Time for the US to find a new manager.
Neil W. Blackmon
There’s infinite melancholy in what happened to US Soccer Saturday, one of if not the most brutal day in the modern era of the US Soccer Federation. First, at a mostly vacant Rio Tinto, a less-talented but better-prepared Honduras side defeated the US 2-0 in a CONCACAF Olympic qualifying semifinal. That evening, at a brimming, boisterous Rose Bowl that for pure sporting spectacle was as splendid as American soccer can offer, Mexico defeated the US 3-2 in extra time. With the victory, Mexico advanced to the 2017 Confederations Cup. Within hours, the two main priorities for US Soccer in 2015 were vanquished. As El Tri supporters sang and danced and celebrated into the Pasadena night, American fans were left bleary-eyed and stunned, resigned to quietly turn off television sets, staring solemnly at everything and nothing at once.
In a press room smelling of sawdust in the bowels of the Rose Bowl, Jurgen Klinsmann, manager and technical director and Sunil Gulati’s Alpha and Omega, brought in as manager to instill a “proactive, attacking style” , entrusted to flip the pyramid on its head and “challenge the establishment”, faced for perhaps the first time a (full) room of journalists with the lion’s share questioning his judgment. The questions weren’t brutal, by any stretch, but there were pointed and poignant ones asked about the program’s failure on both fronts.
Shortly after taking the job as national team manager, Jurgen Klinsmann chided the press, calling for more “healthy debate” and dialogue. That dialogue and debate now largely and rightfully centers on him. I don’t think, unless it was just the smell of sawdust, this was lost on Klinsmann.
Jurgen Klinsmann: "I felt the game was very even."
— Mark Zeigler (@sdutzeigler) October 11, 2015
With his tanned face a bit more ashen, his engaging eyes frequently cast downward, Klinsmann stumbled through the motions. Much of the game was very even, Klinsmann said, despite overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary and our old-fashioned friend, optics. Perhaps sensing this wouldn’t work, at least on this night, he retreated.
“We could never calm the game down,” said a manager who held a sub in a 120 minute game so he could replace his Premier League goalkeeper for penalties.
“We ran a lot, we won a lot of balls, but we couldn’t combine,” said a manager who once again opted to play talented players in uncomfortable positions, deploying Fabian Johnson and Jermaine Jones as shuttlers in a diamond midfield that never truly played like a diamond.
Klinsmann praised his team’s heart and character, which was right to do, but was perhaps symptomatic of the team’s troubled condition under his management. He was hired, after all, to make American soccer about more than character and grit. There was something painstakingly sad in seeing Klinsmann, perhaps aware that at least as manager, the pragmatism of his early tenure was now hopeful tinkering shading more toward hopelessness.
There’s sadness in failure, even for an oft-imperious leader like Klinsmann. Men of conviction often recognize their own illusions last, because, as Faulkner wrote, your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory. There’s a sadness in sitting a few yards away from that moment in time.
There’s melancholy in that moment even if as a young footballing country we reach and find the greatest capacity for change only once we see things as painfully as possible. We must have pain to reach necessity. The recognition of necessity is integral to change. Necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor, entitlement and pride.
When it comes to Jurgen Klinsmann remaining national team manager, US Soccer reached the point of necessity late Saturday night in California. Change is required when facts and ledgers aren’t square, and the reality is Klinsmann has long stopped writing checks his team’s performances can cash.
A dejected Jordan Morris walks away after Honduras scored in the Olympic qualifying semifinal Saturday afternoon. The US lost, 2-0.
Saturday, it was two checks. The technical director check of qualifying for the Rio Olympics next summer, a point of emphasis for Klinsmann for two years and one his fingerprints were all over, beginning with the side’s manager, Andi Herzog, whom Klinsmann hand-picked. The managerial check of qualifying for the 2017 Confederations Cup, in a game Klinsmann called the program’s most important for two or three years, with a win a last chance to accomplish a priority Klinsmann identified prior to the Gold Cup as the key goal for the senior team in 2015.
Earlier this summer, as the US lost to Panama in a half-hearted third place match at PPL Park, Sunil Gulati told reporters that Klinsmann’s job was certainly safe. “We don’t make snap judgments based on one game,” he said. As rough as the Gold Cup was, this seemed a reasonable enough position, one that demonstrated a prudence regarding opportunity costs befitting a Columbia economics professor. Prudence of this sort had been in short supply with Bob Bradley, who was the interim coach turned World Cup group stage winner that managed the US team when Gulati couldn’t hire Klinsmann the first time around. The problem for Gulati, of course, is that Saturday reframed the debate. No longer is the question should Klinsmann remain national team manager- the only reasonable side to take in that debate is that he should not; the question is now should, if his ego allowed it, he remain in any official capacity at all?
