USA 0-0 Colombia: Mom, Dad, I Don't Know How I Feel About (January) Camp

Me tonight, only 20 years ago and with a lot more hair.

I was a little torn about the line-up the U.S. trotted out in tonight’s positively somnolent 0-0 draw against Colombia. January camp is, or has become, all about calling in players from the fringe and giving them a moment – I get that - but I would have rather seen interim coach Anthony Hudson name and stick with a starting XI over both games. Instead, he played the camp like a bad hand in draw poker and swapped out 10 players between Wednesday’s loss and tonight; unless I’m miscounting, only Walker Zimmerman started both games (and he lasted longest in this one).

Now, had you presented me with both line-ups and asked me which would do better, I’m pretty sure I would have picked tonight’s line-up, regardless of opponent. If nothing else, it featured the more experienced/accomplished players, particularly with the national team set-up – e.g., Paul Arriola, Aaron Long, Jesus Ferreira, Kellyn Acosta, Sean Johnson – and yet they delivered less in every category I could name outside the spine of the defense.

To state the obvious, Serbia and Colombia are different teams that played different styles. Perhaps knowing they could get something lethal going given the right circumstances, Serbia gave the U.S. more of the ball while Colombia played its defense high enough to force errors and broke from there; call it a second cousin to a press, twice removed. I don’t know what Wednesday’s line-up would have looked like against Colombia, in other words, and mostly hope that that multiverse got treated to a more entertaining game because, my god, was tonight’s game like watching old people fuck in front of drying paint....you have my apologies for the mental image...

The Mothership’s stats page doesn’t post xG for U.S. games, but the Yanks’ five total shots suggests something in the 0.5 range. The only two shots on goal involved Matthew Hoppe – he set up Paxten Aaronson for one (and he could have done better) and fired from the channel for the other – but those didn’t amount to anything besides easy-ish saves for “A. Montero,” Colombia’s ‘keeper. The only other decent U.S. chance I can recall from my times of full, attentive consciousness was the chance Ferreira opened up with a smart first touch. The way he lost that ball to a swarm of Colombian defenders sums up the game in a singular moment. The Colombians broadly overwhelmed the Americans tonight, but without ever coming close to beating them - i.e., boredom, by any other name.

USA 1-2 Serbia: Their Coach Seating Is Better Than Our Coach Seating

No. How are you really?

How do you talk about something that didn’t matter?

With just a handful of well-known exceptions – e.g., Walker Zimmermann and Aaron Long – just about every player who started for the U.S. Men’s national team tonight are only in the picture if you’re looking at the edges or deep into the background. And, given the comparative youth of the current starting set, providing a novel approach and/or skill-set strikes me as the only way any of tonight’s bubble boys can bounce into the first team. That’s where you start...

The place I want to go from there is a back-to-front TED talk about what worked and what didn’t tonight – and, no less significantly, when. But first the recap.

I don’t know much about the Serbian national team that beat America’s freshest B-Team 2-1, but I have a pretty good idea about how it won the game. Taking advantage of the rift that opened on a lonely free kick in the first half helped (think this is a full highlight package; go nuts to the extent it is), sure, but the game turned at the beginning of the first half. That’s when Serbia started pressing the American back-line and deep-lying midfielders. That pressure didn’t force mistakes, so much as exploit and punish them. A Serbian player ran down every long touch – which had ample company, unlike Serbia’s free kick – and they read every telegraphed past like they were jamming the channel. The winning goal came well before the pressure evaporated – and it followed from chasing a loose touch and a soft, telegraphed pass – and that left it up to the U.S. to claw their way back to level terms.

As in the first half, it took the U.S. a while, maybe even too long, to tilt the field toward the Serbian goal. The Portland Timbers’ Eryk Williamson kicked off the hottest rally of the 2nd half with a flying tackle and a great leading feed to an overlapping DeJuan Jones, a move that forced a save from...hold on, yeah, the lineups are up. Guess it was “D. Rosic” who made that save. I count that as one of the U.S.’s brighter team moves of the evening – it was a lot of soloist stuff prior, with the best of it coming from the San Jose Earthquakes’ Cade Cowell – and, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see those 20 shots, but I doubt I felt all that inspired by a quarter of ‘em, maybe a third...

An MLS History Project, 2000: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Least Watchable of Times

Bro. Don't. It doesn't end well.

First, and full disclosure, you can skip this post and just watch a young Rob Stone tell you the story of the 2000 MLS season. That’s about an hour of your life (and why'd they stop making those?!), so this’ll be shorter. Probably. I do go on…starting now…

If I gave the impression that I can place some, or even all MLS Cups in time, this is inaccurate. The 2000 MLS Cup Final, on the other hand, sticks in my memory like a rock in a shoe. It was the first final in league history that I dreaded and prayed to all the gods I can name (it’s a lot) to keep it from coming to pass. It did, obviously, and the 2000 Kansas City Wizards team that won it was that rock in my shoe. It took their more recent face-lift and a general improvement in their approach to the game to make me stop hating them. So, that was what? 15 years?

