By MIKE NASTRI
NEW YORK — The U.S. Soccer Federation did not just hire the 35th head coach in national team history, but it perhaps altered the direction of the entire national team program.
Jurgen Klinsmann, the first foreign-born U.S. national team coach in 16 years, touched on a few topics during his first press conference since being hired to replace Bob Bradley on Friday, but he frequently emphasized the culture and direction of soccer in the United States.
Klinsmann mentioned numerous times that "it's important to understand your [U.S.] culture." And after living in the United States for the past 13 years, Klinsmann feels he is ready to incorporate more of this country's melting-pot society into the U.S. team.
"There's so much influence from the Latin environment that has to be reflected in the national team," Klinsmann said.
This Latin influence could mean a bigger role in the national team for multi-national Americans such as Jose Francisco Torres and Edgar Castillo. Also, this Latin infusion will certainly have an affect over one of the Klinsmann's most difficult tasks: finding a style of play for the national team.
"One of my challenges will be to a way to define how the U.S. team should represent it's country," Klinsmann said. "And what should be the style of play? Is it more pro-active and agressive kind of forward thinking style of play or is it more of a reactive style of play? That comes with the obviously the players you have at your disposal, but also with the people that your surrounded with.
"I think it is important over the next three years that I have a lot of conversations with people involved in the game here to find a way to define that style. What suits us best? What would you like to see?"
Style of play was not the only big question that U.S. fans were pondering for which Klinsmann didn't have clear answer. He said that he has only had contact with a handful of U.S. players and hasn't picked his squad for the Mexico friendly yet. That announcement will come Wednesday. Also, Klinsmann hasn't picked a full-time staff yet.
"I want to see what's out there," Klinsmann said. "There are a lot of good, highly qualified coaches in the U.S. that I might not even know. So, I need to talk to people and understand what's out there."
The former VfB Stuttgart and Bayern Munich star will accomplish this task by trying out different assistant coaches ahead of World Cup qualifying in June. Then he will pick a permanent staff based off his experience with these assistants. However, Klinsmann did make individual reference to two current figures in the U.S. system.
"I want Claudio [Reyna] very close to me in terms of helping in his new role as Technical Director of Youth Development," said Klinsmann, whose previous coaching stints were with the German national team and Bayern Munich. "He will always be part of the staff. He will sit with us coaches on the table, so I can tell him how I look at the game. As well as Tab Ramos, who is the U-20s coach for right now. I want his perspective and information on what's going through at training at the 20s and the U-17 level."
The youth system and staff will be a huge emphasis for Klinsmann. He was nearly hired two different times in the past five years, most recently after last year's World Cup. But, the sticking point between Klinsmann and U.S. Soccer was the amount of control over that very youth system. This time around, Sunil Gulati and Klinsmann have seemingly put that conversation to rest.
"Between us [Klinsmann and Gulati] there has never been an issue about so-called control," Gulati said. "Jurgen's comments previously were about being able to incorporate that into a piece of paper. So, the understanding about how we were going to move forward and collaborate has been clear for many years."
With those "power" concerns put to rest, expect Klinsmann to make some changes to the U.S. youth system. Some of the changes he briefly touched on include making youth teams' style of play and culture reflect that of the senior team and to continue to build on the growing academy system currently in place. Klinsmann pointed that the biggest difference between the game in this country and any of the top 10 soccer nations is the amount of time youth players spend field.
"This is what is really missing compared to the leading soccer nations around the world, the first 10-12 nations around the world, is the amount of time kids play the game," said Klinsmann. "If you have a kid that plays in Mexico 20 hours a week, and maybe four hours of organized soccer but 16 hours of unorganized soccer just banging the ball around in the neighborhood, but if he gets up to 20 hours it doesn’t matter how he plays it, with his dad or with his buddies in the street, this will show later on with his technical abilities, with his passing, with his instinct on the field and all those things, and I think that’s certainly an area where a lot of work is ahead of us."
These changes Klinsmann hopes to make will only become palpable if he is able to stay past his current contract, which Gulati revealed runs through the 2014 World Cup. Gulati and Klinsmann certainly see eye-to-eye on a lot of strategies and outlooks, but that won't matter if Klinsmann can't get results on the field.
