1. Be genuine to his desire to test youth - Ventura and Brooks weren't given lip service. They started key matches. Dempsey is not on the squad, it forces Wood to step into the lineup. Yedlin steps into an RM role now RB. 2. Youth teams - perhaps they are all being given the same game plan and instruction, which is to say, here is the basic format, create inside of it. Separate yourself or lose. Our youth teams suffer, but the few players who rise above it can theoretically, handle the pressure of the big stage. Miazga, Morris? 3. Focus on the whole man in order to start the culture of complete professionals. All his non-sports therapy. 4. Build up enough individual professionals to build a team rather than the other way around. Meh I'm not saying I buy into it or believe it, but if there is a line of logic to be had, this is my stab at drawing it.
It might, but with all the negativity, I thought a home for UP with Klinsmann! might have its own small dark corner in which to cower.
I like the idea of this thread, but I don't necessarily agree with the items that you picked to highlight. 1. I do agree with this one. He does call in a lot of different guys, and he's not afraid to call in guys that noo one else really has on their radar. This can be fun, and can lead to some successes, but it also is going to lead to a lot of failures, which is really OK. 2. I can kind of see this one. There seems to be some coherency across age level in training and approach, but I wouldn't call it a success. Unfortunately, watching the youth teams play, they look like they don't know what they're doing out there. The players look unprepared. They don't seem to understand their roles and how to help the team. Of course... you could argue that the senior team looks like this as well, so in a perverse sort of way, he is preparing the youth for the senior squad... but not for a SUCCESSFUL senior squad. 3. I completely disagree with this. I think that most American players are very disciplined and professional in their approach to the game, and have been for some time. Back when McBride was a Fulham, I remember the manager talking about the fact that the US players, while not particularly skilled, all tended to be very professional in their approach to the game. As a matter of fact, a lot of the off-field preparation stuff that JK brought to the German program was stuff that he learned from the US program. 4. I'm not sure what you mean bu this. If I were going to give JK credit for doing stuff right, I would pick the following: A. The ability to recruit dual nationals and intigrate them into the team. I think he's done things that no other coach we've had could have accomplished in this area. They haven't all been successful, and there have been mistakes, but overall I think it's been a good thing for the program. B. Brought a "real European" experience to the USMNT. I don't think this is necessarily a great thing in the short term, and I don't think it's sustainable... but I think that the dictatorial (and sometimes arbitrary-seeming) way that he approaches coaching provides a lot of context for players and others involved in the USMNT program. I think in the long run, this will be something that US soccer will look back on and say, "OK, that's how they do it in Europe where players are put into the meat grinder at the age of 11 and never given a chance to think for themselves. We need to figure a way to get kids fast-tracked from a young age without grinding them out like that." C. Minimizing pay-to-play. Many could argue that this was happening anyway, but JK has done a good job to try to broaden the way in which players are brought into the national programs.
Category 1: Things Klinsmann decided to do that appear to be going pretty well, which initially BigSoccer flipped out over, but now reluctantly acknowledge were good decisions, or pretend they knew all along: - Bobby Wood - Jordan Morris - The Kyle Beckerman role Category 2: Things Klinsmann did right that were "No Shit, Sherlock, why did it take so freakin' long?" moves: - Fabian Johnson to mid - Besler back in defense - Yedlin to defender Category 3: Jury is still out: - Alvarado: Not ready to right him off. See Category 1. - Ream: Meh. Not a dynamic left back. Maybe a nice solid option. - Guzan / Howard rotation: Personally, I think he should pick one. We will see. Category 4: Things Klinsmann appears to be screwing up, again: - Jones + Bradley, eliminating the Beckerman role - Zardes as a midfielder - Helter skelter play - Too much rotation in the defensive line - Benny F&{<ing Feilhaber
Good point here. The other prominent example being Julian freaking Green in the Round of 16 at the World Cup. I'm curious if you can elaborate on this one. I'm not sure what you mean here.
i have tried to not mention specific player choices as JK was brought into the US to do far more than place player X or Y into the mix. At least in theory, he was brought in to change the whole enchilada.
Yes Yes, and although progress is not always linear, per Sunil, it's safe to say that we had hoped for something more and something better
I'd be delighted if the youth teams were run to develop top players, rather than to win tournaments. But is there any evidence that today's teams are run differently than those of 5, 10, 20 years ago? Morris wasn't a youth team player. He got 3 looks at the U20 level, that is it. Unless you call the U23 squad a youth team, which is a helluva stretch ... a top 23-year old should have long since become a first-team club regular.
Did we have any of those against Brasil? You can't call Brooks one as he is in and out of the Hertha rotation this season. The only one that could be said of is Miazga, but he's only been a starter for less than a year. Maybe Serna, or O'Neill when he was with MLS?
Maybe bring back that silly idea of giving out uniform numbers based on numbers??? He's broaden the pool such that we should start to have more competition for positions.