The Wizards won MLS Cup that season by beating a far more interesting Chicago Fire 1-0 on an 11th minute goal by Danish import, Miklos Molnar. To look back through brighter lenses, that awful ending casts a shadow over a season that sparkled with all kinds of massive debuts. The 2000 season saw the great incoming and upcoming of some of the most important players in MLS history, but it was the latter group (e.g., the upcomers) that teams would rely on and build around for the entire decade to come. As you’ll see when I get to them, these aren’t all household names; better still, at least one actual legend made a lot of noise when he joined the league, only to leave it with a bitchy little Teutonic whimper. I’ll get to all that, but, first, I’ve got to talk about MLS’s updated mechanics.

A lot of league’s most infamous gimmicks – no ties, the 35-yard shootout that prevented them, the ridiculous scoring system that followed from, keeping time on a scoreboard clock that counted down to 0:00 with no input from the referee, and so on; just all the comical misjudging of what American soccer fans wanted, not to mention the idea that that stupid shit would lure fans of America’s Big 4-5 to soccer (deep breath) – those all died with First Kick 2000. Don’t take that to mean the fever had totally broken:

In Which I Try to Restart That Thing with the U.S. Men's National Team...

The mood I'm battling.

Seeing as we may not get a 2020 Major League Soccer regular season, now seems like a good time to return to an old hook-up, aka, the U.S. Men’s National Team…

…yeah, yeah, I’d be stunned stupid if MLS let CBA negotiations scuttle a landmark season (25th anniversary’s a biggie), but these are stupid times, so buckle up, I guess?

Back to the task at hand, though, the U.S. Men start qualifying for 2022 Bizarro World Cup this year, so there’s no time like the present for all concerned to gear up, players and fans. And, honestly, I’d like to get on board, but…well, that’s gotten harder since those faraway years when, because I didn’t really have an MLS team to cheer for, the U.S. Men’s National Team was my team. Back then, half the reason I followed MLS was to learn about the player pool. 25 years later, I’m a lot, lot dumber about what the U.S. has for options and, in a particularly comic twist, following the U.S. Men reminds me of how I used to keep one eye on MLS while I tracked the Portland Timbers’ fate in the USL; that’s to say, the only time I see Christian Pulisic play comes during the rare occasions I see him play for the U.S. Men. Based on that visual diet – i.e., watching a frustrated Pulisic kick at the sub seats (and did I dream this?) after departing at the tail of another anemic performance – is it any wonder I find Pulisic something less than great shakes?

Also, don’t get me started on when and where they air the goddamn games. It’s like they want to fail.

As of today, I’m biting back all that anger and just…trying to get excited about the U.S. Men again and, hopefully, seeing them qualify for FIFA’s latest monstrosity (aka, Qatar 2022, coming that Christmas, apparently). Saturday’s friendly against Costa Rica will be the next step in that process (ESPNews, guys? Really?). The first step will be…honestly, just figuring out what they hell is going on – e.g., how are the CONCACAF teams qualifying for 2022 (or even Gold Cup 2021), and what the silly fuck was the CONCACAF Nations League?

USA 3-0 Panama: Perfectly Adequate, Utterly Undramatic

There are many fruit-based comparisons available, but this one is mine.

I'll start with this: if you've missed Major League Soccer during the offseason, the U.S. Men's 3-0 win over Panama should have scratched that itch. Even going beyond (MLS-exclusive) personnel, that match came as close to, say, Columbus Crew SC pushing around, say, the Colorado Rapids as you're likely to see outside the real thing (yeah, yeah, the latest edition ended differently, the three points wound up in the same column). Better still, it all held up, all the way down to the U.S. fucking around with fire inside its own defensive third; pure Gregg Berhalter that, the high-risk, high(?)-reward of playing out of the back...god knows what a more accomplished national team than Panama will do with that high-wire act.

Credit where it's due, though: even if Panama put a couple chances on the American goal (I'd call Abdiel Arroyo's near-self-assisted goal they're best look), the U.S. never looked worse than strained - pretty much exactly what one would expect from a U.S. C-team playing Panama's B/C team. For what it's worth, I'd argue Panama ceded possession more than the U.S. maintained it, but the beginnings of something good lurk in that detail. Whether or not the Central Americans played to practice defending deep (who's to say?), their relative comfort on the ball when they had it stands as the only real warning sign I picked up from Berhalter's first outing as U.S. Men's coach. It's hard to lose sleep over that because, if a game between the U.S. and Panama's A-Teams is an apples-to-apples comparison, this was tangerine-to-tangerine, and nobody really starts its tangerines in the games that matter. Still, it was good to see the tangerines have their day. The question is, how many will one day become apples? (And...thus ends the fruit analogy.)

I'll get to that, but I want to flag one deeply and personally satisfying shift from the Jurgen Klinsmann era to tonight. In his post-game comments, Berhalter made a very clear point in directing a question about what coaching his first game for the U.S. Men meant to him (from a notably close-talking Sebastian Salazar) to praise for the players. If he follows this up by taking full responsibility for the first crushing loss, Berhalter will get a solid year of slack from me. Now, back to the tangerine thing...

A fairly constant stream of chatter plays under friendlies like this, one that acknowledges that the "real starters" wait in the wings to take over when the real games come to town. Anyone who wants to change that equation has to stand out - and several players did that for the U.S. Men tonight, including the San Jose Earthquake's Nick Lima's balls-out tackle and next-level cross to pick out Walker Zimmerman for the U.S.'s second goal; or just everything Zimmerman did with his head all day long (that he might be better with his head than he is with his feet speaks volumes about how goddamn good he is with his head); there was also Jonathan Lewis' nifty change of pace against [Panamanian fullback] (sorry!) to set up the U.S.'s third goal; which went to Christian Ramirez who, in his few minutes on the field, managed to play a cleaner, striker role than Gyasi Zardes managed all night and, golly, did anyone else feel the weight of Taylor Twellman going after Zardes' game? Jinkies....

