The Royal Heffernans


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Friday, July 29, 2011

Jürgen!


I'll keep this short and sweet. I'm happy that Bob Bradley is out as USMNT head coach. I've never really been a fan. Also, I get the excitement over Jürgen Klinsmann - but that needs to be tempered. Klinsmann had previously turned down the job twice in the past 5 years. Most people familiar with those negotiations agreed that he turned the job down because he couldn't get the amount of control he wanted of the overall system. So either one of two things has changed now...
  1. US Soccer has relented and will afford Klinsmann the level of control he seeks.
  2. Klinsmann is no longer seeking that level of control.
If it's the former, there's reason to be optimistic for the future of US Soccer as Klinsmann will have 10 months before WC '14 qualifiers begin to make big changes. Klinsmann is on the record saying he prefers an attacking style of soccer and he overhauled the mechanical German team during his tenure there. If he's given the freedom things could be exciting with the USMNT in the coming years.

If it's the latter? Well, expect more of the same that we saw from Simpson to Arena to Bradley. In other words, we'll overpower weaker CONCACAF teams and regularly get whooped on by class teams - maybe with a sprinkling of surprising (pleasant or otherwise) results.

I guess what I'm really saying is, as long as Jonathan Bornstein never gets a call up during Klinsmann's reign I'll consider him a huge success and his contributions to US Soccer priceless.

p.s. I mainly wrote this so I could use the umlauts.

3 comments:

Teddy said...

Explain to me the dynamics of selecting the MNT roster.

Who chooses the national pool players?
Who chooses the players who get an invite to camp?
Who chooses the final roster?
Who chooses the lineup?

It's not like we have a GM (or Mike Brown) over the head coach. Are you saying Bradley and predecessors were handed a group of players and told, "Good luck"? I would think you put all the blame on the head coach in selecting his pool of players.

Teddy said...

So do we switch to adidas now, like when head coaches change in college? It will be strange seeing Klinsmann in Nike!

Teddy said...

Nice quote from Jurgen at his intro press conference. Directly addresses one of my biggest concerns with US Soccer which I mentioned on Ian's previous post about the national teams:

Klinsmann had in the past spoken at length about forging an American soccer identity. He indicated Monday he thinks Latin players will be key to that process. While Bradley was widely criticized for not using enough Latino players, Klinsmann will likely take a different approach.

"There's so much influence coming from the Latin environment over the last 15, 20 years that also has to be reflected in the U.S. national team," Klinsmann said.