It is useful, at this juncture, to remember that Sunil Gulati hired Jurgen Klinsmann to do two jobs, and compensates him lavishly to perform to expectation in each. If there’s been a gaping failure in the US Soccer Media (myself included), it has been the continued conflation by the majority of these two tasks in evaluating Klinsmann’s performance. This has allowed folks to defend Klinsmann’s performance as manager by citing his nous as technical director, even as many, including Klinsmann himself, point out that the demands and responsibilities of those jobs at times stand in fundamental opposition to each other. What was needed was wholesale failure to shed light on the folly of this type of task conflation. Last week delivered.
The failure last week by the youth teams—it is important here to remember that on Tuesday an American youth side lost by the appalling score of 8-1 to Germany in Klinsmann’s hometown of Stuttgart—undercut the technical director defenses of Klinsmann, perhaps unfairly. Yes, the U23 not advancing to the Rio Olympics would constitute a colossal failure of a stated objective by the technical director himself. Yes, for the second consecutive cycle, Jurgen Klinsmann handpicked the manager for the crucial task of Olympic qualification and they didn’t get it done. Making matters worse, each guy was outcoached by a canyon’s margin in a crucial game, whether it be current Portland Timbers manager Caleb Porter or longtime Klinsmann trustee Andi Herzog. Make no mistake. There are negative implications to a U23 failure to earn Olympic qualification, something the team can still do if they best Colombia in a two-leg playoff. But making that the sole mechanism for evaluating Klinsmann as technical director is foolish and myopic, just as assuming the youth program was fine in the aftermath of a heartbreaking but encouraging World Cup quarterfinal run in New Zealand this summer would have been. Klinsmann’s capability and suitability for the job of US technical director shouldn’t, as Sunil Gulati has said, rest on the attainment or failure of one objective.
Klinsmann’s defenders are largely correct in their assessment of Klinsmann as a technical director. Jurgen is a big-picture guy, a long-term thinker whose best features are his ability to motivate and to sell a brand. His famous “the pyramid is upside-down” rant resonated with many youth coaches driving rickety school buses to travel tournaments hours away, or to high school age players trying to decide whether to play for their woefully underfunded high school program or just the travel club team, or high-school coaches who toil on ant-pile infested football practice fields when they aren’t battling like honey badgers for budget scraps. And it should have resonated with these individuals. These individuals, as Will Parchman wrote masterfully this week, are the root of US Soccer. Nourishing and assisting that culture is essential to long-term success, and Klinsmann is right to know it and he’s right to speak about it and he’s been right to implement small changes to help it. But being right about the root of the problem and carefully plotting change that will “shake things up a bit” is only minimally related to Klinsmann’s job as national team manager. And that’s incontrovertible, regardless of whether Jurgen’s ego would allow him to retain one job while ceding the other. It is an entirely false choice, and one that has been baited to the public in tweets like the one below, that it is either Klinsmann or a “MLS coach”, and that manager won’t matter.
Yeah, some MLS coach will bridge the massive disparity that exists.
Yeah, that's it. That's the problem.
— 3four3 (@3four3) October 11, 2015
There’s no need to accept the premise of the tweet that any MLS coach would do worse than Jurgen. Indeed, one has already done markedly better with a smaller player pool, but that’s not our focus here. It’s the premise of false choice. The notion that only Klinsmann can “challenge the establishment”—a term that remains largely undefined by those who utilize it—and the absurd corollary that Klinsmann must continue to manage the national team to implement needed structural change. That’s pure applesauce, an argument that taxes the credulity of the credulous.
Two years ago, the US ruled CONCACAF and bailed Mexico out of World Cup failure. Things have changed.
As national team coach, here is where we are.
With the deepest player pool in history, albeit a pool without a dynamic, game-changing superstar (is there any need to address that elephant again?), the US have now lost to 4 consecutive CONCACAF sides on US soil for the first time in the modern era. Three of those four sides will likely be in the HEX, and it would be four except that one of Panama, Jamaica and Costa Rica will not survive the next round as they are grouped together. A qualifier against a fourth potential HEX opponent, Trinidad and Tobago, awaits next month in Port-of-Spain and the Soca Warriors are coming off a Gold Cup where they won a group that involved Mexico.