The Space In-Between: Catching up on MLS, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati

Perfection is perfection, Mike Brady.

Major League Soccer’s offseason has lasted long enough for me. With an eye to keeping limber and toned, I’ll be tracking the league the same way I always do: once a week and from somewhere between a bird’s eye view and an airplane flight path. I will drill down on Thing 1 (Portland Timbers) and Thing 2 (FC Cincinnati) when there’s something to talk about with either – more on that below – but I’ll never see enough about any of the other teams to go granular on them. Fair warning.

Whether this starts a tradition or steps off from the wrong foot, I’m going to talk about MLS as a whole first – not least because the main point there applies to every team in MLS, including Thing 1 and Thing 2. (No, I’ll stop that right now…and has anyone ever done a version of that using penises for the “things”?)

When I read through (most of) Matt Doyle’s (aka, The Armchair Analyst’s) 2018 Global Review (which takes some time), two loose concepts kept surfacing: first, and most important, it gets a little easier every season for teams to lose touch with the pack in MLS, never mind the leaders; think your pudgier cyclists during the Tour de France. For those who journey through Doyle’s Labyrinth, you won’t read a naked and proud positive about any team until you get to the Number 18 spot (of 23 MLS teams), where he notes that Mauro Manotas balled out for the Houston Dynamo in 2018, scoring 25 goals across all competitions. The teams below Houston’s playoff-dodging squad are 2018’s pudgy cyclists – e.g., your San Jose Earthquakes, Orlando City SCs, the Colorado Rapids, the Chicago Fire, Toronto FC – the squads who put one foot in front of the other here and there last season, but never enough to really be part of the playoff conversation. Doyle used a really clean call-response to sum up Orlando’s season, but the same applied to them all (and Houston, honestly, and probably Minnesota United FC too):

“DISAPPOINTMENT: The whole season, really.”

Still, one team underlines the point about falling behind better than the rest: San Jose. They ended 2018 the worst team in MLS, none of their signings returned on investment, the head coach, Mikael Stahre, never really settled in and got yanked before the end of the season (having built no confidence), and Chris Wondolowski aged another year. Shit was bleak, basically, even if admirably scrappy. San Jose also won the Supporters’ Shield in 2012 with a sound defense and a set of brawlers for forwards. The league moved on, the ‘Quakes fell behind, and, despite some effort (but….the world’s longest outdoor bar?!), they haven’t yet figured out how to catch up. Every team in MLS: This could be you. You don’t want this to be you, so don’t let it be you.

Columbus Crew SC 3-2 Portland Timbers: Slow Reflexes and Broken Ladders; MLS Week 4 (Hangover)

David? Darling?

True story, I failed the oft-tricky Eastern Time v. Pacific Time test this past weekend, so I missed catching the Portland Timbers v. Columbus Crew SC live. Whatever. It was a short, stupid weekend regardless, so the whole thing felt half-assed, and I’m going all over the record on this point:

MLS Week 4 is not over until at least the majority of Major League Soccer’s teams have played their 4th game of season. So, no, this was not MLS Week 4, this was farce dry-humping a charade, and I refuse to have any part of it.

Except now, when I talk about it. At some length.

By the time this post goes up, I’ll probably be, oh, an hour, maybe an hour and a half, after finally sitting through the full 90 minutes (plus stoppage) of the Timbers weird, but not crushing, 3-2 loss to Columbus. I’ll spend the balance of this post going over what I saw in that game, but I’m going to start with this weekend’s – let’s call it what it is – smattering of MLS Results during what this shite…I mean, site (hmm) has decided to officially call MLS Week 3 MLS Hangover .

The whole thing (and the backstory as to how I cocked up catching the Timbers game) kicked off with the U.S. Men’s 6-0 win over Honduras in a World Cup qualifier that brought the U.S. soccer community ten fistfuls of Rolaids worth of relief. I tweeted a couple thoughts that aren’t novel enough to repeat here, but my personal bottom line is that, if Arena…wait, hold on. Shit. OK, I have another embarrassing announcement to make: my head is so far up the ass of someone who is very, very far away from the CONCACAF qualifying schedule that I didn’t really fully realize how loosely people were apply “must-win” to the Honduras match.

Timbers Tie Seattle, and a Theoretical Update on the U.S. Men

Mom/Caleb makes me walk away.

