In the end, and there was always going to be a bitter end, it took the United States six years to figure out the truth about Jurgen Klinsmann when it took Bayern Munich about nine months to come to the same conclusion. Back in April of 2009, the situation was dire enough for the Bavarians with a Champions League berth not secure; action had to be taken. The U.S. is in a similar boat; it's unthinkable that we cannot qualify for the World Cup in the remedial football class that is CONCACAF, yet we are at the bottom of the table through Klinsmann's final two matches in charge.
But there will be plenty of time to examine the United States, Bruce Arena and an apparent bumper crop in talent that was mismanaged so thoroughly. For now, there is only a postmortem to conduct and one that makes anyone with a shred of footballing knowledge wondering why Jurgen Klinsmann should be hired by anyone in the future. Oddly enough, attending a state dinner in Berlin - with two neutered world leaders in Angela Merkel and Barack Obama - was his final act as U.S. coach.
There were failed formations, players out of position, nonsensical interviews and a general arrogance and condescension to just about everyone in sight during his reign of terror. This included even former basketball great Kobe Bryant. Even his greatest accomplishment - the 2013 Gold Cup championship - was won with Landon Donovan as the player of the tournament in a watered-down event. We all know what would happen to Donovan one year later.
Not that Donovan was the only player to draw Klinsmann's ire with a laundry list of them thrown under the bus. That group includes Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley, Alejandro Bedoya, Fabian Johnson, Tim Howard and John Brooks. If you notice, those are players that the United States generally counted on in his era. It was Brooks who Klinsmann blamed for Mexico's winning goal last week, and the center back responded to such "motivation" with a calamitous performance in the ill-fated 4-0 loss to Costa Rica.
Somehow Klinsmann got extreme credit for a 2014 World Cup in which the U.S. did advance from a difficult group by beating Ghana and drawing Portugal. It was never the Group of Death - Costa Rica won that one by besting heavyweights Uruguay, Italy and England. Then the knockout loss to Belgium in extra time made Howard an American hero - although many astute observers wondered why the Red Devils were allowed so many shots at our goal.
The U.S. managed one shot on target in the loss to world champions Germany in that World Cup, then were consistently outshot and outplayed in the 2015 Gold Cup - losing to Jamaica in the semifinals. Klinsmann blamed the referees for that defeat. Improvement as far as results came in the 2016 Copa Centenario with wins over Ecuador, Paraguay and Costa Rica mostly due to the individual brilliance of Brooks and Clint Dempsey. Losses to Colombia twice and Argentina by 4-0 in the semifinals told another tale.
Sandwiched around that Copa were ridiculous results in World Cup qualifying. An unthinkable loss in Guatemala has somehow been glossed over but the results of the last week could not be. And while losing by four at Costa Rica was embarrassing, it says here that for the U.S. to see the end of their Columbus home dominance over arch-rival Mexico was a far more telling blow. In fact, Klinsmann lost his last two competitive fixtures to El Tri on home soil, failing to qualify for next year's Confederations Cup as a result.
Those who followed Klinsmann's tenure in Germany closely couldn't have been surprised. His pep talks in the 2006 World Cup bordered on the ridiculous and his host nation side actually weren't that impressive in that tournament and lacked a signature 90-minute win. His lack of tactical acumen was evident the year before when Germany's disastrous defending in the Confederations Cup resulted in 4-3 wins over Australia and Mexico and a third-place finish in that event - on home soil.
Ironically, Klinsmann's place as Germany coach was under pressure in 2006 before Arena brought a reserve-laden U.S. squad to Dortmund and was hammered 4-1 in front of a jubilant crowd. Even that match was scoreless at the half. Said Arena: "The game served the purpose of evaluating players. I’d never come again to Germany to play the host country in their last tune-up before the World Cup with a second team, but this team is wearing USA. We got beat, and we deserved to get beat."
Yes, Klinsmann used his starters to pummel a team of Arena's backups in order to save his job a decade ago. It's the mentality of a small-minded man - to beat a weak team and claim glory for it, as Klinsmann did in the 2013 Gold Cup for crushing Belize and El Salvador. The same mentality of "going for it" was seen in friendly wins at Germany, Italy and the Netherlands when those European powerhouses never really were up for the fight. Now it's Arena's turn to try to clean up this mess and restore some semblance of cohesion to the once-proud United States national team.
No comments:
Post a Comment