KLINSMANN EXPLAINED . . . OR NOT
Filed under: Juergen Klinsmann, Uncategorized | Tags: 2006 World Cup, Alamodome, Baerum, Berti Vogts, Bobby Warshaw, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Claudio Reyna, CONCACAF Gold Cup, Denmark, England, FC Dallas, Fox Sports, German National Team, Ireland, Joachim Loew, Jordan Morris, Juan Agudelo, Juergen Klinsmann, Liga MX, Major League Soccer, Manchester United, Mexico, MLSsoccer.com, Norwegian first division, Portugal, Rob Stone, San Antonio, Stanford University, Swedish first division, Switzerland, U.S., U.S. Soccer, U.S. U-17s
Stanford University sophomore Jordan Morris scored four minutes into the second half and his replacement, erstwhile striker Juan Agudelo, applied the clinching goal in the 72nd minute as the U.S. defeated Mexico by that familiar score of 2-0 in a friendly played before a sellout crowd of 64,369 at San Antonio's Alamodome.
The 20-year-old Morris, who made his international debut in November at Ireland, became the first college player to start for the U.S. in two decades. Agudelo hadn't played for the U.S. since November 2012 and hadn't scored since March 2011.
With the match not on the FIFA international schedule, the U.S. lineup was dominated by Major League Soccer players while Mexico was largely a Liga MX side.
The U.S. is 13-5-5 against Mexico since 2000, 17-11-9 since 1990 and 19-33-14 since the two nations first met in 1934. [April 15]
Comment: Just a friendly and just a warm-up to this summer's CONCACAF Gold Cup between two sides missing their biggest names, many of whom stayed with their overseas clubs. U.S. coach Juergen Klinsmann had this to say to MLSsoccer.com a few days before the match, which was played a couple of weeks after the Americans lost at Denmark, 3-2, and earned a 1-1 draw at Switzerland:
". . . It is a great opportunity for everyone (individually) to show where they are right now, where they are at this stage with MLS teams, down in Mexico, and just show us at what stage you are. And then obviously the closer we get to the Gold Cup the more we kind of define things."
And because of logistics, Klinsmann and his predecessors have had to play the hand they're dealt when it comes to personnel, rounding up European-based starters for one friendly, then European-based bench sitters and MLS and Liga MX players for another. (Playing outside the FIFA international window, like the Mexico game, only makes things more difficult.) But in his nearly five-year tenure as U.S. boss, Klinsmann has established not just a revolving door but a spinning revolving door to his team's dressing room, frustrating observers who would like to see him, at the very least, settle on a back line so those four souls don't have to introduce themselves to one another before every kickoff. They might even learn to play as a unit.
True, the U.S. got a shutout victory in San Antonio with yet another eclectic group, but that quote and that game only made a recent online article by Bobby Warshaw all the more interesting. A 26-year-old midfielder for Baerum of the Norwegian first division who played for the U.S. U-17s, FC Dallas and two Swedish first division clubs, Warshaw wrote:
"Juergen Klinsmann is a tough cat to understand sometimes, but his comments prior to the U.S. men's national team game with Switzerland shed a little light for me. Whenever Fox Sports' Rob Stone asked a question about the team, Klinsmann put the emphasis on the players. He never mentioned team goals. Rather, he kept referring to the players, suggesting that 'the players have the opportunity' and 'it's a big time in their careers.' It annoyed me.
"That doesn't answer the question, Juergen. Why are you putting the weight on the players here? You're always criticizing the players. He asked about the TEAM. How are you going to prepare the TEAM? You're the man in charge.
"It seemed he was missing the boat.
"And then I remembered back to one of the first conversations I had in a European locker room. I had been there for a week on loan from my Major League Soccer team. I started talking to a guy in a nearby locker about his career. He said he didn't want to be with the club long; he was going to move on to a bigger club soon. It seemed a strange thing to tell a teammate.
