Jurgen Klinsmann is little more than a week away from bringing together the U.S. men's national team for the World Cup qualifying matches that will determine whether the team advances to the Hexagonal Round, or crashes and burns. He helped provide some good insight into his thought process on player selections, preferred positions for certain players and the status of some national team prospects in a wide-ranging interview with ESPN.com.
Among the insightful nuggets Klinsmann shared was a very interesting take on Jozy Altidore, and the difference between his success in the Dutch League and his struggles with the U.S. national team.
"The Dutch league is very open — (Altidore) gets three or four chances a game," Klinsmann told ESPN. "In international games, there's less space. It's hard to get chances — you have to create them yourself. Yes, you always want people to feed your strikers who are good at finishing, but on the other hand, when teams are locked in, you have to work-work-work and force your luck, and sooner or later you'll get rewarded for that. I think Jozy can do a lot better, and he knows that."
Klinsmann also discusses everything from Eric Lichaj (on the radar but not getting a call just yet) to Michael Bradley (sees him as a No. 8 and not a No. 6) and much more.
Give the story a read and let us know what you think. Agree with his decision to keep Fabian Johnson at left back? What do you make of his comments on Altidore? Glad to know he's still in contact with Stuart Holden?
Share your thoughts below.
Jozy hardly is finished.
You act like this is all he will ever be and that simply is not true.
AZ made it crystal clear they bought Jozy to develop him and sell him at a profit.
Should he continue with his good form he could be gone as early as January or probably no later than the end of the season.
In which case he will move to a league where there are not as many chances. So he can wait until then to get good at that sort of situation or he can learn it while playing for the USMNT.
Either way we will know about Jozy before 2014, which is all that really matters for the USMNT.
I would have been interested to hear why he rates Castillo higher than Lichaj? But hopefully Lichsj keeps getting time with his club so JK will have to call him in .
+1. Seriously.
Please go back to the hole you crawled out of.
The first part is true (though things are now trending in the other direction), but why pin it on Johnson and Williams? Johnson’s been their best player by a pretty good distance, and they have a winning record since Williams has joined the starting lineup.
I said I hadn’t seen Puebla play lately. He looked good in his last cap and from what I’ve read, he’s been playing well down there. Yes he’s older, but he’s the same age as Landy. And a lot of people on here think the lack of Landy is the reason our offense can’t score.
How did you type that while double fishing crack pipes?
Beas isn’t strong enough on the ball. Mexican club soccer is defensively lax, but at the international level he loses the ball too easily.
Horse manure. The tactics were fine.
The players could not hold a 1-0 lead even with a defensive lineup. And they lost it on set pieces. Execution not tactics.
Give a good team an early 1-0 lead on a crap team like Jamaica and you should be able to at least hold on for a 1-1 draw.
It doesn’t, but it’s a masterful deflection by Klinsmann. There has not been good service, but motivating the player by saying “create the space yourself” is the way to goa about it. You can’t have players complaining about their own team, and Jozy does not. It is USMNT fans who make those statements.
Jozy is not the only player who has to be better, this much is obvious.
i like lichaj, but i think a lot of people overate him. i think he will be a starter for us in the future but not right now
Bornstein, Findley and EJ years ago were nearly as fast as Gatt.
Lichaj is fast, so what? It takes more than speed to be a good soccer player.
Come on buddy, it’s 2012. Unless you have a Delorean that goes 88mph, your post in way off.
yes, but you still dismiss it like he’s not scoring at all, wake up he’s scoring and has a lot of high quality goals
Do you watch Hoffenheim matches? They get thrashed (talking scores of 5-0, 4-0) on a regular basis because of poor performances by the German-Americans
If you have to explain your little Captain Americo bit it wasn’t “abundantly clear”.
It’s like someone saying “This joke was funny,you should have laughed, that you did not means you are stupid.”
That actually could be the basis for a very bad stand up routine.
total d-bag
please, jozy has the highest ceiling out of all of them, how can you not see that
You guys seriously overrate Lichaj.
He still has a lot to prove and is very likely going to spend most of this season battling with Bennett for the starting left back job for Villa. He needs to lock that down before he gets called up.
watch some Lichaj games, and then talk to me, moron.
You and Lorenzo need to take a reading comprehension course.
Fool
fair enough.
He complains about not having wingers, but doesn’t play DMB. I haven’t seen Puebla play for quite a while, but wouldn’t Beasley be a better winger than Danny Williams? I liked Williams as a 6, can’t stand him as a wing.
Haha pedastool…that’s my favorite misspelling of the day.
I agree. He lost me at “the dutch league reminds me a lot of the MLS”.
Klinsmann: “No, I see Michael and Jermaine [Jones] as No. 8’s, guys who can go both directions. But if you play for instance a 4-4-2 with Landon [Donovan] on the right and Brek [Shea] on the left, then you can only have two in the middle. With Danny, Michael, Jermaine, Kyle [Beckerman] and Mo [Edu], we have five options.”
this is an interesting comment. IF all are fit, which of any of the options mentioned start over MB? Williams or JJ at the one destroyer probably is one spot. But who and where else? If it’s Shea on the left in a 4-4-2, then wouldn’t Williams sit and it’d be JJ-MB in there with their combo skills and ability to link? and if it’s some 4-3-3 or 4-1-whatever then it’s Williams as the destroyer and then MB right mid, JJ left where Torres has been, with Clint LD and Jozy/Herc. I guess, if taken at face, what Coach is saying is he rates Williams over MB in the 4-4-2 paired with JJ.
