Continuing on from the last post…
Well now that Germany is out, the speculation around California Klinsi is growing louder. Is he the solution to the question posed in my last post regarding the intricacies of the US system? He’s got a foreign point of view and has worked a side to the semi-finals of the world cup and yet he’s familiar with the US system. Could there be a better choice?
You’d better believe it, bucko.
While I wouldn’t be surprised or even terribly disappointed with Klinsmann as a choice as coach, he’s not the name I want to see.
Klinsmann took a team which had a decent mixture of age and youth and a hell of a lot of talent and got them further than people expected. Did they look like world-beaters? No; they looked lucky to get by Argentina and unimpressive in most of their matches, apart from the round of 16 match versus Sweden. This is not an accomplishment to be sneezed at; he did quite well, but I am not convinced that his coaching is going to bring anything new to the table for the US team.
Klinsmann has taken a lot of what he does directly from the tactics and methods of Bruce Arena and the USA. Arena already has the fitness coaches and such that so revolutionized the German training field for this world cup. He can’t bring that in to the USA setup and expect to get more success than we currently have.
Is he more tactically astute than Arena has been? I’m not sure. I would argue that if one were to give Arena a team with Klose, Schweinsteiger, Ballack, Podolski etc, he’d have done as well as Klinsmann did too.
I have little doubt that Juergen Klinsmann would be a successful coach for the US National Team. He’d do very well. I predict that he would win the Gold Cup, qualify with ease for the 2010 World Cup and probably keep the US in the top 15 in the New and Improved Coca-Cola FIFA World Rankings™. However, the real test is the World Cup itself. On that stage, he will be found as lacking as was Arena in 2006.
And (and this is the important part) at triple the price, if reports are to be believed.
The US simply doesn’t have enough competitive matches to give the coach, whoever that may be the opportunity to improve the team enough. I ended the last entry with a quote from Steve Sampson. I will now use another piece of advice that he gave his successor:
“I would play only 20 percent of friendly internationals within the CONCACAF region.”
A fine goal, but it’s very difficult to make it a reality. Steve Sampson’s side ended up playing friendlies against Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Bolivia; outside of CONCACAF, but not really much higher quality opposition. The ‘elite’ teams like England, Germany, Italy et al. do not play many friendlies because they’ve got enough competition with qualifiers for the European Championships and World Cups that they don’t need extra exhibitions except to blood some new talent. In this region, that’s just not in step with reality.
People calling for the US to participate in the Copa America are short-sighted are on the right track, but are short-sighted. There are very good reasons that the US has not participated in the Copa America since 1995. The most obvious is MLS. The Copa America takes place right in the middle of the MLS season. Even today, the loss of marquee players for a month or two could be damaging to the growth of the league. In the earlier years, it would have likely been even more dangerous.
What sort of team can the US realistically take to the 2008 Copa America? The European players will be off, but the MLS teams are not going to want to give up their players again. There will be World Cup Qualifiers, and possibly the Olympics to contend with as well, so there’s a lot of food for thought.
One solution is to bring back the US Cup. In the early days, this was a decent competition. It was designed as a trainer for World Cup 1994 and in the first two incarnations included teams like Ireland, Portugal, Italy, England, Germany and Brazil. After the World Cup, it still had decent teams like Nigeria, Colombia and Mexico. However by the end of its run in 2000, it was just another set of friendlies with teams like Guatemala, or a 2nd string Mexico. It’s hard to get teams to take such tournaments seriously, but if we can get the right mix of teams, it can be done. The Tournoi which France hosted in 1997 as a primer for their World Cup is a perfect example. France had the advantage of being within skipping distance from the majority of the big teams, but we really can make it work by inviting a South American team and one from Europe and then one from Africa or Asia. If the European’s can’t be bothered to attend, fuck ‘em. We can do without them. A Europe-less pool could be USA, Argentina, Australia, Cameroon. Or even USA, Ecuador, Japan, Ghana. These sorts of things would still be worthwhile, even without an England, Germany, France or Spain involved.
The hole in this proposal is playing games on foreign soil. The US simply doesn’t do this enough. The Copa America will help, but realistically the US needs to win the Gold Cup in order to qualify for the Confederations Cup, and do all that it can in order to get itself invited to competitions like the one that I’m sure South Africa will run in order to do a dry run before 2010.
Falling back again on good ol’ Steve:
“It's very important that we establish a broad base of talent. We only have 30 or so players who can compete at an international level. We need 60, 70, 80 players at a minimum who have quality international experience.”
Maybe we have more than 30 today, but we’re still a long, long way off of the 60-80 that Sampson wanted, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get there. Once again, I come back to the point of tenure.
A long term approach is still needed in this program. Sunil Gulati headed up the Project 2010 committee, so he must know that there’s a long way to go before the goals of ‘2010’ can be a reality. I remember reading an article about the US and Nigeria contesting the 2014 World Cup final, but even 2014 seems a tad early for me. By 2022, I think the US can realistically expect to be semi-finalists and contenders. If we can host some time around then again, so much the more so. However in the meantime, we need someone who is going to continue to build the program, brick by brick. If that’s Klinsmann, so be it, but I think that there are better options for the price he would command.
Well now that Germany is out, the speculation around California Klinsi is growing louder. Is he the solution to the question posed in my last post regarding the intricacies of the US system? He’s got a foreign point of view and has worked a side to the semi-finals of the world cup and yet he’s familiar with the US system. Could there be a better choice?
You’d better believe it, bucko.
While I wouldn’t be surprised or even terribly disappointed with Klinsmann as a choice as coach, he’s not the name I want to see.