And perhaps Morris wasn't a youth team player until the U20s because he didn't play in the US Soccer Development Academy for the Sounders until he was 18. Domestically US Soccer pretty much just scouts the USSDA. I assume it was his choice not to play Academy soccer until his senior yr just as it was his choice to play college soccer rather than sign a homegrown with Seattle
Nah, not buying that one. That was a 'WTF go ahead, I promised you an opportunity' while thinking we had no chance. The fact he scored was nothing more than a coincidence. He hasn't seen the light of day since.
This was posted on a different thread and I wanted to discuss these kinds of discussion: 1. JK is probably more aware of each players strengths than any of us given his time as a player and his close contact with them. So it begs the question: why does he do it? He did it with Ballack in Germany until an absolute spanking against Italy prompted him to see the light (in this case, the german media and FF were strong enough to make him change, the US media and FF are not). At any rate, this placement of Ballack coupled with a high defensive line lead to some unnecessarily exciting matches for Germany in 2006. But again why did he do it? Well it turns out, JK was right, he was just, well, 8 years too early. Germany was able in 2014 to push the defense to a high line, control the midfield with three players (over the course of the tournament), Kroos, Ozil and Schweinsteiger. I am of a mind that 2014 doesnt happen if 2006 doesnt happen first. In a fun twist of history, Algeria attacked 2014 germany with 2006 germany and nearly, shockingly beat them. My point is 2015 USA is potentially setting the stage for creating a 'bradley' type role and in JK's eyes, this 'bradley' is the best option he has.
This argument doesn't really hold together. If you fail with a certain combination of tactics and players, and then have someone later succeed with similar tactics and different players, it doesn't justify your failure. There's no reason to believe that because JK tried something with Ballack, it had any influence whatsoever on the ability of players to execute that strategy eight years later (even if you accept the premise that it is, in fact, the same strategy, which I don't think is necessarily true).
the B2B/CAM hybrid is more a throwback than forward-looking. Thing is, guys with the stamina to effectively cover that much space are few, players with that PLUS the ability to be creative are one/two per generation even in Germany or Spain. If he's creating that role, he's foolishly optimistic about our capability of producing such type of player in the next 10 years.
We played a 4-4-2 flat in the first 2 matches of WCQ2018. Bradley was played in a CM double pivot. He was not asked to be any kind of a "playmaker".
We essentially played the infamous empty bucket. The only difference being that we no longer have Donovan and Dempsey on the wings, we have Fabian and well, an out-of-position Zardes.
Interesting that this thread can't even surpass 1 page while any anti-Klins thread immediately rolls up the posts! Carry on!
If you are going to jump in at least know what you are talking about. We did not play an empty bucket. We played a double pivot, a simple version of the double pivot is a pulley.
And this was a direct result of no dempsey. These are the really tough lessons of losing your two super stars. With dempsey we could skinny diamond all day and get away with it, because his tweener striker/acm abilities masked all sorts of creative antimatter in our midfield. Lose the dempsey and we went to a pretty good tactic, but JK was undone with two slow FB's would couldn't complete the extra overlap run to give us numbers in the box on the cross... back the drawing board.
Woah, woah, woah! I didn't mean to push your buttons, I was just stating my opinion. If I recall a while ago from this thread, wasn't the empty bucket suppose to be a formation with 2 wide players and 2 mids playing behind with no one in the middle? Based on what I saw yesterday, Bradley and Jones rarely at times journeyed to the middle, even if they were tasked to do the double-pivot.
I want Klinsmann so gone but he's done some good. (1) His recruiting has been exceptional. In Germany, we've added Fabian, John Brooks, Julian Green, and Gedion Zelalem, all of whom could have still had ambitions to play for Germany internationally. We've added other dual nationals as well in Danny Williams, Terrance Boyd, Andrew Wooten and have staved off Chile for Morales and Poland for Miazga and Mexico for Alvarado(?). I can't think of a guy, not at the youth level, in JK's tenure, that was in our grasp and decided to play for a different NT. (2) His late game subs for the most part have worked very well. At the WC, Green got him a goal in the Round of 16 and Yedlin, who at the time was basically a nobody, provided tons of spark. (3) He got out of the group of death. Regardless of how pretty it was, getting out of a group in which Ghana and Portugal didn't get out of was a victory. (4) Stress the preference of Europe. This hasn't always paid dividends as Jozy, MB, Altidore, and Jones have moved to the MLS during JK's tenure but I think we'll see the true effect in the next wave. It's no secret that the pressures of Europe will only help in strengthening the pool. (5) He has failed to implement some players that we would like to see (Benny, Nguyen, Finley, Lletget) but he has also found some diamonds in the rough that have been very good for us. DMB at left back, Beckerman at CDM, Wood and Morris at striker. If we had it our way none of these would play a big role and they've all been solid for us. We all had different hopes for this guy when we hired him and things haven't gone as planned and some of that is his fault and some of it isn't. 5 years ago, we thought Landon and Dempsey would both still be going strong, Bradley would be playing Champions League soccer, Altidore would be scoring goals in a Top 5 league, Stu Holden and Charlie Davies would be healthy, Freddy Adu would find his way, and Joe Gyau, Brek Shea, Luis Gil, Juan Agudelo, and Charles Renken would be first team players in Europe. Things don't ever end up as we expect them too.