That’s the 2015 reality.
Before that, Klinsmann guided the US out of a Group of Death at the World Cup, which is an accomplishment we at TYAC commended in this space and is certainly still worthy of applause. Praise can also contain reservation, and any evaluation of the American performance in Brazil demands at the least tacit acknowledgment that the Americans didn’t play very good soccer, save a scintillating hour in Manaus. They were outshot, per game, 21.7-10.15, the worst margin for an American team at any World Cup since they returned to the competition in 1990. They were out-possessed, 56.5 percent to 43.5 percent, the worst figure for any US team at a World Cup since 1994, and the worst disparity of any side advancing to the Round of 16 in Brazil. They completed 70 less passes per 90 minutes than their opponents in Brazil, and everyone remembers that they needed a herculean effort from goalkeeper Tim Howard to not get boat-raced out of the competition by Belgium.
One could argue that the US was simply out-classed in the Group of Death, and that explains the disparity. One would be wrong. The Americans played in a more difficult group in 2002, and reached the quarterfinals, and were statistically far better in a nearly-as-tough group in 2006, but made more fatal errors in earning only one point. In fact, even the 1998 side was better statistically, and they finished last in France. Further, the trend of being outshot and not generating nearly as many chances as the opponent continued at the 2015 Gold Cup, when the US outshot only hapless Cuba and a Jamaica side that bunkered for the final hour. Honduras outshot the US in the group stage as did relative minnow Haiti. Panama did it twice, including the third-place game, where Brad Guzan made more saves than Tim Howard did against Belgium. Read that last sentence about Guzan again for effect.
The rise of Mexico shouldn’t excuse Klinsmann’s poor choices.
The pace of the Americans descent has been frightening. Winners of the qualifying Hex earlier than ever under Jurgen Klinsmann, the US qualified for Brazil with a 2-0 win over Mexico in early autumn 2013. They then rallied to defeat Panama and rescue Mexico from World Cup qualification failure on this date, October 15, two years ago. As recently as two years ago, not only were the US the best team in CONCACAF, they were by some wide measure, and a case could be made that they had been since their win in Jeonju in 2002. Today, the question isn’t whether the Americans are best, it is about whether they are second or even third.
The US lost a game Saturday night at the Rose Bowl that had little business being two minutes from penalties. That’s a testament to the Americans’ character, and perhaps to Mexico’s institutional memory about what happens against the US when a game is tight. Mexico enjoyed Barca-like possession and the US defended the Mexican assault as if they were at the Alamo—with the same result, total and abject defeat.
It was mystifying, in the game’s aftermath, to hear talented American soccer voices suggest this was an improvement on the 2011 Gold Cup, in the same stadium four years prior. That was, as it happens, the last time until Saturday the US had lost to El Tri. The only thing better Saturday was the score. By almost any objective measure, Bradley’s 2011 side played Mexico a far better soccer game, one of the more entertaining international finals in recent history. The Americans led the game 2-0, attacked Mexico throughout, and played an up and down game at a tempo the current US team just can’t play. Mexico won, but how much that had to do with the injury of one of the Yanks best players, Steve Cherundolo, with the score 2-0, will forever be fertile fodder for debate. Saturday’s game was a far cry from that, a coronation delayed only by American grit and Mexico’s refusal to bunker and limitations at CB.
Certainly, the US aren’t entitled to be kings of CONCACAF. Mexico won the Olympics in 2012 and those players were bound to grow and mature and a handful of them were bound to pan out as senior team players. It’s a prosperous time for El Tri and the youth pipeline shows little sign of slowing. But again, contrary to the argument of the Klinsmann faithful, it’s a false choice and premise to suggest that any of that entitles Klinsmann to more time. No one is entitled to anything in life, least of all coaches that continue to lose games. And this remains true even if Klinsmann can’t be coaxed to turn down the television booth and the southern California beaches to remain technical director back at Soccer House in Chicago.
Will the US make a change?
Asked Gulati if Klinsmann has his support. "We'll sit down & talk in the next few days. But we always do that after games." No more comment.
— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) October 14, 2015
Gulati’s response this week was cryptic. Here’s what he told Grant Wahl as the Americans were losing to Costa Rica Tuesday night in New Jersey.
