Can India supplant the United States as a footballing destination?

Unless you have been under a rock or in a "safe space," you know that Virat Kohli is widely considered one of the world's greatest athletes. Kohli has put forth a series of astounding batting displays to lead India to an easy series victory over England, showcasing why Team India is the No. 1 Test cricket team in the world. Even people who hate Kohli love him.

A topic of debate in sports bars from Mumbai to Manipur is imagining how great India would be at football if top-level cricketers like Kohli played the sport instead. It is well known how India practices football in their training sessions, after all.

Seasoned United States fans have heard this before. American football superstar Odell Beckham has stated that he would have played for Real Madrid or Barcelona if he stuck with the sport he dominated as a child, choosing instead to stay in the States since he claims he didn't want to leave his family.

Both India and the United States have professional leagues in which the best players tend to be over 35 years old. MLS commissioner Don Garber claims that his league can produce the next Christian Pulisic yet still trumpets Frank Lampard's impact on the league. Supporters of MLS brag that the stadiums are first-rate and fans are enjoying the matches - even though the championship was won by a team without a shot on target for a 120-minute match.

There is little question that MLS-level caliber of football can also be produced in India's Super League. Players such as John Arne Riise, Florent Malouda, Lucio, Diego Forlan and Mohamed Sissoko all operate there, and the eight-team league is thriving.

That number eight should be noted since only major Indian cities have clubs for a three-month season. Unlike the expansion of MLS to almost 30 teams, soccer in India is getting light exposure in order not to water down the league. In that sense, an IPL team probably has the same amount of quality as MLS and attendance has averaged over 27,000.

It's not hard to imagine India's football league soon topping MLS since the goal is to eventually compete with the Japanese league as the best in Asia.  The J-League's credentials can't be questioned after Kashima Antlers took Real Madrid to extra time in a spirited display in the Club World Cup championship. 

That's the same competition in which CONCACAF champion Club America were hammered by a jet-lagged Real Madrid in the video below. Of course, no MLS team has had the quality to oust a Mexican team to gain entry to the event so it shows where the league truly ranks in the pecking order of football. This week was proof that MLS is no match for the J-League.

India has two teenage footballers as trialists in Spain so the real question is whether the next Virat Kohli will choose the sport rather than cricket. It's a tough call in India since cricketers get fame, fortune and the best Bollywood models, much like American football players in the States. It's worth watching how much football develops in India and the United States as they vie for the status of having the best 35-and-over league in the world.

Arena Bringing what the U.S. Need: The Truth

The United States has announced that tickets will go on sale Monday for the Jan. 29 matchup in San Diego versus Serbia.  Making that announcement was none other than Bruce Arena, back for a second go-around as boss and the no-nonsense manager showed what he was all about Friday with an unprecedented Facebook Q and A.

Arena took a number of fan questions and two things happened. One, the questions were quite good and two, Arena answered them honestly and thoroughly.  Gone were the days of the U.S. coach lambasting the fans after getting thrashed by four goals.

He was forthright about the January camp, mentioning that players who were out of favor in the past like Benny Feilhaber, Darlington Nagbe, Juan Agudelo and Gyasi Zardes would be there. He also intends to bring in uncapped players like Walker Zimmerman, Keegan Rosenberry and Gambian-born Kekuta Manneh, with Chris Pontius of the Union also earning the right to go to the camp. Arena detailed how Perry Kitchen won't be there since Hearts is in a Cup competition. is in the bloody Scottish Cup! - (note:IMOTGP reader Ryan Willox)

The coach said there is hope that Clint Dempsey will be available for the camp while explaining that Boro backup Brad Guzan is the No. 1 keeper for the qualifiers now given that Tim Howard will still be recovering from surgery come March.

Arena didn't shy away from the tantalizing possibility that Christian Pulisic and Sacha Kljestan could play together in the middle of the pitch, suggesting a 4-1-4-1 as a possible setup.  He said he was unaware of any new young talent in the pipeline, with the inference being that the player pool that the knowledgeable U.S. fan sees is the same one he does as well.

He provided details of his trip to Germany in which he visited with Fabian Johnson, John Brooks, Bobby Wood, Christian Pulisic and Timmy Chandler. Arena specifically mentioned Wood's stint off the bench in a match against Darmstadt and directly answered a question of where Johnson would play by saying that he asked Johnson the exact question: Johnson said he can play as a defender or midfielder but just wants consistency. Arena noted he would not be able to work with this group until the week before the Honduras match.

