Whatever the ultimate value that JK brought to Germany in 2006, the fact is that he had someone else in charge of tactics. Whether this was a condition of getting the job or self-knowledge on the part of Klinsmann, it addressed his weakest point. Unfortuantely, he seems dead set on proving that he is a great tactical thinker. Nothing else explains his tenure. He wants to prove everyone wrong. If he had Tab Ramos or Claudio Reyna sitting next to him, with some real authotity to act, I think his tenure would look a lot different right now.
And those strengths are really minimized in a midweek one off, with no training, and a bunch of Euros getting heat stroke. How will this effect the next few games? I've been thinking of starting this as a thread since the day after the game, and will do so soon....
Whatever the ultimate value that Tony in Quakeland brought to Big Soccer in 2006, the fact is that he had someone else in charge of soccer knowledge. Whether this was a condition of becoming a poster or self-knowledge on the part of Tony, it addressed his weakest point. Unfortunately, he seems dead set on proving that he is a great Big Soccer poster. Nothing else explains his tenure. He wants to prove everyone wrong. If he had Susaeta or Bob Morocco sitting next to him, someone with some real knowledge to post, I think his tenure would look a lot different right now.
Just the type of professional jealousy I have had to put up with my whole bigsoccer career. I'll show you all someday!
I thought he came in and played well to kill off the game against Guatemala that got the US to the Hex.
Fair enough, I did not find that particularly memorable, but because of that, I can't say he was bad either.
The problem with guys like Zusi and Sasha is that they are fine to have in your 23 man roster - you can slot them in as a starter when guys go down (or pull a 'Donovan' and disappear) and as long as they are the 10th-11th best player on the pitch they will do an adequate job in a role as a supporting player. They are NOT the type of player who can come in and change a game as a sub. I'd rather see even Robbie Rogers coming off the bench than those two - at least he could run at tired defenders (as seen to great effect in Klinsy's first game). We actually have plenty of good sub options in our pool - speedy guys (Beasley, Shea, Gatt, Gyau, Rogers, EJ if we bring him off the bench once everyone is back), big guys who can hold up the ball and win long balls against worn out CB's (Boyd, Gordon), poachers (Gomez, Bruin, Wondo), limited playmakers who can play that one killer ball (Feilhaber, Diskerud, ...gulp... Adu). Now, some of those guys are injured or horribly out of form (I am NOT advocating calling up Rogers or Adu right now by any means) but we had one impact sub (Gomez) available for this game (and maybe another 1/2 if Castillo was subbed in at left wing) and he couldn't even get in because we had already subbed on three CM's.
I believe he should have started in a five man midfield, ahead of Eddie Johnson, in this particular match.
In my view, this change would have made the attacking six players truly the slowest in recent USMNT history. And I don't think that is a good thing, because when a team can't stretch the defense with speed, it's easy to compress the field, deny space and make possession really difficult. EJ was necessary in my view.
Since the 32 team World Cup began in 1998, exactly two nations on the face of the earth have made the quarterfinals all four times. One of them is Brazil. The other apparently "had a lot of really average outfield players" for the first three of those cups. Over the span of these last four cups. England, Spain, Italy, France and The Netherlands have made just two QFs. I can't imagine how crappy their players were. Perhaps if they'd just had Klinsi as coach,...
A team in order to be effective should have a mixture of starters, backups, and impact subs. So far Klinsmann is going with starters and backup players in the Qualifiers.
There has been some history at the DFB job. Klinsmann won the world title as a player under "team manager" Franz Beckenbauer, who didn't even have a coaching license (and never worked as a coach before). Beckenbauer had Holger Osieck and Horst Köppel working for him; solid sweat suit guys. Klinsmann's predecessor Rudi Völler had a license, but no experience, and had Michael Skibbe working for him. Klinsmann had a license, but he wasn't hired for his brilliant practice exercises and tactical knowledge; it was expected that he led the campaign with the assistance of a true coach. Klinsmann got his license in a shortened course for merited WC and EC winners. One outsider there was young Jogi Löw, who already worked as head coach of Stuttgart, won the DFB Cup, and had to catch-up his license in part-time on his job. Löw was best-in-class of course, taught his class mate Klinsmann lots of things, and Klinsmann remembered whom he should call when he needed somebody to teach his players.