Sure, if you ignore the World Cup he totally failed to qualify for, then yeah. Tying Portugal is a good result. Is it a big accomplishment for the NT? It can be debated. I'd say it's roughly equal to drawing England in the groups in 2010. Tying Belgium in regulation, taking a record number of shots along the way, is not worth lauding, IMO. Consider: in the same tournament, Costa Rica took Netherlands to PKs and Algeria tied eventual champions Germany in regulation -- much better teams than Belgium -- without surrendering an embarrassing number of shots on goal. Between them, Germany and Netherlands defeated Portugal, Spain, Chile, Brazil, France, Argentina. Belgium defeated Algeria, Russia, South Korea and the USA before losing unceremoniously to the first real team they played -- Argentina. Similarly, I take nothing from defeating Ecuador at home, but it doesn't reach the high water mark of past accomplishments for the team. I would expect us to win that match more times than not and I think that's a good assessment of the Klinsmann era. We mostly got the results we should've (until we started not to). That's the limitation of not having a tactical plan -- in any competition, the gap between abilities is mitigated by tactics.
I think it'sy unfair to blame either Klinsman or Arena completely. They both tanked. Klinsmann got next to nothing out of our toughest games, but Arena couldn't clean up with the minnows and lost to T&T at the end. So, they both get a grade of failed to qualify from me.
torture the numbers however you want - we made it out of a group we weren’t expected to. That deserves credit.
Not sure how you blame the guy who didnt get to finish and gave up the three points when there was much more room for error. Arena's team was much worse at the end than the the team from the first two games. When a coach takes over a team and makes it worse (player selection, mismanaging players, arrogance/complacency, drive an agenda other than winning, etc), he isn't blame for the failure.
Getting fired 2 games in makes WC'18 not on JK. JK also never failed to make it out of WC group stage.
This is all usual nonsense, He didnt pick up 3 points vs the best team. For that, he lost his job. Failing tonqualify was on Arena. Beating Ghana... the team that then tied Germany 2-2. Who cares how many shots they took. The majority werent dangerous. Sure, Belgium wasnt a very good team??? This last paragraph has a lot of good stuff in it. I like to judge games and tournaments on how the team performed as results can some times go the wrong way or the other team is just more talented. What was great about the Copa is that all teams were decent and we played well in all the games except for the argentina game where our lack of depth shown through with three players suspended. I cant think of an another tournament where that is the case. Not 2002, nor 2006, nor 2010, nor 2014, nor that silly confederation cup in 2009 where we got blasted in 2.5 of the games losing by a combined 0-9. You are still going on about tactics? What I learned from 2017 and 2019 is that player selection is much more important than tactics. I cant remember worse years than those two years.
Sure, it does. I'm not taking anything from getting out of the group. We can put things like the performance against Belgium in context (since that's what was offered).
It is if advancing is considered the #1 goal. Again, u seem to care about asthetics. I care about results.
If it's important to you to see it that way, then I can't stop you, obviously, but even if you blame Arena 100%, that man gets nowhere near the job if Klinsmann isn't having a string of historically bad performances and losses leading up to his firing. Arena inherited a team that lost to Guatemala, Jamaica (at home), Panama (at home) and Mexico at home twice...under Arena they went from those mighty heights to...losing to CR at home and Trinidad & Tobago.
The result of the game in question was a loss. Algeria, Costa Rica and the US all lost to better opponents in WC'14, despite tying in regulation. The difference is, the US set a tournament record for the number of SOGs received, despite facing a weaker opponent than the others. So basically, I'm simply questioning (based on these facts) how this can be considered a noteworthy US performance.
Guatemala, Jamaica, and Panama had jack $hit to do with the Hex. Hey, look, JK also made Semis of the Copa in '16. Those games were closer to the Hex than the ones you listed. But again, they had nothing to do with the Hex. Arena had 8 Hex games. He had a Gold Cup. He had friendlies. He had ample opportunity to figure it out. But he didn't. He blew it.
You know my thoughts on the "semis of the Copa". I do think generally the US played well in that tournament and, again, basically won the games they should've, which is more than I can say for the Gold Cup and the Hex matches that occurred around it. But I have no problem blaming both, really (and I do). I would not call 2014 Belgium an elite team. They were a talented but pretty unproven team all things considered, with neither the historical pedigree or the recent accomplishments of the other two (they didn't even qualify for the previous Euro, or the two previous World Cups). Belgium's golden generation arguably peaked for 2018, but in 2014, Hazard, de Bruyne and Courtois (for example) were all still U-24s who had won nothing* at club level (I think Hazard won the title with Chelsea the following year). EDIT: *I think Hazard / deBruyne had won league titles in Belgium / France prior; but I was thinking at the PL level. Mainly I'm saying they weren't yet the players we think of them today whereas Germany / Netherlands both had many more established players with big international / club pedigree.
Results are subject to chance, so the how does matter along with the how many when evaluating the team and management.
Arena's 2002 team lost to Poland and needed a pk save against South Korea and missed handball against Mexico. Weak ass team that got lucky. He missed knockouts in '06 after getting obliterated by Chechia and losing to Ghana to come last in the damn group. He failed to qualify for '18, despite inheriting a team that made semis of the Copa. There's the evaluation for the aesthetes.
I'm evaluating Klinsmann on his own merits; not sure why it has to be a "Klinsmann vs. Arena" thing. Arena's legacy is secure. Unlike Klinsmann so far, Arena's had more success than failure as a head coach, including more successful intl qualifying campaigns (2 of 3; the one he botched being the one he inherited).
Apologies in advance for going WAY off the topic of BA Vs JK Vs. LD Vs CD Vs VD or whatever; but the Jewsbury interview was funny. I laughed a lot.
When you said Arena's legacy is secure, I agreed, but then you went the opposite direction. I think his legacy is secure as an arrogant bozo who utterly failed and screwed me out of enjoying a World Cup. Unfortunately, with recency bias, that means more to me than his '02 accomplishments or his tenure with LA Galaxy. Guy is a joke. Klinsy? Also a joke. A snake oil salesman. Did well in Copa, did well in WC, lost the team because he's not a manager, he's a cheerleader. They are both jokes, they are both arrogant bozos. Argument over. Scary thing is - I'd take both of them now over Egg, as long as they come as a package deal. Klinsy can select the talent/rosters, and Arena can be in charge of tactics. Bam - that ain't a bad combo!
I'm applying the same logic to both coaches. So, yeah, Arena was the biggest failure of himself, Bob, and JK.
This is so old. Of course he wouldn't have. But he wouldn't have brought him as a backup to Jozy. He would have also probably brought Feilhaber instead of Beckerman, and a few more dinosaurs from MLS instead of Yedlin, Green, Brooks, and Johansson.
Klinsmann probably doesn't get fired if he hadn't also tanked in the Gold Cup and basically had a series of crappy results after a good series of friendlies right after. If he had built up a bunch of faith a few bad results wouldn't have been a complete disaster, but people had already lost much faith in him making it look shaky to assume he would right a severely off track ship. I mean, dropping points in our Mexico and Costa Rica games isn't really a fire-able offense on its own. It was the culmination of a series of poor results. Personally, I thought the horrific Gold Cup results deservedly had him half way out the door before those games were even played. I'd have been inclined to fire him for that alone.
People forget that Klinsmann was fired after that Gold Cup essentially. Arena had agreed to a contract, but then Flynn went into the hospital. Then Sunil got cold feet and the team did well at the Copa. But if Flynn had set up any kind of contingency for his medical needs, JK would have been gone in early 2016.