"I realized Klinsmann wasn't shirking responsibility in the interview. He was making a statement that reflects his view of the game, and it's something I think I've failed to understand about the coach: The European football culture where Klinsmann was raised revolves around individual ambition. Personal success means more than team accomplishments.
"It's a funny feeling around a European locker room. Everyone is happy to be on the team, but everybody also wants to be on a different one. A lot of the players have one foot out the door as soon as they step in. If a European player could pick between a trophy at the end of the season and moving on to a bigger club, he would choose the move. And it's all perfectly accepted. It's a strange way to conduct a team. (I can't imagine what it's like to play for a feeder club like Ajax, where not a single person really wants to be on that team.)
"Every player in Europe has a small sense he will someday end up in Manchester United red. Seventy-five thousand fans, Champions League, multi-million-dollar deals all feel within your reach.
"In MLS, the ceiling seems so low. The league office won't sell you; it has no incentive to. You work hard to get some playing time and then become a starter. Hopefully the team rewards you with a new contract, but it's not likely. They pat themselves on the back for getting a good deal within the salary cap. They tell you to sacrifice for the team. You chug along.
"In Europe, the sky's the limit. It's an incredible feeling. It only takes one game or one good run for someone to spot you. The next morning your club sells you to pay the electric bill. You move up a step in a matter of days.
"It changes the way you see the game. Winning isn't the be-all and end-all. You don't play to win the game . . . . You play because you're personally ambitious. Ambition drives performance. And if everyone plays well, then the team wins the game. That drive, that ambition, that personal selfishness helps players, and the team, perform.
"This is strange to Americans. We hate to think anyone is playing for himself. We loath selfish players. And that's one of our disconnects with Klinsmann. Klinsmann doesn't view it as selfish. He sees it as natural, if not necessary.
"The way you talk about the team doing well is to talk about the players playing well. All of a sudden, 'the players have the opportunity' makes a lot more sense. It's the individual's drive that moves the team forward.
"But players still need direction and game plan, neither of which Klinsmann seems to provide. Emphasis on a player's individual ambition aside, at some point coaching needs to be done.
"Klinsmann has a general view of the team that we don't seem to like. Some wise person in history surely said that hatred is fueled by ignorance–and seeing Klinsmann through this European lens at least helps us understand the man a little more. But who knows, maybe that understanding simply gives a little more merit to the hatred.
"Klinsmann grew up in a sporting model different than the one touted in the United States. I don't think it explains everything, but it explains a little."
Warshaw is certainly right in that Klinsmann's outlook runs counter to American sensibilities. The U.S. sinks or swims as a team; for decades, it has been a one-for-all, all-for-one outfit out of necessity. Go down the list of the USA's greatest upset victories–from England in 1950 through Portugal in 2002 and beyond–and in every case the whole was greater than the sum of its parts compared to the individual international stars they defeated.
And U.S. Soccer has even had to stand its approach to youth soccer on its head in an effort to match the player development methods of top soccer-playing nations. When Claudio Reyna was appointed the USSF's youth technical director in 2010 (a year before Klinsmann took the helm of the national team), his curriculum could be summed up by this quote: "We care about how many players you develop rather than how many trophies you win." It was refreshing . . . and altogether Klins-ian.
So the focus now is on the individual, not the team. It can only be hoped that when these sparkling individuals reach the national team, it is Berti Vogts who can help the rugged individualist Klinsmann turn a collection of talent into a unit, supplying Warshaw's "direction and game plan." With Klinsmann under fire for his selections and methods and tactics, it was Vogts who was brought aboard two months ago as technical advisor to do for Klinsmann, perhaps, what Joachim Loew did for him at the 2006 World Cup when Klinsy was German National Team boss. Vogts, an unselfish, blue-collar player nicknamed "The Terrier" would've been Warshaw's prototypical American, a guy playing for the team, not to move up the soccer ladder. Vogts, after all, toiled 15 seasons in the Bundesliga, all with the glamorous Borussia Moenchengladbach.
