We are thankful, believe it. We appreciate early Thanksgiving and/or Christmas I know what country im going to this winter for vacation . Never been, but it sounds good, bear with me im doing this on a whim but its going to happen.
Celebrate now, but don't forget: when we win World Cup 2038 in Antarctica, you're all gonna feel real stupid for not realizing all the things Jurgen did to make it possible.
This is so ********ing dumb. Can't believe this is real. What a bunch of ridiculous reactionary bullshit. Remember this day when we finish bottom of the group in Russia.
It will be better than not qualifying at all, which we were in perilous danger of doing out of the gates. Read this very clear........we would not have picked up points anywhere but T&T on the road, and we would have been very lucky to get ties at home to Panama and Costa Rica. We would have finished 4th at best (more realistically 5th behind Honduras)........and probably lost to Iran, Uzbekistan, Australia, or Saudi Arabia in the playoff.
We would have been very lucky to get a tie at home with Panama? Get out of here. We would have been huge favorites in all of our home games except against Costa Rica where we'd still be solid favorites. If we'd had the exact same results home to Mexico and away to Costa Rica last cycle, it wouldn't have stopped us from winning the Hex, let alone finishing in the Top 3.
yeah.......we were huge favorites in the Gold Cup too. Those teams are better now, and we are worse. It would have been diabolical. Actions speak louder than words, and Panama have probably come away something like 2-1, maybe even a shutout over us. I haven't seen enough of Honduras yet to properly gauge them but what ive read they've gotten better too. We are the only team who has gotten convincingly worse in CONCACAF by a significant margin, and that is at least 90 percent on your boy. Its not the player pool.......it was the coach. You will see that in the coming months, and I will remind you of it.
The Gold Cup debacle was where I started to lose faith... and the complete implosion of our Olympic team. I can't imagine this was only about these 2 games at all. We shouldda probably paid more attention to Philipp Lahm in the first place.
The US was 24-2-1 at home in competititve games under Klinsmann to teams ranked outside the Top 15 in ELO, but sure keep on cherry picking a couple bad games and ignoring a mountain of wins to make your case.
We usually beat crap teams at home regardless of the coach. I believe that is the group we just narrowed it down to there.
Jurgen was very clear in his NY Times interview that the only people criticizing him were dolts who didn't know the team and knew very little about soccer. You see, this country is so clueless - I mean really really dumb when it comes to soccer. All of Jurgen's success was due in spite of MLS and this know-nothing country. And worst of all, Jurgen was disrespected by people questioning his methods. Don't you know how smart he is and dumb you are? Just questioning him shows how disrespectful you are. Well, how will we ever move forward without him? I mean, we have always qualified for WC since 1990 and regularly qualified for the Olympics and sometimes even the Confed cup, but we are doomed without him. Such disrespect to an obviously superior person - anyone doubting him should be ashamed. Shame Sunil!
I'll give him credit. When he stops experimenting and plays a reasonable lineup after a long camp, our team plays close enough to their potential to win most of the games they should. Which is to say, when you couldn't fit a credit card between what he does and what Bob Bradley would do, they do well enough. He's also been a boon for recruiting. Brooks, Williams and FJ weren't foregone conclusions. OTOH, if the only reason you're playing for the shirt is the coach, you need to get your head straight before we cap you. I'm not saying that's the case for these guys in particular, but I'm saying the only way a coach should impact your decision to play or not play for the national team is if the guy is a total whack job. The experimentation he does is an integral part of every national team manager's job. But the way Klinsmann does it isn't well constructed to provide meaningful conclusions. It's done far to frequently, in inappropriate situations, and in a way that damages morale, both for the players and the fan base. The net result is that the team lacks coherence beyond the norm for national teams, which is saying something. His guiding star is that it takes little effort for world-class players to form a cohesive team. This is true. But we have very few (if any) world class players. Cohesion is critical. Everything he does appears to be in the service of breaking down that cohesion. From the formation changes, to dumping Donovan prior to the world cup, to throwing players under the bus, to trying to shoehorn the best player at position X into position Y's role instead of selecting ANY player who knows position Y... He has an idea of what he's trying to do. It's just a bad idea. Instead of marshaling the ONE THING WE HAVE GOING FOR US, he destroys it in favor of an ideal that isn't attainable. You're probably right about the 5 best coaches in world football, because if three of them share the same delusion(?) unbridled optimism(?) about our player pool based on their experience as world class players, we'd be screwed. Which is why I'd take someone like Bruce Arena or Bob Bradley back in a heartbeat. Not because they're the visionaries that could lead us to the promised land, but because I know they will build something rather than tear it apart, based on what we have rather than what we wish we had. So, when people say "It's the player pool!" They're right. Klinsmann didn't really know how to coach ours. Classic case of "It isn't you, it's me." Which really means, it's both of us. Let's just be friends. I'll always cherish the special times we had together.