What to make of Jurgen Klinsmann’s regime to this point? REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini
Kyle Bonn
ATLANTA — The United States lost to Jamaica 2-1 on Wednesday night, crashing out of the 2015 Gold Cup in the semifinals. Everyone has thoughts about it. Everyone.
Immediately following the match, Twitter was a primordial soup of hot takes hitting every point of the visible spectrum. Some people wanted Jurgen Klinsmann to be fired. Others argued the Gold Cup isn’t important, but instead a smaller piece of a bigger puzzle.
With US Soccer left to lick its wounds – the biggest of which ooze an overwhelming supply of questions – it is important to remember there is no right answer to many of them.
There are many who want Klinsmann to go, and there have been for a while. It’s not hard to put together a thorough argument in favor of relieving the German of his duties.
Those who wish to go that route have plenty at their disposal.
There is a shocking lack of improvement in competitive results from the beginning of his tenure to now. Despite the feel of steady growth in World Cup performances, a Round of 16 appearance this past cycle is not the tangible improvement fans want to see on paper. Obviously elimination by Jamaica in the Gold Cup semifinals is more of a step back than anything, despite Brad Guzan’s insistence otherwise postmatch. On the field, are the US better off than they were four years ago?
There is his desire to stick by certain players he discovers despite their struggles, seemingly past the point of stubbornness. At the forefront of that category is Club America defender Ventura Alvarado who continues to get starts at the back despite showing little progression and a propensity to make game-changing mistakes in one-on-one situations. Timmy Chandler also fits this mold. Despite being one of the team’s best crossers of the ball, his defensive limitations are shocking, yet it took a leg injury to keep him from the starting lineup this Gold Cup.
Fans can point to the dismissal of Bob Bradley before Klinsmann, for seemingly much less. Bradley was relieved of his duties following a Gold Cup final loss that felt like much less of a disappointment than this result against Jamaica. There is no denying Klinsmann has been the beneficiary of much more slack than Bradley ever received.
And yet, despite all this evidence against Klinsmann’s survival, firing him seems like nothing more than a quick trigger finger. For much of the game against Jamaica, the US was in complete control, and while a lack of finishing plagued them, ultimately they were still largely the better team. It wasn’t abject failure.
But it’s the feeling of disconnect that prevailed throughout the 90 minutes in the Georgia Dome that United States fans feel is all too familiar. For much of the match, even as the US poured forward and spurned wide-open chances, the squad felt unglued. It felt as if any moment, the tower of sticks could fall apart. It was a familiar feeling throughout this Gold Cup, only this time in Atlanta, it did indeed come crashing down.
The United States under Klinsmann’s command still feels like it’s on the cusp of making a leap everyone is grasping for – a leap to the “next level.” But every time the team gets to the proverbial edge, instead of springing to the next level, it takes three steps backwards. Eventually, Klinsmann will get them across the barrier…right?
If the US are to improve, players like Gyasi Zardes have to continue to show improvement and become consistent.
Ultimately, the Gold Cup is not the be all, end all. Upsets happen- this is why we watch soccer, to some extent. Regardless of the result, the Yanks have a very legitimate chance to secure a Confederations Cup place. There are almost three years until the next World Cup, and all agree those results are the most important. You could argue whether that’s cruel, I suppose. But international soccer isn’t club soccer. It’s played in small sample sizes. Perhaps that is why defeats are so agonizing.
Despite overwhelming evidence against Klinsmann’s reign thus far, none of that is the most worrying. There’s an intangible aura hanging over his tenure that just got a lot thicker with the failure in Georgia. The German coach will not be fired in the near future – nor should he at this point – but the anti-Klinsmann chatter continues to build evidence, and if the team continues down this same path for much longer, there will be enough for a jury to convict.
Serious changes must be made. There are players who would have clearly provided a boost to the squad who were left out, like Benny Feilhaber, Perry Kitchen, and Matt Besler. There are young players waiting for their chance to prove they can be an asset to the World Cup cycle. The squad is not completely broken – far from it. Clint Dempsey has been revived, Michael Bradley is a quality leader, Aron Johannsson has emerged as an electric option up front, and Gyasi Zardes is starting to be positive in spurts, among plenty of other positives that Klinsmann should get equal credit for. But for every positive, there seems to be a negative of equal or greater value, or at the very least, a “yeah, but…” that covers the happy moments in mud.
We didn’t learn anything new about the United States Men’s National Team with their 2-1 loss to Jamaica. In a vacuum, it was just a 90 minutes where the US dominated most of the possession, missed a bunch of chances, and appeared porous at the back. But US fans were left with an overwhelmingly heavy burden of questions that threatens to consume the near future of the federation, and those questions must be answered soon to avoid that burden becoming too heavy for Jurgen Klinsmann to bear.
Kyle Bonn writes for NBC Soccer and is a contributing writer to The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @the_bonnfire.