By RYAN TOLMICH
LA Galaxy full back Robbie Rogers opened up this week about the lack of dialogue between himself and Jurgen Klinsmann, prompting the U.S. Men’s National Team coach to insist that he his willing to reopen communication.
Rogers, who cited Klinsmann as one of his early life mentors, said Tuesday that he has yet to hear from the USMNT head coach since coming out as gay in 2013. The Galaxy full back, who hasn’t been called into the national team since 2011, also admitted that he was hoping to hear from the German to mend the two’s relationship.
Klinsmann said Thursday that that conversation could happen any time, as the USMNT head coach is extremely open to talking with Rogers in the near future.
“We can have that any time,” Klinsmann said, according to LA Galaxy Insider. “No problem at all. He dropped me a note and I absolutely respect that, but this is his privacy so I felt that there was no need to respond. No, I can give him a call and we can have a nice cup of coffee any time.”
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What do you think of Rogers’ and Klinsmann’s comments? Expect Rogers to feature for the USMNT any time soon?
Share your thoughts below.
So you are Gay? Who cares? So you bravely came out….Who cares? Can you play and contribute to the USMNT is all that matters. Trying to mend the relationship between him and Klinsmann….what relationship? The “stay close to the national team head coach so I can get selected” relationship? The man is busy structuring a team that’s quickly losing foreign representation, a team thats going through major transition between old and new players….on top of that he has the U20, the U23 where he is trying be involve with coaches, to create the mindset on what it takes to be a professional and he should call Robbie and say what? congratulations? Baby-sitting might have worked with Bob Bradley but Klinsmann is a different breed………Get on Klinsmann’s radar like everyone else, with hard work and consistency.
The “gay card” being played by Rogers is weak. Yes, he absolutely played the card, too.
There’s an obvious reason JK might not have called which has nothing to do with sexuality. For most US soccer players, contact from JK means that he is calling you into camp or onto the team. RR was only starting to play better then, and maybe JK didn’t want to have to call his old protege and say “Hey congrats on coming out, and by the way, you’re not making the team,” which would have been embarrassing to all concerned.
I work for a Euro company and many times, they do not respond to emails if they have nothing to say. That is the culture. They don’t realize that Americans consider that rude or that maybe the non response is sending a message. Just a cultural difference
There are many better backs not getting called and some that were called that shouldnt. Robbie is an OK back that only gets attention because he’s an openly gay player. This is not about gay but skills and I doubt JK will knuckle under to those trying to turn it into a homophobic action
This is dead on…
I can respect that opinion, but this has nothing to do with skills. These two were friends since Robbie was a kid. They must have spoken occasionally, and Robbie obviously felt JK avoided communicating after the announcement. JK didn’t have to do anything public, he didn’t even have to respond privately to a set of coming out messages, but why has JK not picked up the phone in a year? Now I said there are a lot of good excuses, but I think JK’s was weak.
Not to say I’m cool with Rogers putting his NT coach on blast like that, but if he seriously has been reaching out to Klinsmann a lot over these last 11 months, well, I can understand the frustration leaking out into his answer of a fairly direct question.
OMG! Robbie is being way too sensitive about this. These two were not friends. What 40 yr old man would be friends with a 12yr old (outside the late MJ). It sounds like he was a mentor who offered him career advice etc and was friendly. I had 2 people like that with whom I had closer relationships. Guess what, I am now on the other side, and I can tell you a mentor has more than 1 mentee (safe to assume Robbie was not the only close mentee that JK had).
JK is also German. I lived in Germany. They do not get involved in their friends personal lives as easily as Americans do. The British are reserved and the Germans are MUCH more so.
Robbie hasn’t accused Jurgen of anything. He just mentioned that they hadn’t spoken since his milestone of coming out. That isn’t, by extension, an implication that Jurgen hasn’t wanted to simply upon those grounds.
Jurgen’s excuse isn’t strange in any way, particularly as Robbie hasn’t really been part of the national team plan for a little while. Now, with his re-emergence, Klinsmann has obvious reason to speak with him again. Some of the conclusions being drawn here are a bit silly.
In regards to Klinsmann being a mentor figure, I totally believe that Robbie would have expected his mentor to reach back after he sent him that message when he came out. However, as is the case with teachers and mentors, they often have many, many people through the years that have considered them a “mentor,” so I think many times the special relationship players/students think they have is generally one-way. Think about how many players, from the youth system to every professional/national team a guy like Jurgen has had some sort of relationship with. I think it’s perfectly believable that Jurgen thought no response was necessary, but the fact that he’s said publicly that he’d sit down with Rogers over a coffee and talk should put to rest any silly assumptions of homophobia.
Thank you
Unless someone goes public with his support for Robbie Rogers it should immediately be assumed that he is homophobic. We must demand that people announce publicly they are allies in the cause or we have to be suspicious. I was planning to organize a boycott of the U.S. National Team and call for Klinsmann to step down because I, like Robbie, found it remarkably suspect that our coach hasn’t even contacted Robbie, a man who courageously came out publicly in a sport and country awash in homophobia. This is not an issue where we should allow different opinions to exist. We must stamp out any suspicion of hatred or we’re not a tolerant people.
lol!
No left backs in camp? 3-man backline? No problem at all!