I know I said I wasn’t going to comment on any Portland Timbers preseason games until the two before the season. I also know that I’ve run out of ways to say, “MLS Team X picked up Player Y. I don’t know anything about Player Y, so this move feels Z.” (And that's been the staple of a lot of the Late Tackle posts). I still want to talk about soccer, so, in two parts, I’ll write what I’ve got about yesterday’s 1-1 draw between the Timbers and the Seattle Sounders; after that, I’ll close a couple notes on the state of the U. S. Men’s National Team. Or at least what it feels like after a short sample…

Speaking of short samples, and I say this with love, I never know how much heart and brainpower I should invest when the Timbers play the mix of trialists, draftees, T2 guys and players from the Siberia end of the bench. Even if I like what I see, what are the actual odds that I’ll see that player again? Like petting a puppy at a pet store, I tell you…

Meanwhile, on Seattle’s side of the ledger, they sent out one of the rare MLS line-ups that I greet with a rare, but literal and thorough, “who the fuck is that?” Anonymity notwithstanding, one of those guys forced a penalty kick and forced the tie. And, yeah, I know Harry Shipp, and best o’ luck to the poor bastard. He’s on the tough end of a chunky depth chart. (And, guys? That picture? The one on the team’s roster page? He looks like a still from an ISIS snuff video. Maybe do a re-shoot, yeah?)

To wrap up Seattle, that seems like a good place to start. So, they got that Swedish cat, Gustav Svensson, and he seems to lurk around the same part of the field where people got used to seeing Cristian Roldan last season, so what’s that mean when Osvaldo Alonso comes back? As much as I preach squad rotation, players can get restless watching and, before you know it, a guy like Roldan accidentally winds up in the bin marked “surplus to requirements,” and then what, y’know? Depth is good and all, and I support it; it can have consequences. That’s all.

The Late Tackle 01 05 2017: On Roster Rebuilds, Youth, and The Bruce's Penultimate January Camp

Another day, another post, some trades, some U.S. Men’s National Team crap…

Leoardo, Roy. Roy, Leanardo

Whenever I felt bad about the Portland Timbers’ chances last year, I could look south, then a little east…no, more, where I’d see the Houston Dynamo. In those dark minutes (don’t like to dwell), I could tell myself, “hey, it could be worse, I could be a Dynamo fan.” These flashes of superiority lasted right up to the moment when Portland tripped over the same red, velvet rope as Houston, the one that keeps teams out of the playoffs.

Having heard whispers of a “total rebuild” down in Dynamo-land, seeing them add Leonardo from the Los Angeles Galaxy reads like going cheap on parts. So, in the context of “total rebuild,” I dug a little deeper, spotting two more names in the report on Leonardo, Alberth Elis and Romell Quioto. They’re both young, Honduran attackers, not exactly the hottest names in the transfer market, plus, how many young players come to MLS only to flame out? In search of where the there is here, I finally dragged my lazy ass over to the Dynamo’s current roster, where I found still more names: Adolfo Machado, Juan David Cabezas, even Eric Alexander, who might not be the best player MLS has ever seen, but he’s smart, reliable depth, and a gamer with the right people around him.

Even if you think Portland’s in a slightly shinier boat than Houston heading into 2017, the Dynamo appears well ahead and seeing, and addressing, the need for repairs. If this were just a case of weighing Leonardo as a pickup versus Portland’s latest, Roy Miller, it’d be one thing. Sure, every one of the Dynamo’s reinforcements might go bust, but I wouldn’t count on it. So, yeah, pick it up, Portland.

The Late Tackle, 11 28 2016

Decent likeness of Seattle, there...

[Welcome to what I want to make into a regular feature. It looks like me posting stuff – because it is - but it also more or less me taking notes as I go, so’s I can stay current on all this shit. It’s just a round-up of the day’s MLS/U.S. Men’s news, curated for “worth” by me, and it’ll go up any day I get to it. And, yes, the title is a play on MLSSoccer.com’s, The Kick Off. I’ll go for most of the content and, feels fair to point out, you can get to it there first…but without my notes. Your choice, no judgment.]

Satan Nears His Throne

I already lamented the Seattle Sounders punching their ticket to MLS Cup 2016, but thought I’d also pass on The Armchair Analyst’s more…careful review (and his doesn’t end with an argument for/celebration of the Supporters’ Shield, as mine does). Two items of interest in there: First, heading into the game I kept wondering when Colorado would press for the one goal they needed and, as Matt Doyle (said Armchair Analyst) noted, Colorado opted to press from the get-go; decide the wisdom of that however you wanna. Second, he breaks down Seattle’s lone goal in a way that I’d call both thorough and overly deterministic – i.e., the Rapids faced the pressure, but the sequence of bad breaks/decisions could have been broken at any time even as it unfolded. Even at the death, the whole thing could have been averted had Jared Watts played a smarter clearance (and what the inevitable have become evitable?).

He also flags Sam Cronin’s absence through red card accumulation and, like me, asks what might have been?

A Wily Veteran Moves On (But What Open Pastures Remain?)

My guess is that players of a certain stature can find a place to play up based on name recognition/the “gander-factor” (e.g. “Come see the freak, two bits a gander!”), at least up the point where a medical professional got involved. I don’t think Jermaine Jones has that, even within the States, but, with him talking about moving on from the Rapids, it’s worth wondering who takes him. Jones showed that he has at least 45 rock-star minutes left in his legs – he was a dominant force in the first half yesterday – and that was after recovering from injury and a U.S. call-up under a fitness psychopath like Jurgen Klinsmann. Still, to clarify the question a little: how would all y’all feel if the Portland Timbers picked him up?

Jurgen Klinsmann: Reassessment of a Reassessment

"the 10% that are unimpressed need to go be Germany fans because they will never be happy otherwise."
- Ryan Larkin (@Larkin8), a tweet.