Is that what Coach is saying?
Shea, Mo and Beckerman are good players I respect in the USMNT kit, but a lineup that includes any of them that also pushes MB to the bench? OK, I guess we’ll have to wait and see
GO USA!!!
Look at pictures of Herc when his hair was shaved, dude looked like a Mexican Obama. That was this guy’s joke. Then someone got butt-hurt and went all POLITICS!!!!! on us.
Bwaaaahhhhh!!! I love internet sarcasm. Really though, you did kind of overstate it. I mean, it’s obvious that you’re not that dumb, so it was a joke, right?
I used to be a big believer in JK or at least i wanted to be but his comments are idiotic! Yes JK i understand that D.Will is a great DM. That doesn’t mean that he’s a great winger or forward! Why improvise when you have talent that play those actual positions. We all know that Messi and Ronaldo are the best two players in the world but that doesn’t mean that they would also be great CB’s or GK’s! This is just ridiculously stupid logic.
At this point it is hard not to believe that Klinsman can offer a rationalization for anything he wants to say.
unfortunately, the current LD can only play for us now, not the 2002 version.
First I’m not on foodstamps and Where I’m live, NY, people like herc and Blacks leave in poverty. What if someone wrote, about all the latinos killing each other in Mexico would that be nice.
Twat. Do you even know what socialism is, or only what you’re daddy told between dinner courses.
Or did Italy take a note from the US when we beat them in a friendly?
nice crystal ball to justify your judgments, I’ll stick with the argument I made above based on reality and historical record my friend
I referenced four games Old School, not one, and also used etc etc etc
and yes, the Algeria game. To question his heart still, after what he’s done throughout his career, but with Algeria as a delicious cherry on top, is bogus
he’s imperfect, like all, but his heart has been tried and proven, yet evidently unrecognized still by some which I expect will always be the case
Altidore needs to drop back towards the halfway line and make himself available to the MF and D. Gomez did this in the last game against Jamaica very well.
Hate that I even have to clarify it but: I actually love Donovan. Always has been one of my favorite players and (on other/foreign boards) I’m routinely defending his, what I believe is, world class ability.
However, a duck is a duck.
If he had Dempsey’s heart, he’d be one of the best players in Europe.
watch the game, you’ll understand why you heard it how you did on these boards 😉
that’s awesome you can reference the Algeria game.
i’ll reference the rest of his career.
We aren’t Spain. We can play other then Tika-Taka or whatever. Jamaica had to play on the same field. I’m not dweling on it, but I think we do need to take Jurgen off a high pedastool to one a little shorter. He is not Ferguson.
Klinsmann: “Teams in CONCACAF are getting better, and they’re all competitive — there are none you can take lightly. It’s a good sign of how the quality of the game has grown within the region.
Straight from the mouth of the SoccerJesus himself. It’s not that we are as good, it is that the rest of CONCACAF is better. So you can forget all about getting better vis-a-vis the real soccer powers in the world.
JK is making the most of the talent he has. Any good coach would do that. What system plays with 3 DM? A 5321? Most systems play at the most 2 DM’s. We have seen 3 DM with Klinnsman on more than one occasion. I think using this amount of DM in a game is best used to protect a lead late in the game. A good use of a late substitute. This should not be the core system of the team. What about a box midfield? Bradley and Jones playing as box to box MF with Edu and Williams playing DM? No wingers! Donovan and Dempsey as LF/RF. All players playing on right or left will use width to get extra time and space as needed. Let’s call it Mimimal Width with focus on more short passes (keep away with purpose). The USMNT has been looking more and more like Italy in Euro 2012 using no wingers after Pepe was dropped and reverted to a 4312.
no heart vs. Algeria there in stoppage time at the death, or vs. Mexico in 2002, or with that Gold Cup PK back in 2007, or with his MLS Cup winning flick last year, etc etc etc
respecting what he’s accomplished shows heart whether one likes him or not, especially regarding how he’s represented in the USMNT kit
Well I guess Klinsman has given up on attacking style of soccer.
Sounds like Klinsman is blaming Jozy for having to play with 4-5 DMFers
Herc is not a Latino Obama, he is Adam Carolla’s more athletic twin.
The more I think about Klinsmann’s complaint that he had three players (Bocanegra, Edu, and Dempsey] who came into camp before the Kingston debacle with “no rhythm, no fitness base…” the more I wonder about his judgment for that game. Because actually, Bocanegra had been playing regularly. It might have been the Scottish 4th league, but it was nonetheless playing regularly. So what does Klinsmann do with these three problem players. He starts Edu and Dempsey, both of whom had not had club games for about 10 years, and sits Bocanegra on the bench, who had been playing regularly at the club level. Does that make sense? And we saw how important Bocanegra was to the back line when he was reinserted as a starter four days later in Columbus and took back the captain’s armband. Bocanegra should have started in Kingston and Klinsmann now is still trying to talk down his fitness for that game to justify his decision to bench him in Kingston.
Wow, where to even begin.
I’ll just leave it with your post being completely offensive and inappropriate for this blog.
Plus, you sound like a total d*ck.
I’m sorry Klinsmann, you sound defeated.
You are saying USA forwards should expect 1-2 chances in a game? Then I have a problem with you and your coaching. If we can only manage to get Altidore 2 chances a game against Guatemala, that is a little defeatest, no?