The German is replacing one of the more successful U.S. coaches in it's history. While unpopular among groups of fans, Bradley took the United States to it's highest-ever finish in a FIFA tournament and won the 2007 Gold Cup and its group at the 2010 World Cup. Klinsmann has to meet or exceed the results of his last two predecessors in Bradley and Bruce Arena, otherwise, his big ideas may never come to fruition.
I think we need to expand the topic beyond one ethnic group. There are overlooked players from so many ethnic backgrounds – we need to step up overall recruiting and reach undiscovered talent in as many ways possible.
and both had bad years with their club teams. People have to stop holding up Torres and Castillo as the examples of how we aren’t recognizing and incorporating Latin talent. If they were performing better, they would get called in. Castillo can’t even get run with his club team.
The solution to the Latin problem isn’t to bring in Castillo and Torres, it is to recognize and nurture the young Latin players properly. For many years, we have been dealing with a system that prioritizes wealthier white kids that pay to be on traveling teams rather than recruiting the more talented Latin kids.
FWIW, i personally am a supporter of playing soccer informally, off teams, etc., especially for kids, even though I’m a youth soccer coach.
BUT, you’d have to walk me through these great teams, player by player, to prove to me the rosters are full of “street soccer” players. The same way “poor kids” and “street soccer players” aren’t the same categories, neither are “immigrant kids” and “street soccer players.” Don’t be surprised if many of the immigrants you listed were trained in highly structured, elite leagues. Where I live, there are whole leagues made up largely of immigrant kids, and the coaches pressure them more than the non-immigrant coaches do.
Overall, what I’m saying is, you don’t need a “street soccer” base in your country to have a successful national team. Rightly or wrongly, high-pressured elite squads create these high-level players as well as or better than “street soccer.” To me, the “street soccer” theory is a romantic fantasy.
Between the “hispanic” connection (read Mexico) and the now the big German influence in not only players, but now the coach, there can only be one result to all of this…..
I think we are gong to see a big resurgence of om-pah-pah music and future games. 🙂
Most clubs do something similiar, although it isn’t a scholarship. Clubs entice players and coaches to change allegiances by offering reduced (or even eliminated) club dues.
It’s more of a push the costs to the other parents type of situation though.
Bornstein is half Mexican, but everyone hates him. Bad Gold Cup but he played well in the World Cup, Torres didnt.
I’ve noticed his good games too, but he’s just not effective overall. His passing (because he lacks the technical skill to advance the ball and be dangerous) is a bit too Beckerman-esque for me. As a counter-example, Barca isn’t the best team in the world because they know how to pass, they are the best because teams have to defend every pass and every play as if the next touch will put the ball in the back of the net. Granted, few can touch Xavi or Iniesta. But Torres isn’t even a lesser degree of that kind of threat on the ball, either passing or scoring. Defenders can just lay off on him and dare him to do something.
Mexico!?
How can you expect anyone to do squat in 10 days? Mexico will be a run around to get a feel for things, you cant expect anything from him so fast. He’s got 3 years to do what needs to be done.
just like Juan Epstein from “Welcome Back Kotter”
Seriously though, I think Landon’s dad is part Spanish, his complexion just doesn’t look too Irish.
Our Latin roots need to be embraced, I think it already is to some extent. Nothing wrong with a cultural identity that is nuanced and not homogenous.
I know this is the internet, but what, no one edits these posts? C’mon Nastri…
“That comes with the obviously the players you have at your disposal, but also with the people that your surrounded with.”
“the obviously the players”?
“your”?
The best team in the world, Spain, has barely any size, they are just purely perfect in technical ability
The “street soccer” theory is both true and overly simplistic. The Dutch and the French are superb examples for the US. They are both countries that have very conscious, directed development programs to build players and have been very good at it (the Dutch are a very small country and until recently, football was maybe the 3rd most popular sport in France).