Klinsmann took a team which had a decent mixture of age and youth and a hell of a lot of talent and got them further than people expected. Did they look like world-beaters? No; they looked lucky to get by Argentina and unimpressive in most of their matches, apart from the round of 16 match versus Sweden. This is not an accomplishment to be sneezed at; he did quite well, but I am not convinced that his coaching is going to bring anything new to the table for the US team.
Klinsmann has taken a lot of what he does directly from the tactics and methods of Bruce Arena and the USA. Arena already has the fitness coaches and such that so revolutionized the German training field for this world cup. He can’t bring that in to the USA setup and expect to get more success than we currently have.
Is he more tactically astute than Arena has been? I’m not sure. I would argue that if one were to give Arena a team with Klose, Schweinsteiger, Ballack, Podolski etc, he’d have done as well as Klinsmann did too.
I have little doubt that Juergen Klinsmann would be a successful coach for the US National Team. He’d do very well. I predict that he would win the Gold Cup, qualify with ease for the 2010 World Cup and probably keep the US in the top 15 in the New and Improved Coca-Cola FIFA World Rankings™. However, the real test is the World Cup itself. On that stage, he will be found as lacking as was Arena in 2006.
And (and this is the important part) at triple the price, if reports are to be believed.
The US simply doesn’t have enough competitive matches to give the coach, whoever that may be the opportunity to improve the team enough. I ended the last entry with a quote from Steve Sampson. I will now use another piece of advice that he gave his successor:
“I would play only 20 percent of friendly internationals within the CONCACAF region.”
A fine goal, but it’s very difficult to make it a reality. Steve Sampson’s side ended up playing friendlies against Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Bolivia; outside of CONCACAF, but not really much higher quality opposition. The ‘elite’ teams like England, Germany, Italy et al. do not play many friendlies because they’ve got enough competition with qualifiers for the European Championships and World Cups that they don’t need extra exhibitions except to blood some new talent. In this region, that’s just not in step with reality.
People calling for the US to participate in the Copa America are short-sighted are on the right track, but are short-sighted. There are very good reasons that the US has not participated in the Copa America since 1995. The most obvious is MLS. The Copa America takes place right in the middle of the MLS season. Even today, the loss of marquee players for a month or two could be damaging to the growth of the league. In the earlier years, it would have likely been even more dangerous.
What sort of team can the US realistically take to the 2008 Copa America? The European players will be off, but the MLS teams are not going to want to give up their players again. There will be World Cup Qualifiers, and possibly the Olympics to contend with as well, so there’s a lot of food for thought.
One solution is to bring back the US Cup. In the early days, this was a decent competition. It was designed as a trainer for World Cup 1994 and in the first two incarnations included teams like Ireland, Portugal, Italy, England, Germany and Brazil. After the World Cup, it still had decent teams like Nigeria, Colombia and Mexico. However by the end of its run in 2000, it was just another set of friendlies with teams like Guatemala, or a 2nd string Mexico. It’s hard to get teams to take such tournaments seriously, but if we can get the right mix of teams, it can be done. The Tournoi which France hosted in 1997 as a primer for their World Cup is a perfect example. France had the advantage of being within skipping distance from the majority of the big teams, but we really can make it work by inviting a South American team and one from Europe and then one from Africa or Asia. If the European’s can’t be bothered to attend, fuck ‘em. We can do without them. A Europe-less pool could be USA, Argentina, Australia, Cameroon. Or even USA, Ecuador, Japan, Ghana. These sorts of things would still be worthwhile, even without an England, Germany, France or Spain involved.
The hole in this proposal is playing games on foreign soil. The US simply doesn’t do this enough. The Copa America will help, but realistically the US needs to win the Gold Cup in order to qualify for the Confederations Cup, and do all that it can in order to get itself invited to competitions like the one that I’m sure South Africa will run in order to do a dry run before 2010.
Falling back again on good ol’ Steve:
“It's very important that we establish a broad base of talent. We only have 30 or so players who can compete at an international level. We need 60, 70, 80 players at a minimum who have quality international experience.”
Maybe we have more than 30 today, but we’re still a long, long way off of the 60-80 that Sampson wanted, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get there. Once again, I come back to the point of tenure.
A long term approach is still needed in this program. Sunil Gulati headed up the Project 2010 committee, so he must know that there’s a long way to go before the goals of ‘2010’ can be a reality. I remember reading an article about the US and Nigeria contesting the 2014 World Cup final, but even 2014 seems a tad early for me. By 2022, I think the US can realistically expect to be semi-finalists and contenders. If we can host some time around then again, so much the more so. However in the meantime, we need someone who is going to continue to build the program, brick by brick. If that’s Klinsmann, so be it, but I think that there are better options for the price he would command.
posted by Zathras at 1:10 PM
2 Comments:
Zathras, enjoyed the analysis on the U.S. system. We've had similar thoughts as you may see visiting http://zigazoga.typepad.com .
Listen, we are trying to compile a list of soccer bloggers and I would really like to include you in our initiative. Please feel free to drop me a line at jason.cronkhite@gmail.com . I look forward to hearing from you and opening up dialogue on soccer.
Best,
Jason
I propose a new tournament, played at the same time of the year as the European championships. The only regions that are allowed to participate are those that have never won a World Cup: North America, Africa, and Asia. Call it the triple-A (America, Africa, and Asia) Cup.
It will be a rebellious alternative to Copa America and the European Championship. Those tournaments are meant to make those continents better so why shouldn't the rest of us have our own?
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