If Jurgen Klinsmann cured cancer, I don't think I would congratulate him. It's likelier, probable, actually, that I would just list all the ways that he could have done it better. I lead with Mr. Larkin's tweet, then, to acknowledge...let's call it "Klinsmann Derangement Syndrome," as well as the possibility that I suffer from an acute case.

By end of day Saturday, the U.S. topped Group A in the Copa America Centenario. I did not see this coming. Getting out of the group seemed reasonable, but, for a fan-base conditioned to it by the 2015 Gold Cup, the 2015 CONCACAF Cup, and a rocky start to 2018 World Cup Qualifying, failure presented as a plausible option. The team has Ecuador next and, in a happy change, thoughts of a win and a trip to the Copa semifinals doesn't feel like fans smiling affirmations to themselves in a mirror from inside a burning house.

Mood swings of that magnitude make sense. Whether this it's accurate or just an effect of living it in the here and now, the Klinsmann era seems like the most contentious in U.S. Soccer history. The question of if and whether the U.S. Men's National Team programs are progressing at all, never mind as advertised, hasn't cooled off since the 2014 World Cup. Bad results in games that mattered kept discontent at a boil, but identifying the origins of the problems divided U.S. fans into two broad* camps (* yes, I think I'm squeezing out some nuance): one group of fans blamed those terrible results on the U.S. talent pool, while the other dropped the blame and a shit-ton of grief on Klinsmann.

U.S. Loses to Guatemala: The End of an Era in a Sane World

Yeah, yeah, she's dead. We can do worse.

I'll keep this short. In spite of past promises, of course.

When Jurgen Klinsmann first coached the U.S. Men's National Team, American fans were told there would be a transition period. This would be the time when Klinsmann would implement a new system that would make the U.S. Men better, more sophisticated, better prepared to "take it to the Big Boys of international soccer," your Spains, your Germanys, your Brazils, your Argentinas...uh, honestly, I don't really know what comes after those teams.

The U.S. looked confused in those early days, unsure of how to implement Klinsmann's "proactive system," how to dismantle any opponent calmly and with composure. Still, we were all assured that it would come, that Dear Jurgen would show us the way.

Anyone who watched the U.S. lose to Guatemala tonight – and, no, I don't give a lazy, disinterested fuck if that game happened in Guatemala, because I'm told that the U.S. hasn't lost to Guatemala since Reagan (partially) occupied the Oval Office (look Nancy Reagan was our fucking president back then, just like Woodrow Wilson's wife seriously might have been the first female president) – should completely appreciate one damningly unavoidable point: after six-plus years under Klinsmann, the U.S. men still have no goddamn idea what they're doing when they take the field. They concede the first goal more often than not, so they're always playing from behind, etc. The U.S. spent the first half against Guatemala lumping long balls to forwards running into space? That's progress?

Worse, even had a couple decent U.S. shots gone in, what would that have really meant in the long term? Where are the green shoots? Where is any tangible sign of improvement with the U.S. National Team? And if anyone points to wins over Germany and the Netherlands last year, or whenever the hell that was...my answer is this: the cold, stark reality is that the U.S. lost tonight to Guatemala, one of the most stagnant teams in CONCACAF, a side that trotted out at least three frankly ancient barrel-chested players. And I'm not knocking barrel-chested guys, heading there myself, but I'm not a professional soccer player aiming for a World Cup, now am I? As much as CONCACAF has improved, it remains a fucking minnow region on the global scene. That is 100% NOT fucking improving on any scale that isn't devised, defined and calibrated by Jurgen Klinsmann and U.S. Soccer.

By any plausible appearance – yes, I'm hedging mightily here - U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati made a mistake hiring Klinsmann. And, like the fuckwits who run the global economy (say, what's Gulati do for a living again?), rather than admitting he made a mistake, Gulati doubled down before a 2014 showing at the World Cup tournament that saw the U.S. do no better than it has in the modern era – e.g. the time since 1990, then the U.S. pretty much started automatically qualifying for the World Cup. So, per Gulati, all of you should totally take out subprime loans today. And do it on the beach, or maybe on a flood plain because nothing will ever change, housing prices will always go up, and what's climate change?

What about Klinsmann's prior success as a coach, both with the German National Team and with Bayern Munich? As we all know, Bayern had the sense to chuck Jurgen after a fairly short period of time, mostly because he was more obsessed with the Fitness Gospel than with sorting out tactics and personnel. As for Germany, yes, the man undeniably mined the German nation for the new young talent that it desperately craved. Here's a funny thing: if you mine for talent in a gold mine (e.g. soccer-mad Germany) guess what you get? You get fucking gold. Yes, if you dig in a gold mine you get gold. This isn't complicated. In other words, what happened here is pretty straightforward: Klinsmann identified talent among a rich crop of German players, guys who get minutes on some of the best teams in the world, and he set them loose on the world stage. Surprise of surprises, he did well with that. Not well enough to win a World Cup – that came later, and there's a story there, for sure – but he laid a foundation that someone else built into a renewed, invigorated Mannschaft.

That same script doesn't hold up when you try to find gold in a silver mine, or, worse, a copper mine. I honestly don't know the talent level of the U.S. player pool. None of us do, because there is no test but the Klinsmann's years to tell U.S. fans where their national team is now. I only know it's nowhere near what one sees in Germany, or Spain, or Brazil, or Argentina, or even much of Africa, the rest of South America, Mexico, and select parts of Asia and Central America. What I do know is that blaming the player pool is a dodge. It's pushing one's own failures onto something that can't be controlled, which is a hell of a lot like saying your dog ate your homework. Failure is failure is failure. And, more to point, this failure came after some version of progress and success, so....