There are myriad ways to interpret that, but the safest one is to suggest Gulati is aware of the wellspring of opposition to Klinsmann’s management, even if he’s not yet ready for the Sword of Damocles to fall on Jurgen’s head. And yet, one wonders how long Gulati can hold out before his own job hits the chopping block. Is there an event horizon where Gulati sticking with Klinsmann reaches “he’s listening to the violins on the Titanic” status? Would that horizon be reached as quickly as next month in Port-of-Spain? Or will the US World Cup qualification have to be in serious jeopardy to force a change?
It’s tough to know for sure, but remember that this hadn’t been a banner year for Gulati even before Saturday’s failures. The US Women won the World Cup, but he was criticized openly by Senator Richard Blumenthal for the way the USSF handled Hope Solo’s domestic violence arrest, and for much of the tournament, Solo’s off-field issues sadly remained a public focus. Prior to the World Cup, Gulati made news when the FIFA indictments handed down by the Department of Justice included several prominent figures in the American soccer landscape, raising reasonable questions about whether US Soccer had any knowledge or awareness about the longstanding corruption. And if they didn’t, why not and is not knowing what’s happening under US Soccer’s nose worse? Gulati compounded the problem this summer when he couldn’t be bothered to attend a hearing on Capitol Hill about the FIFA indictments and what US Soccer knew when his presence was requested. After years of championing transparency and demanding accountability in international soccer, his absence, even if advised by counsel, was a poor look at a time when the public gaze was very much on Soccer House. Gulati is a brilliant mind. Certainly he realizes the senior men’s program is out of joint. And he knows there’s a risk that if he stands by his man, he sinks with the ship.
What to do, then?
Why do later what will or must be done eventually? It’s a good life rule and one that I was thinking of this week when Steve Spurrier, one of my childhood heroes, retired—scratch that, resigned—from coaching college football at South Carolina. Spurrier was confident, brazen and sure of himself, while rarely strident. He was, maybe more than anything, remarkably self-aware. He once won a game against a #1 FSU team by rotating his quarterbacks every play. He said it was because he could coach them before each play and didn’t think he could win with just one of them.
It was a stunning answer.
Sometimes it’s time to give someone else a chance, as Steve Spurrier reminded us this week.
Reading various Spurrier stories this week I again thought of having the good fortune and opportunity as a young college student to meet the coach at a question and answer event I attended with my dad. I asked him how he could change quarterbacks so effortlessly, and whether he was worried about the confidence of an 18-22 year old kid who knew they could be replaced in an instant. His response made a lasting impression. “Football is about adversity,” he said. “If you can’t handle something as simple as being benched, you’re probably never going to be great.” He then paused, looked right at me and said “Anyway, sometimes in life you just have to give someone else a chance. That’s all that’s really about.”
Soccer, too, is about adversity. Klinsmann guided the US through the adversity of the Donovan sabbatical, the 2013 Gold Cup, and the 2014 World Cup group stage. Now adversity has again hit—rainy days, as Klinsmann put it this week.
It’s time to give someone else a chance.
It is time for the United States to make a change at manager.
There are plenty of compelling reasons.
Second World Cup cycles rarely work. Marcelo Lippi, Raymond Domenech, Bruce Arena. History is littered with failure. That’s a foundation. Force multipliers? Plenty exist. Klinsmann’s tactics have been wrong for over a year, and his insistence, since his first game against Mexico in 2011, to play his best player Michael Bradley underneath the forwards as a playmaking number ten has cheated American fans and Bradley out of seeing a properly positioned MB 90 internationally in the best years of his prime. Klinsmann’s statements about his long-term strategy are increasingly incoherent, his early tenure pragmatism now more incessant guesswork. He’s grown increasingly volatile, criticizing star players for being hurt in tie games, ostracizing legendary players, and claiming he’ll infuse the team with youth while playing the same and now aging core he’s always played in games that matter. It isn’t Klinsmann’s fault the team has aged and the US has had trouble reproducing generational talents like Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. But it is Klinsmann’s fault that the team has lost its way, its counterattacking nous and identity and now, its continental championship and chance to play at the 2017 Confederations Cup.
Klinsmann can should continue to have a role in shaping the future of US Soccer. American fans and commentators would be foolish to not want that. He’s personable, engaging, and had a hand in the German soccer revolution that culminated in a World Cup victory last summer. But he doesn’t have to stay the team’s manager, and every day he does is a day closer to the potential humiliating failure of not reaching the 2018 World Cup.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.