SOCCER STORIES–THIS TIME IT'S '30 FOR '30'
Filed under: ESPN 30 for 30 Soccer Stories, Uncategorized | Tags: '94 World Cup, 2014 World Cup, 30 for 30: Soccer Stories, Andres Escobar, Barbosa--The Man Who Made All of Brazil Cry, Belfast, Brazil, Ceasefire Massacre, Chile, Connor Schell, ESPN Films, ESPN Films and Original Content, Falkland Islands War, Garrincha Cripple Angel, Hillsborough Stadium, Ireland, Lore and Amazing Feats, Maradona '86, Mysteries of The Jules Rimet Trophy, Oddities, Osvaldo Ardiles, Pablo Escobar, Ricardo Villa, Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, The Opposition, The Two Escobars, Tottenham Hotspur, White Blue and White
ESPN Films has announced that in April it will premiere "30 for 30: Soccer Stories," a series of documentaries as part of the lead-in to its coverage of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil in June.
"Soccer Stories" will "include a mix of stand-alone feature-length and 30-minutes-long documentary films from an award-winning group of filmmakers telling compelling narratives from around the international soccer landscape. In addition, a collection of 10 vignettes about Brazil's rich culture will be featured throughout ESPN's FIFA World Cup programming," according to ESPN Films, creators of the critically acclaimed "30 for 30" film series. Among its works in that series was "The Two Escobars," which explored the murder of 1994 World Cup goat Andres Escobar of Colombia and drug king Pablo Escobar's involvement in soccer in that country.
Said Connor Schell, vice president of ESPN Films and Original Content, "With ESPN being the home of the 2014 World Cup, we know that sports fans will be looking forward to high-quality content focused on what is perhaps the world's most revered sport. We feel this is the perfect time to expand upon the success of our "30 for 30″ series by focusing this collection on some of the incredible stories of soccer's legendary past." [January 11]
Comment: "Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats" hereby grants ESPN permission to use the title "Soccer Stories" for its series of pre-Brasil '14 documentaries.
Indeed, soccer is a treasure trove of compelling, ironic, tragic and humorous tales. Some are even true, others apocryphal. Many beg to be told. The Hillsborough Stadium disaster is part of the ESPN series–one of its two feature-length films–and it's part of "Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities. Lore and Amazing Feats" the book, as well. So is a profile of the tragic life of Brazilian great Garrincha, entitled "Garrincha, Crippled Angel" in the ESPN series. And "Barbosa–The Man Who Made All of Brazil Cry." And "The Opposition" (about the 1973 military coup that led to Chile's national stadium being turned into a concentration camp/execution ground). And "Mysteries of The Jules Rimet Trophy." And "Maradona '86."
The ESPN series is rounded out by "White, Blue and White," a feature-length exploration of Osvaldo Ardiles' and Ricardo Villa's stardom in England with Tottenham Hotspur on the eve of the Falkland Islands War, and "Ceasefire Massacre," about the terrorist murder of six men at a small pub outside Belfast who were watching Ireland play in the '94 World Cup. Neither made the "Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats" cut.
Perhaps ESPN's "Soccer Stories" will prove to be an effective scene-setter for its World Cup coverage. Not that a World Cup needs much in the way of an hors d'oeuvre, but soccer people in this country are a funny lot. Many play but will not watch televised soccer on a regular basis or follow it through the press or Internet. Some will watch only their kid or a favorite club. Some are ex-patriates who'll wake up and make like a fan only if the homeland is playing in a World Cup; some are Americans who, Olympic-like, pay attention only in World Cup years. They're all missing the soul of their sport, the incredible worldwide kaleidoscope that is soccer.
Look for ESPN's "30 for 30: Soccer Stories." Soccer is alluring, exciting, exhilarating; by turns, it makes dreams come true and crushes hopes. But you have to take the trouble to meet it halfway. If you're only playing, if you're only coaching, if you're only officiating, if you're only watching, you're missing out.