Klinsmann was hired on the explicit assurance that he would improve the U.S. National Team. Period. The U.S. has clearly not improved, and by any applicable measure, and, at this point, I don't give a fuck why it happened. After last summer's CONCACAF Gold Cup, the moronically contrived CONCACAF Cup, all I know is that the U.S. Men cannot do any worse than they have under Jurgen Klinsmann. The only counter-argument to all the above – literally – is for patience, that we all wait for Jurgen to unearth the next gem. The answer to that line of argument: name the first gem. Why the hell are Kyle Beckerman and Clint Dempsey still vital to this team after all the players Jurgen Klinsmann has brought in? Anyone blaming the player pool is adopting the opposite argument of what has made the rest of CONCACAF improve, so far as it has: by making the fucking most of what you've fucking got. That is Klinsmann's clear, and sole failure: he never even attempted to find out what IS best from the pool he has. And, objectively, time is running out.

Bottom line: the one thing we know is that we cannot fix the player pool in the short term. The one thing we can do: fire the fucking coach. Again, this was someone hired, and retained, on the premise of taking us to the next level. At this point, anyone who does not believe that the U.S. has actually regressed is like Sunil Gulati: they just don't want to admit that they were wrong.

Probably. Look, I know it's hard, but look at the evidence. It’s damning. And, yes, this is short for me.

The U.S., St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and an Inevitable Win

I see the U.S. winning the World Cup.

Call it a good start, I guess. Or just call it the right one. With the U.S. Men's National Team tangling with a small island minnow like St. Vincent & the Grenadines, anything too far short of clear victory would have begged questions. One of those could have been, how the hell did St. Vincent score that first goal?

Within the U.S. context, this is the equivalent of those preseason spring warm-ups that Major League Soccer clubs play against the local college: victory is basically assured and the day will be a success so long as Hristo Stoichov or Dema Kovalenko doesn't break some poor kid's leg (hmm...thought Kovalenko broke a college kid, too; nope, just one of my all-time favorite MLS players, Ronnie O'Brien). In any event, St. Vincent (or do they prefer the Grenadines, when people aren't feeling up for spitting out the whole mouthful?) could barely get out of their half. The game only becomes interesting if you rewrite the rules to allow Grenadines (going with that one, this time) a goal every time they got the ball across the midfield stripe at the feet of one of their players. Even with that revision, I think they still would have lost last night...

So, I guess that leaves talking about the U.S. Men's collective and individual performances. On the collective side, see above, I suppose. At its simplest, the U.S. just had to figure out how to break down the St. Vincentians (also, probably not correct...know what, hold on: I'm going to figure out how to do this right, show a little respect. OK, have my resource...added "the" to the nation's formal title; and, hence forward, I will call the players and their country by their right name; OK, got it). And they did. To their credit, the Vincentians fought hard to keep the U.S. in front of them and to make their one goal stand up...and that lasted about 6 minutes or so. It did take a nice headed goal by Bobby Wood to equalize, at least, and a couple U.S. goals felt a little lucky, thanks to deflections (still, did not know Fabian Johnson could take a respectable free kick; see all the goals here). And so the U.S. walked out 6-1 winners.

I'll wrap up with thoughts on a couple players, even while acknowledging that a game like this provides a pretty distorted lens by which to judge anything. To put that more clearly: there are things U.S. attackers can do against the Vincentians that they can't do against even Trinidad & Tobago (who, for the record, won last night). Anyway, on with the Yanks, starting with a very special debut.

The U.S. Men and the Beginning of the Journey: World Cup Qualifying

Good times.

As the United States Men’s National Team embarks upon what everyone hopes, and all assume, with be its eighth consecutive successful World Cup qualification tournament, I’m feeling a little philosophical. Here, “philosophical” means anxious in that unique way one feels after 7 or 8 years of marriage – i.e. safe in the knowledge that things are fine, and probably will remain fine - but, again, just “fine,” as opposed to “great,” “orgasmically intense,” “soul-suckingly shitty,” or any other usefully definitive emotional state – so, what’s there to do but smile and suck it up till one or both of you is dead.

So, cheerful, in other words.

As everyone knows, U.S. Soccer is not in a happy place right now. While every past U.S. coach ended his tenure under some uncomfortable scrutiny, U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s tenure possesses all the Sturm und Drang of a Wagnerian opera, stuff of the intensity not seen since Steve Sampson’s weird experimentation and early exit from the 1998 World Cup. Arguments have raged for at least a year now over whether Klinsmann is guiding the U.S. Men’s program or ripping out the rails from beneath it; they’ve hit such a pitch since the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the meek display against Mexico in the (stupid) Confederations Cup play-in that some pundits have speculated (hopefully) that a failure by Klinsmann’s team to take at least four points from these first two qualifiers could finally force U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati to look past the (apparent, but clearly real) blood-brother arrangement he has with Klinsmann and fire the man.