Yes, playing soccer in small, undirected games, is a great way to develop. Almost every country in the world has this (including: China). And they’re not all world powers. For instance, one of the lessons from the Dutch is that our youth players probably play too many games (where in 60-90 minutes you get very few touches) vs. practice activities and small-sided games.
DEAD ON!
The problem is the single entity structure. It kills any and all incentive for any club to produce young talent since they don’t reap the benefit when these kids become stars and are sold.
Hopefully Klinsmann see’s this and pushes Garber a little to change this single entity BS.
I <3 Grammar
HAH, sorry, overlapping domains. ;p
Get out and see the world. You would be surprised. The street soccer theory is valid, and relevant.
When professional teams have a U-8 team, then how can you expect there not to be a hundred kids that hope to make those youth teams and hone their skills on the street.
Also, I think you’re conflating two things. Poverty and street soccer. The two are partially, but not exclusively overlapping magisteria.
But they also didn’t fit in. The reason? The style was not congruent. Torres was thrown into a system that didn’t fit his style or skills, Castillo wasn’t trusted to play left back even once. It’s not enough to bring them in, the have to be worked in, made a part of the system. If we can find a balance, we might actually have the skill passing to jump start a counter attack rather than a thin hope for success.
Steve Sampson speak spanish plus remember he was the Coach for Costa Rica for a while. Bora Speak spanish remember that this USNMT was also built with some good Latino influence, “Reyna, Ramos, Claviho, Mastroeni, Balboa, Hugo plus Dempsey & Landon Donovan all played with Latinos back in the days
I meant Africans from Africa, or any other non-Latino. What about people from the former Yugoslavia? Their technique is incredible too and they are not Latino.
Most of Germany’s national team is made up of 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. Not exactly rich kids either.
Mesut Ozil – Turkish
Lucas Podolski – Polish
Miroslav Klose – Polish
Cacau – Brazilian
Dennis Aogo – Nigerian
Serda Tecsi – Turkish
Marko Marin – Serbian
Jerome Boateng -Ghanaian
Piotr Trachowski – Polish
Sami Khedira – Tunisian
There is no way BB, or any USA coach at his level would exclude players because of their heritage, whether they have a Mexican background or any other. Coaches want to win and will play who they think give them the best chance to win.
I hate Bornstein’s game, but he was there because BB thought he gave us the best chance to win…most of us disagree with that analysis, however, he played because of that reason.
He did not eliminate any player because of a Mexican background…people who claim racism when there is none drives me crazy.
Bornstein must have had naked photos, I truly am convinced.
I think Gulati would have signed him, I think he was getting major push back from the board and CEO, then they say all the youth teams fail and how the gold cup went down and finally saw the writing on the wall so to speak.
I love it when people mix politics with sports, and by love I mean hate.
You make me sick.
Correct. Compare the Spanish national team to the US national team – simply in terms of how many times they play together and train together as a team in one year. It’s ludicrous. One of the obstacles we face is the size of the US, the travel distances involved in getting our players into camp, the travel distance between Europe and the Home Depot Center in CA, and the smaller number of friendlies, and competitive matches we play (no Euros, a less competitive qialifying region, etc.) – it’s a big uphill climb. Add to that that many American players as kids are being pulled in 10 different directions, baseball, American football, hockey, lacrosse, tennis, etc. – and it’s not hard to see why our players lack the fine touch, and technical skills. It’s just a matter of time on the field, through put and repetition of skills, repetition of real game time, team situation time – and there you have it – you can’t just wave a magic wand. Soccer is a language, a rather complex one at the individual physical level, as well as the mental and emotional – human beings are hard wired evolutionarily to learn language with great ease, at an early age – and if a child does not learn a language by the time they are about 13 – they will have a very, very hard time learning ANY language at all – this is a known fact of child development. After the psychic cement, the neuro-hormonal and anatomical genetic primers for language learning go silent in adolescence, it is really, really hard to prime them and get them going if a child for some reason has been in an isolated or abusive environment where they got no exposure to language learning. If you want American boys (or girls) to learn how to speak soccer with their feet in French, or Mexican or Iberian Spanish, or Brazilian Portuguese, or German for that matter – and you want them to speak fluently and with a good authentic accents – YOU HAVE TO START VERY YOUNG, and you have to expose them to people who “speak” the language with proper diction, vocabulary and good accent. That is one of the primary reasons why Klinsman wants to re-vamp our youth training from the ground.
