it is that both failed, which is finally making us suspect that the pool sucks.

Since we want to be optimistic, we hype up the kids.

 

We all knew the pool sucked. I'm not sure we all understood the degree but even given that with a better coach or at least one willing to take risks once it was rather obvious the current players weren't up to the task then I think we qualify.

 

And we wonder why certain of the players quit against CR?

you think they didn't know about this "plan"?

 

Tim Ream's opinion.

Ream said: "Listen, one's European, one's American, one's a hard, get down to hard work, but he's also laid back and that's Bruce. You know he's, he came in and immediately you could feel the difference in, in attitude that the players had.

"They were a little more relaxed, which you could say is a good thing, you could say is a bad thing, depending on the results, but there was definitely more of a team feel once Bruce came in.

"Listen, Jurgen's a great coach, he, for whatever reason, just wasn't getting the best out of everyone. You know, at the end of the day, I don't think you can say we would have qualified with Jurgen or we wouldn't have. It's a moot point because they made the change and everything still turned out the way it did."

http://www.espn.com/soccer/united-s...says-jurgen-klinsmann-bruce-arena-debate-moot

Pretty consistent with what has been reported over the last 6 years. In camp, Bruce comes from the the more relaxed Pete Carroll "players coach" I am your buddy, school while Klinsmann is Bobby Knight, always intense, always confrontational alternated with the Zen Mr positive, making the players as Herc, Yedlin, and others reported "made the players feel that they could accomplish anything and beat anyone".

 

This is very generous. Maybe more like Lane Kiffin and Mike Singletary.

 

The first time I saw that poster, I thought it was referring to the human race being in trouble regardless of which of the antagonists won.

Having watched the movie, I now realize that they were referring to the audience.

 

Pulisic chimes in.

Q: What does former US coach Jurgen Klinsmann mean to you?
A: He called me up at a young age because he saw what I had been doing in Germany at Dortmund and he respected that. I respect him so much because he also gave me an opportunity. He brought me in — first time was Copa America — and he brought me along slowly. He didn’t throw me in the lineup right away … but he trusted me to put me on the roster, brought me in [and] gave me minutes time by time. As he felt the time was right, he started to start me and I think the way he did it was perfect. I’m so thankful for what he did to my career, especially for the US.

Q: Should Klinsmann (who was fired in November 2016) have finished the qualifying cycle or did a move need to happen?
A: It was tough. Obviously, with a bad start in the Hex (CONCACAF World Cup qualification) — that’s how things go in professional sports sometimes. I’m not saying it had to happen or if it was right — it was something that didn’t shock people.

https://nypost.com/2018/05/25/christian-pulisic-details-how-us-can-move-past-world-cup-mess/

 

The player pool was better than 5th in the Hex.

 

On paper, we should've been the #2 team in the region.

But once you watch how we play, it becomes fairly obvious that we aren't.

 

Tactics are determined by the coaches.

 

Disagree. You can have great tactics, but if your players are just too dumb to get them, it's useless.

IMHO, the big problem with us is that we lack players with a brain. So they can look more or less fine in their club with smarter guys directing them on the field, but once they play with the NT, they're lost.

A tactical plan only gives guidelines, it's impossible to cover all the variables. To fit the plan to the events on-field you need at least a couple of men with brains to help the others, or to serve things for them on a platter.

 

Club attainment of the players would indicate the suggestion they were too dumb to get the tactics is dumb.

 

I'm trying to explain how it works.

Let me make it easier: you have a guy like Alejo Bedoya in Nantes, playing the RM role. His duties are mainly defensive, but when a hole opens, he has a guy centrally, Guillaume Gillet, who draws the mark of two men and opens space for Alejo to run forward. He points and makes the pass, our guy finds the ball, gets open for a cross, and it becomes an assist.

End result: since Gillet arrives, Bedoya starts assisting/scoring.

Then Alejo comes to the NT and is put in a more offensive role. But no one is drawing the fullback away from him, and the guy behind (Chandler, or Johnson) doesn't come out with him. Alejo gets the ball, is surrounded, has to retreat, and looks at the midfield for guidance. Mike Bradley is standing in the middle of the field, not keeping anyone occupied.

They're all following the plan, but it's not working because none of them had the mental acuity to adapt: neither the RB ran forward to accompany Bedoya, neither Mike deviated from his central role enough to pull the mark of the fullback, and Bedoya looks much poorer with the NT than he looks with Nantes.

The difference is one man: Gillet. We didn't have anyone with Gillet's brains in midfield. Because the coach cannot tell you exactly what to do for each situation, he cannot cover the near infinite possibilities. And that's why you need at least a couple of men with brains on the field.

 

Bedoya was generally used as a defensively minded flanker for the US. He did well in the role during the World Cup where he posted WS scores of 6.9, 6.1, and 7.6, in the three matches he started.

I don't think Bedoya have more than 3 assists in any one of his Ligue 1 seasons.

 

In 15/16 he had 3 goals and 3 assists playing a rather defensive RM position. That's a lot better than our average striker.

 

Both Arena and Klinsmann suffered of the lack of leadership within the team.

And I'm sorry but our players are, for the most part, dumb. You can notice in their off-the-ball movement. The intelligent man makes himself available to be part of a play, the dumb guy tries to become the protagonist without processing the situation.

Even our best player, Pulisic, is a guy whose off-the-ball movement does not scream "smart guy."

 

Guys like Cherundolo, JOB, McHead, Reyna, and above all Donovan had the brains our men now lack.