I have no opinion on that particular point beyond acknowledging a certain emotional numbness. It’s not unlike marriage sex in Year 8 (missionary OK, Judy? No, you don’t have to move. Sure, you can leave the TV on). That’s to say, I don’t think anything changes and I don’t expect it to get better, really. Look, just kick the fucking ball, already. Just play the game, yeah?

It’s precisely times like this, in the Marianas-esque depths of ennui, that one is inevitably drawn to the past. As one thinks about all those past campaigns, both the long marches of getting troops and the supply “tail” to the front (qualifying) and the decisive, pitched battles (the actual World Cup tourneys), one’s memory drifts here and there with no clear object, or even intention. Memory does its own thing, here, and one sees what one sees and dwells on whatever comes up.

On Klinsmann: Feeling Cooler Heads With a Phrenologist’s Fine Hand

I sense...resistance to a certain line of thinking...

A couple good and wise posts went up earlier today. One sought to place Jurgen Klinsmann's tenure in a...let's go with a more grounded context, while the other clocked the tenor of broad, hysterically seething national outrage directed at Dear Jurgen and declared it...let's go with excessive.

For those new to this space, I have, in the past, joined the aforementioned chorus of "broad, hysterically seething national outrage"; it's possible that, in the past, I have blamed Klinsmann for everything from the most recent U.S. Men's National Team loss, through a minimum of two forms of cancer (yep, prostate; that's on him), and up to a general sense that, dang it, things just ain't what they used to be. Apple pie has tasted like straight-up shit for years, I tell you.

With that in mind, I just want to say: they're right. I tweeted both posts because both Will Parchman (first link above) and Wes Burdine (second link) offered strong arguments as to why we should all just calm the hell down. And, as both authors pointed out, that is not the same thing as not wanting Klinsmann gone. And I still want Klinsmann gone (and, frankly, I don't get the argument that Klinsmann swallowing a demotion to the role of technical director alone is a blow his ego couldn't sustain, because ego slightly bigger than Montana; pretty sure he can take it; yes, yes, but would he? Do you honestly think I care?).

Call those posts a welcome corrective, then, not unlike a friend calmly telling you to walk away from that dude who said something about your mom (really, dad? To mom? Jesus). With this post, I intend to walk through their points with two main thoughts in mind: 1) to attempt to explain just why Klinsmann pisses everyone off so very, very much (which is to Burdine's point); and 2) to take a stab at assessing where the U.S. Men are right now (which is, somewhat, to Parchman's) with the World Cup qualification cycle just about one month into the future.

FIFA, Their Cups, and My Raging Discontent

OK, maybe half of that ass.

The U.S. Men's loss to Jamaica, and the concomitant early exit from the Gold Cup, put me into a head-scratching funk, just like it did for a lot of American fans. That said, I think I caught a different bug. The short diagnosis goes like this: the loss to Jamaica, and everything about it, didn't piss me off nearly as much as the fact that the U.S. can still reach the Confederations Cup. The long version follows, which elaborates on how totally and ridiculously ass I find the larger situation.

While I forgot the mechanism – that is, the playoff for CONCACAF's Confederations' Cup spot between the 2013 and 2015 Gold Cup champ'eens – it sounded familiar once people started talking and tweeting about it as last night's semifinal slipped further and further out of reach for the U.S. And it's fair on paper: here, in CONCACAF, we just happen to play our regional tournament on a two-year cycle, as opposed to the more common four-year cycle, and, with the Confederations Cup happening once every four years, they had to come up with some way to decide on which team gets to fly the flag...

...at the Confederations' Cup...

...which is like a half-assed World Cup...

...held the year before the World Cup...

...to accomplish? Oh, goddammit!

U.S. Tops Honduras in the Main Course (After a Nice Appretizer)

We are the world! We are the Turkey!

"...I only laced it with PCP."

And that's why I love the bar where I watch soccer most often. Because that's quality eaves-dropping...

One other note before getting into the nitty-gritty. Like most of you, I read two (or more) things today that bunched my undies, e.g.: 1) the record-breaking number of people who watched the Women's World Cup Final; and 2) reports on the comparatively shitty pay that members of that same team made during the tournament leading up to said World Cup final. Yes, yes, women's sports don’t draw with anything like the same consistency as men's leagues do around the world, and, yes, that translates into what they get paid. Still, and even if just domestically, those same women drew a shit-ton of eyeballs for that final, so call this my (extraordinarily modest) call to see them reap some (meaningful) measure of the dollars spinning off that whirlwind. Because they earned it, goddammit. And if it's because the sponsors failed to show up, leverage that shit into the next contract because people, Americans, especially, totally watch the women's game. Make it right. I don’t care how it's done, but fucking pay these women what they absolutely earned.

And, with that, time for the two-course meal that was tonight's CONCACAF Group A kick off.

MLS: Mopping Up Week 4, Prepping for Week 5

Ruffles on the wrong side, maybe?

Here, at Conifers & Citrus, we're always trying to come up with fresh ways to class up the content, to make it easy on the eyes, a cool drink for the mind, if you will. (OK, again, it's just me...doing my best.) In so many words, I'm pickier than a prom queen picking her dress just knowing that everyone's going to hate me if my dress is not perfect!

So, I keep futzing with it. And that dress looks like shit, dammit.