There are many latinos of african decent, just look at colombia, honduras, brazil ect.
It was LaVolpe who started that change in their paradigm. He diversified their attack strategy. Before his time there, Mexican soccer was all about attacking through the middle. He modernized their game.
Bornstien is latino…
Very true, the USMNT right now is represented by over 6 countries, sadly. We should focus on finding more American born(here in the US) players instead of poaching them like we did under Bradley.
+1
Sorry, meant friendly.
sarcasm. i’m super excited.
OK, let’s calm down. We all knew that Klinsmann wanted an overhaul of the US system, and I think many of us are in favor of that. He also wants to change the team. You don’t do that by talking about all the players we already know about.
If Gulati had hired him right after the World Cup, this press conference wouldn’t have been such an issue. He’s lost valuable months, friendlies, and the Gold Cup. He was officially hired two days ago. You expect him to say we are going to play this style, with these players, and these are my assistants now? Wow. Guess you liked Bob Bradley better than I thought. I’d rather have a grandiose coach who knows what he’s good at, and can take his time doing something that US Soccer has never done: Develop a style and philosophy that young people can look up to.
Qualifying, not Mexico in the next qualifier. Losing would be painful, not life threatening. If all you care about is winning, should have shut of your sets after the Spain match.
Also look at it at an economic level this community the majority Mexican is the largest Soccer TV audiences in the country they sellout Mexican National team games. And are a major reson why the Mexican League has soo Much TV money. The demand is so great that American Sponsors are throwing huge money at the Mexican national team and the Mexican League because of the eyeballs here in the US. Imagine if we can somehow tap into that. what that would to financially to US soccer. Sunil knows this. Imagine if we had a Javier Hernandez Playing for the US or we discover a player like him. the money and endorsements and profile would be huge.
Latin players were not excluded at the youth level in the past few decades because many couldn’t afford the cost to play? I bet there were 3 Latino kids in the 90’s that would have been better than Ricardo Clark, Robbie Findley, and Borenstein if they had a chance to play.
I’ve never believed in this “street soccer” theory. Are you telling me that Germany and the Netherlands are great soccer countries because their kids play “street soccer”? Doubtful. Also, they’re not poor kids, so that argument doesn’t hold water either.
Cheer up! Don’t be a downer, because if so go back to cheering for those big Euro teams snob!
Sean Johnson?
Come on man. He isn’t even the best young American keeper in MLS. And with Gatt you’re talking about a guy who doesn’t even have a cap yet. What about Michael Bradley? What about Landon Donovan?
If people want a near complete house-cleaning from the past year, I think they’ll be disappointed in the results.
Another point to keep in mind, is that Klinsman knows & respects our conditioning regimen. He even copied aspects of it & incorporated them into the German team.
I so don’t understand. If Sunil loves Klinsi so much and he is such the unique and perfect fit for the U.S. as Sunil says, and their issues were not about control, how could it possible take 5 years and 2 aborted negotiations to sign him? You are telling me that he is the ultimate fit for us, yet you let him go over whether to put certain items in writing or not???? Is the priority of having a good USMNT coach really that low? Does that sound insane to anyone else? Either Gulati is an utter ignoramus or someone is lying through their teeth. Either way, my confidence in the men at the top of the U.S. organization’s hierarchy is extraordinarily low.
Pues, asi pienso yo.
(That’s how I think.)
Yo soy Mexican-American, de herencia Espanyola y Escocesa.
(I am Mexican American, and of Scotts and Spanish heritage).
Yo aprendi el soccer futbol – jugando en los parques publicos y las playas de Mexico y Brasil – no en academias. Y en los jardines de mis hogares familiares, y en equipos organizados, en la high school y college en Estados Unidos. Aprendi mas que nada de mis primos, y sus amigos jugando cascaritas en Chapultepec.