It’s a full NT and U-23 camp combined. There wasn’t room for everyone Klinsmann confirms this already move along with the Klinsmann hate
expressing concern about the lack of players in a certain position doesn’t seeeem like ‘Klinsmann hate’ to me, but i guess maybe i’m just a ‘hater’ too.
I am not with Robbie on this one. In the previous article, he mentioned that he tried to reach out to JK when he first came out but nothing since then.If you want to speak to him about something personal reach out to him again. He does have his own family and a very demanding position. He might have viewed the relationship as more than it was since he met him as a kid. I also know a friend who came out around the same age Robbie was (23/24) but to a very conservative family that pretty much disowned him . Judging from my experience, I didn’t pressure him but let him seek me out after everything had settled. Additionally, as (rightfully) accepting the soccer community has been, maybe JK thought everything was cool.
PS – It always blows my mind how much baby-sitting is involved in some coaching jobs. Most of my coaches (not all) just did not get involved to such a degree or (worse) were pretty callous about your personal life and duties to the team.
It is possible that JK is homophobic, but I wouldn’t immediately jump to that conclusion. To me it seems more likely that Rogers is being high-school’ish by thinking “Jurgen should call me and talk to me” instead of being more proactive and just calling the Klansmann.
Now if he has been doing that and Jurgen has been blowing him off, then yes he is homophobic.
So blowing a gay person off is homophobic? Klinsmann played it right, lets not forget Klinsmann is German not American. His cultural norms are different. Sexuality is private in some part of the world. The whole “coming out” thing is exclusively American to me.
“So blowing a gay person off is homophobic”
Well…. ummm… errrr…. Hmmm… Can you come back to me? I mean… uh… can I answer later?
I agree with you for the most part, but I don’t think Rogers’ point has much to do with some coaches having to baby-sit and get into players personal lives. From what I understood, Robbie and Jurgen were extremely good friends before JK became our NT coach, and Robbie felt that friendship stopped the day he announced his sexuality.
But who knows what exactly happened, or what happened in either of their heads during this time?
How many emails/texts/calls did Robbie send to JK? Robbie makes it seem like a few, on multiple different devices.
If Rogers tried to get in contact with him only during his coming out, but hasn’t tried to reach out since then, well, Rogers isn’t painting an accurate portrait with his comments, and he has to carry more blame for whatever entropy their relationship suffered.
Initially, JK might not have known what to say, or maybe wanted to hear from Robbie after things cooled, or just missed the messages until too embarrassed to respond late, or maybe he’d already made his mind up that he shouldn’t have any deep personal relationships to players in his pool…maybe he disagreed with the announcement, but not necessarily the lifestyle.
For the record, I think these excuses for JK aren’t very likely, but I’m not gonna crucify the dude, because all those reasons are possible, given the one-time contact attempt criteria, and I’m sure I missed another dozen acceptable possibilities.
Oh wait, JK already said his reason, and his excuse doesn’t make the cut.
He felt it was Robbie’s privacy, so he didn’t feel the need to respond.
Clearly, if Rogers is telling JK and the world that he’s gay, it’s not his privacy! So why treat it as such, unless that’s what you think it should be, kept private.
Listen, I know a lot of semi-reasonable people that think JK is right, and that it’s a private matter, and you shouldn’t have to announce your sexuality to the world. But fellas, if someone you’ve known since they were a kid comes out to the universe, do you stop talking to them? Don’t you want your loved ones to shed those weights of secrecy, to stop being afraid of absurd societal stigmas, and to inspire others in the same situation, to let them know who they are is just fine? If you really don’t mind it, what’s wrong with making that version of human sexuality public? Most of us can’t help but make our sexual leanings public, because it’s a subconscious impetus. Why should we want someone to keep it private unless we disagreed?
If Rogers tried to get in touch a few times, over a few weeks or months, and JK still avoided him, I think it’s safe to say JK has done wrong, very wrong, in spurning a life-long friend because of their sexuality.
I wish I was able to interview these two, together.
Ives, please get either of these dudes on the pod, asap!
Holy jumping to conclusions Batman!
Guilty!
Although, I don’t think I made any real leaps of logic. I tried to lay out my thought process and tackle how someone would suggest someone else’s sexuality is their privacy, months after they’ve told the world. It has to be because they think it’s a matter best kept private, right?
Now, JK might think keeping it private is in the best interest of player, but does that make him cease all communication with that player?
Isn’t JK’s excuse strange?
Even if Robbie only sent him one email, I think Klinsmann has a sorry excuse.
I know you’re more than just snark, TX, so how do you view this situation?
Germans are cultured people. The have certain ways of doing things, calling someone to talk about their sexually preference just doesn’t seem German. I believe Klinsmann supports him but truly wanted it to be RR thing.
See, Rogers used the wrong approach.
Just because he’s Swabian,….doesn’t mean he is down with being Gaybian.
Rogers hasn’t been called up by Klinsmann since coming out, but he was in Klinsmann’s first camp. He scored the first goal of the Klinsmann era.
I don’t think its the gay thing. Talking to a friend you dont call to the national team when he has a pretty good year might be weird.
Maybe JK just wants to avoid encouraging Robbie and Jurgen Fan Fiction.
Could it have anything to do with the fact that he had retired from soccer at the same time he came out? Or that he hadn’t been playing a lot prior to that due to injuries?
Rogers played (and scored) in Klinsmann’s first game, against Mexico.