Anyway, some stray ideas came to me as I watched the pair of games I caught during Major League Soccer's (MLS) Week 4. Then some more ideas came to me during the week as I read, listened, and generally digested the domestic soccer scene. One idea paid a visit that had particular appeal: why not watch the match of the week from the previous week that seemed to have everyone talking. So, that’s where I'll start. (And, kindly, stick with this till the end because I get to Week 5 eventually.)

What Happened When the New York Red Bulls visited Columbus, OH
The effectiveness of the Red Bulls high press captured a lot press after Week 4. It forced lots of turnovers in dangerous places, certainly, and played a big role in New York taking three points with when they left the Buckeye state. I caught all that when reviewing (most of) the tape (I got through 60+, or thereabouts), but what struck me even more was what (the O.G.) New York club did on turning it over. Forget about Mike Grella's goal; thing of beauty though it was, it was also atypical. The speed and precision of the Red Bulls' short passing game impressed the most: good movement and quick, crisp passing twisted the Columbus Crew SC defense in all different directions, even when it didn't produce clear-cut chances every time. Ignoring that part of New York's game amounts to reading only every other page of the early-season book on them. As much as I doubt they can keep it up all year – hell, it might not even last to the next game, when they don't play a team as methodical in possession as Columbus – it's damned fun to watch when it's clicking.

That the Crew came damn close to giving as good as they got went a little under-reported as well. Columbus forced turnovers of their own pretty high up the field and had plenty of chances, too. All in all, this game topped its billing, even when watched knowing the final score.

Scott Caldwell, the Thoroughly Modern Midfielder, and A Promised Land

Box-to-box? Pure No. 6? He's tough to peg, but best let him pick his spot.

This is going to wander a little, so bear with me.

During last weekend's sour draw between the New England and the Montreal Impact, my attention drifted to Scott Caldwell. Generally, the only players on the Revs' roster less likely to draw attention than Caldwell are the guys on the bench. And brings me to my point.

I started watching Caldwell because, time and again, I saw the Revs' outside backs struggling to find a passing outlet while, at the same time, overlooking Caldwell. There he was, smack in the middle of the field, just outside the center circle on New England's side of the field with no one from Montreal particularly close to him; sometimes Caldwell raised his arms in a bid to catch their attention, but the Revolution stuck with Plan A – e.g. attempting to stuff the ball up the flanks in spite of Montreal's generally effective response of pinning them against the sideline.

Caldwell got more of the ball as the game progressed, but he never struck me as anyone's first option. This formed the impression that, 1) Caldwell's teammates don't trust him implicitly on the ball, or 2) they insist that he earns the ball – presumably by prying it off the foot of some opposition player.

All the above got me wondering (plenty of time for it in a game like that) about what Caldwell does when he gets the ball. Generally, he does what most No. 6's do: dish it to other players, most often with longer or shorter lateral passes; when he's feeling really nutty, he drops it back to defense. OK, yes, I did see Caldwell push the ball forward – it was even a decent pass, if I recall – but it's pretty clear that Caldwell's job is to find, say, Kelyn Rowe who (on a better day) will do something great with the ball, or Diego Fagundez who will (on a better day, in 2013) get dangerous, or, of course, Lee Fucking Nguyen. (I tried to dig up Caldwell's day via Opta, which only shows that I don't know how that works, or who gets access to it.)

Jurgen Klinsmann: My (Quarterfinal) Verdict

You (hic) wanna know...he'sh an asshhole.

Now that I have flogged every side of the debate over the ongoing tenure of U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT) head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, I feel ready to hang up the entire debate until after this summer's Gold Cup (some more, minimal sniping here). What appears below is intended as a sort of final statement on what has become a sort of wallowing in the froth generated by Klinsmann’s "fitness" comment.  After this post, I fully intend to follow the pledge outlined below:

I hereby promise to refrain from discussing Jurgen Klinsmann's fitness for either of his jobs, as the result of any future event, result, quote or circumstance, of whatever nature, THROUGH the final whistle of this summer's Gold Cup final, without reservation or reference to any clause, visible or invisible, contained in my head, or committed to any surface of any kind in writing, including but not limited to, personal notebooks or bar napkins.

So, where do I feel like things are with Dear Jurgen?

There is no more polarizing figure in U.S. soccer today than Klinsmann. Only Landon Donovan comes remotely close and, to put a figure on it, I think his favorable/unfavorable breaks around 80/20. Klinsmann’s, on the other hand, probably splits shockingly close to 50/50. I also think he was closer to 60/40 prior to the whole "fitness" kerfuffle.

For what it's worth, I think these are "naked" opinions – as in, you'll only get numbers like that if fans and observers feel compelled to provide an up-or-down opinion. It's like I think this way because that's how I think of Klinsmann.

My final verdict on the Man of Our Moment goes something like this: I believe in project of improving the culture of soccer in the United States and for improving the USMNT's tactical sophistication, flexibility and, if necessary, our players' collective and individual fitness. I also don't think Klinsmann’s the right guy for the job. Who is? No idea. I am, however, prepared to be very flexible in that regard. And, yes, I stand by the idea I posted last week about retaining Klinsmann as technical director and hiring some other qualified candidate to act as head coach. And, yeah, we could probably do worse for a coach, too. Look, can we all just agree it's complicated.

In brief, then, yes to what the U.S. Soccer Federation is attempting, no to Klinsmann as the guy to do it.

All right, that’s it. No more on this till after the Gold Cup. The completely thrilling and successful Gold Cup.