(I learned soccer football playing in the public parks and beaches of Mexico and Brazil – not in soccer academies. And in my family’s home gardens, and in organized American HS, and college teams. I learned the most from hanging out with my cousins and their friends, playing pick up games in Chapultepec Park.)
No seais tontos.
(Don’t be dummies.)
El proximo Cladio Reyna, Tab Ramos, Preki, McBride, Cobi Jones, o Earnie Stewart se encuentra en muchos lugares, no solo en las canchas y los parques de los barrios pobres Latinos.
The next……………will be found in a variety of places, not only in the fields and parks of the poor Latino neighborhoods.
But – you gotta go there. And it sure helps if you understand their culture, how they think, what they eat, and you speak their language.
As Ives would say watching a blue car pass by “Wow” someone with some sense here.
I wish we could save this page for the day when things aren’t going well, and everyone wants his head on a platter.
Interesting. Just when the German-influence seemed to be peaking, Jurgen hints at more of a latin influence. Chandler, Cherundolo, Jones, Yelldell, Landon, Bradley, and I know I’m forgetting some others with German experience.
* make that Klinsi – sorry folks
Right, which is why I said what he’s doing is in line w/ the past 10 years… And as he has been given all the power, it’s nice to see that he’s going to keep Reyna in a prominent position, b/c he could just as easily have dumped him… But, Ramos isn’t a major player, he’s an interim coach of the U-20 team w/ no guarantee that he would be anything if he wasn’t chosen as the permanent U-20 coach
I was a huge BB supporter but I must say that I liked a lot of what Kilinsy said. You can tell that he has been studying the soccer lanscape in this country for quite a while. He didn’t play all his cards at the presser because only an idiot would do something that, but he gave us enough to frame a picture as to where he stands and where he intends to take US Soccer (not just the USMNT). There is a vision and a plan there and I like that. Now will most/all of that come to fruition? More imporatntly when we’ll we start to see this fruit? Can this grand scheme be met without sacrifcing qualifying for the WC? I guess we’ll see now, won’t we? As fans that’s all we can do.
The banter going back and forth here, from what I have seen, has much to do about the paradigm shift that Klinsey reprsents and those who hate and/or fear that change. It is quite obvious that our current youth setup is not working. If we are being fair here, we all know that’s quite evident. We also see how some of the greats in the world’s game have developed all over the world. Klinsey wants to bring some of that model into our youth set-up. Will it work? I don’t see why not. He’s just trying to broaden the net. But there is a genuine fear – borderline mistrust and blind hate for that change. Not sure whey when we all see that what we have now is not working. Let’s broaden the net and give some more Americans – regardless of what they look like or speak – the chance and equal opportunity to step up and represent the country the love too.
Kilnsey’s resume may be short but we all saw what he did to transform German football. Deny him his success on the sideline but you cannot deny him that.
I liked BB and still respect him as a coach. He did great things for US Soccer. But Klinsey has designs to take the position of National Team headcoach to the next level – putting that position in the place to influence the development, level and play of soccer in this vast country. He has my support.
It has nothing to do with Latin style or Latin players. It has to do with technique.
Would you say African players are Latin because they can dribble and control the ball???
Technique is the attribute which allows you to play a possession-oriented game. From good technique comes good touch. To acheive them, you have to touch the ball a lot. This means you are playing with the ball outside of a structured environment, .i.e. ,organized practices with the coach present.
So you can either practice a a lot with the ball or play on a bad field for many years, to enhance your technique.
Vision or tactical awareness is also another common trait missing in high level American players. Vision is gained from watching a lot of soccer and playing it. 20 – 25 years ago there was not much televised soccer other than the Spanish language tv channels, so this generation that grew up with MLS established should be well developed soccer players vs 30 yrs ago.
Ussoccer needs to get out of being in charge of developing the youth academies in the country, and funnel that money to MLS,NASL,and USL clubs so that they have the resources to scout their areas and attract those players falling through the cracks.
No. Not excited at all.
That’s not my point altho i do kno alot of really good players…braziians, colombians, uruguayans, peruvians in new jersey who are probably better than half the usa national team….there paretns just cant afford to travel them around to play at elite clubs & so forth