As for team performance, Arena indicated that he wants a minimum of four points from the home game against Honduras and match at Panama in March. Gone are the days when the U.S. coach says we are going to "take it to them" and loses by four on the road; this is Arena's pragmatism showing. He noted that Chandler and Jermaine Jones are suspended for Honduras, a match he termed  "must-win." Arena also said winning the Gold Cup is important in 2017.

Other highlights: As far as fixing the team, finding a No. 10 is a priority for Arena as well as shoring up the back line by organizing it better. And that back line will comprise of players such as Brooks, Johnson, Geoff Cameron and DeAndre Yedlin so it's unlikely anyone from MLS will fill those roles.

When asked whether he would encourage players to play abroad or in MLS, Arena was non-commital yet made this interesting remark: "For me it makes no sense if a player is playing on a reputable club abroad and doesn't get on the field (for the U.S.)." Can this be read into Yedlin somehow going off the radar for our team yet featuring regularly for Newcastle?

When asked about relying on veterans for qualifying as opposed to young players, he notably said that using younger players makes more sense at home than in an away environment like Panama. Pulisic having ups and downs was specifically mentioned. You may recall that in the first two hex games, Pulisic started both the Mexico and Costa Rica matches; this blog felt that Pulisic should have been kept in reserve in Costa Rica - a tactic the shrewd home side used in bringing in Joel Campbell off the bench to shred us to pieces.

Leaving no stone unturned, the ageless DaMarcus Beasley will get a look in January. Matt Miazga, who recently scored his first goal in Europe, is not part of Arena's plans for now since the defender is not getting regular playing time at Vitesse. Arena said Columbus attacker Ethan Finley is playing well but not well enough to earn a shot in January.

In conclusion, there could not have been a more thorough evaluation of the state of the program and all the moving pieces involved and it could not have been done in a more professional manner. We encourage all of you U.S. fans to watch the Q and A and judge for yourself. This in and of itself should give us hope that 2017 will be a step forward after this past year made us a world laughingstock.

No surprise: Don Garber lies about the state of MLS

As most football fans know, it's time to crown the champion of MLS on Saturday night. You didn't know? Well you should watch this below ...

Anyway the championship game will be held in Canada for the second time, with Toronto FC hosting Seattle Sounders, a team you will recall this blog went to see back in August when we scouted Nicolas Lodeiro and company. It's a great matchup that features Lodeiro for the Sounders and Italian star Sebastian Giovinco for TFC, marking a rare title game in which both teams' best players are not even 30 years old, let alone the minimum age requirement of 35 for most foreign stars. 

This fact has caused MLS Commissioner Don Garber to go into full-on bragging mode about the quality of MLS, Garber claims that we have "young stars" to look forward to as he continues to make MLS one of the "best leagues in the world."

Said Garber: "Without doubt the target is younger players who are coming at the prime of their career or even as they're beginning to establish their career.

"The strategy in the past might have been to sign players that were well known who have already established their legend playing someplace else. Now we're able to bring in a (Nicolas) Lodeiro who is an accomplished player at 28, but he's the MLS newcomer of the year and we're hoping he can create a legend for himself in Major League Soccer and in Seattle.

"Certainly Sebastian Giovinco has been able to prove that, and Giovani dos Santos who has seen his career really rise to an entirely new level by playing in (Los Angeles). It's part of the evolution of our league."

Let's examine this statement. Bragging about players 28 years old is great and Lodeiro and Giovinco are solid. But if we are talking about great players at that age, we are talking about this guy and this guy. Lodeiro only made 13 appearances for Seattle though he is a player on the rise while Giovinco has never been considered one of the top 50 players in the world.

Meanwhile, it's true that Dos Santos has been more productive in MLS than anywhere else in his career. But is that rising "to an entirely new level," as Garber says, or simply dominating an inferior league. Garber is ridiculous in thinking the U.S. fan somehow won't understand this. Obviously, Giovinco never dominated Serie A like this. To put things into perspective, when The Phantom is playing goalkeeper with little boys and girls in summer camp, he morphs into a fearsome combination of Gigi Buffon and Edwin van der Sar. Those 10-year-olds don't stand a chance!

You can read more nonsense from Garber here.  He wasn't asked about the embarrassing fact that MLS teams fly commercial, and if he was, he would probably tell you that flying Southwest is part of his master plan to "grow the game" and make MLS "one of the best leagues" in the world. Much like Sunil Gulati with the U.S. team, Garber exists to try to fool American fans into thinking MLS is a premium product. It's not and won't be anytime soon, given his plans to expand the league to such lengths that we could eventually have a top flight as big as a 48-team World Cup.

That's All Folks!

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.

Don't worry, it didn't happen!

The rumor is that the United States played a football match somewhere last night. There are numerous news stories about the aftermath. Some people even believe the coach will be fired.

But the real question is did it happen. Because a little after 4 pm Eastern time, there is no mention of the match on the U.S. soccer website.  Go and see for yourself.

We are going to interpret that to say there was no United States match last night! So go ahead and dream big, U.S. supporters!  Remember we are on our way to the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup!

Dumb tactics? Yes. But Mexico still should have lost

History was made Friday night. Jurgen Klinsmann added another chapter to his illustrious reign as U.S. boss. He already guided the U.S. to our first loss ever against Jamaica back in 2012.  He did one better by losing to Jamaica yet again in last year's Gold Cup semifinals.

Now he's the first coach to lose a home qualifier in Columbus  against Mexico after Friday's 2-1 defeat. And it's clear that the new "3-4-3" with Christian Pulisic playing centrally was a horribly naive decision. Things improved when Andres Guardado got hurt and the U.S. went back to the familiar 4-4-2 thereafter with Pulisic operating on the wing.

So yes, Klinsmann blew the start of the game. But U.S. fans have long known the team needs to perform better to overcome his tactical insanity. The real question is should the U.S. still have won this contest?

We here at IMOTGP say a resounding yes because after Bobby Wood's equalizer, this was no contest. And what was exposed was the fragility of the Mexicans. It's not hard to see why this is a team that lost 7-0.   This blog was shocked at how meek and mentally shot Mexico was the game required just an ounce of grit. And the fouling and yellow cards that came with that during the portion of the match in which they were outplayed was evidence of that.

This has been described as one of the "most talented" Mexican teams ever. Well we still see the same one. Chicharito - so sublime at Bayer Leverkusen - was a complete non-factor. Outside of the first half hour in which Mexico were so superior because the U.S. was lost in a trash formation, the visitors brought little to the table, were yelling at each other and looked like they wanted to hide.

Of course, one last tactical mistake - not having a player on the back post in the 89th minute - proved to be the undoing for the U.S. But it's likely the team under Klinsmann doesn't practice such set-piece defending, more likely choosing instead to drill formations that are unusable. Still, let's not hail Mexico for this performance when they were abject for half the contest. Their frailties remain. Bravo to them for getting three points on the road against the U.S. but what this contest proved yet again is that CONCACAF remains a footballing minnow.

Short-handed Gladbach revive Champions League qualification hopes

Borussia Monchengladbach were rooted to the bottom of their Champions League table. They had stalwarts Thorgen Hazard and Raffael out with injuries as well as United States superstar Fabian Johnson while Mahmoud Dahoud started on the bench for their Wednesday trip to Glasgow to face Celtic. None of that mattered as the Fohlenelf rolled to a 2-0 victory that silenced the Bhoys' faithful and boosted qualification hopes.

After a Matchday 1 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Pep Guardiola and Manchester City, Gladbach looked doomed in the Group of Death.  Blowing a lead at home against a Lionel Messi-less Barcelona on Matchday 2 made that fate even likelier.

Now Andre Schubert's side could leapfrog City with three points at home against Celtic provided Manchester City do not win in England against Barca that same day. In that scenario, Borussia could now advance with three points in a Nov. 23 rematch with City.

It's all conjecture at this point but this was an inspired showing by the Foals. Lars Stindl and Andre Hahn proved too much for Celtic to handle after the Scottish champs gave City the business in a 3-3 Celtic Park thriller that had them looking the likelier of the two sides for a Europa League berth.

Instead Borussia turned on the style and made their hosts impotent, seizing on two Kolo Toure errors for their goals even though in truth they were the better side throughout. It was the kind of away performance rarely seen by Gladbach.

"We're fearless at home – we play with a high tempo and we're always looking for the quickest route to goal," Schubert told Bundesliga.com. "In the opponents' penalty area, we look for one-on-one situations and try to get shots on goal. When we're away, though, our attacks break down, or we just pass the ball from one side of the pitch to another." 

Last season, Gladbach took four points off Bayern Munich and visit the Allianz Arena this weekend. They could prove to be the bogey side again to the Bundesliga's best.

Said Hahn: "We know we’re a team who can give Bayern problems."