The state of U.S. Soccer is ugly. I'm not just talking about the pathetic attempt at new kits that Nike recently unveiled for this year, though they are quite ugly. The ugliness goes way deeper and to a more important place than fashion, and to both of of the senior teams.
On the men's side, the team had been in utter disarray for at least the past year. After an embarrassing end to the Gold Cup last summer and then failing to beat Mexico in the playoff for the Confederations Cup spot, 2016 is continuing in the same way 2015 ended: embarrassingly. It's not that the USMNT was beaten by Guatemala, just like the problem wasn't that they didn't earn a Confederations Cup spot winning the Gold Cup ire even the playoff, it's how they did those things.
First, they lost to teams they are clearly more talented than. That happens though. The game isn't played on paper. In the Gold Cup, the USMNT was outplayed and outshot in basically every game. In Guatemala, they were beaten because of simple mental errors that should have been handled by professionals. They could have lost by more if Guatemala had been more able to finish. To be fair, the U.S. Had chances in the second half, but that was after.
Had half the team not been playing out of position, those errors are probably not as numerous or as bad. The fact is that this is a hallmark of what Klinsmann has done with the national team. It’s one thing to fill a gap or fudge a bit on the margins to get your best team on the field or even your best eleven on the field, but that’s not what is going on. On Friday, we had a center back or defensive midfielder at right back, a right back at right mid, an attacking midfielder at defensive/holding midfield, and a holding/defensive midfielder at attacking midfield. Klinsmann had a player for each position on the field and he just didn’t do it. It’s like he’s playing musical chairs with his lineup (and yet somehow Benny Feilhaber is always left without a seat when the music stops).
I understand that Gonzales and Orozco were not the first choice pairing for this game. In fact, both of the first choices, Besler and Brooks, were out with injuries from training (another shock in the Klinsmann era). In truth, Orozco shouldn’t have been on the team. The team has plenty center backs and plenty better than him. You could say that Klinsmann was vindicated in bringing so many center backs with to suffering injuries, but you would be wrong. If you play Yedlin, an EPL right back, at his position, you can move Cameron to the position he plays in the EPL. You get the added bonus, apart from two players playing the positions that got them noticed, an extra midfielder who can actually maintain possession of the ball. Instead, we got a lineup that was indicative of tactical simplicity rather than nuance, sophistication or common sense.
We have a coach committed to playing as many half of his outfield players out of position, despite evidence at the club and international levels that it is a mistake, bringing in players who are not performing and ignoring players who are. Players seem lost. That’s probably a result of so many players playing out of position, and the consistent inconsistencies with regard to tactics, lineups and formations. Experimenting requires controlled and uncontrolled variables. Klinsmann seem to not have a concept of the controlled variable portion of experimenting. Whatever logic there is in the way Klinsmann approaches his tactical and roster choices, it’s completely beyond me.
The chaos with the US Soccer program is not just confined to the men’s national team. Despite the women’s team winning the World Cup, having the World Player of the Year and a slew of talent, there are problems off the field for the women’s team. After being forced to play the sport’s signature event, the World Cup, on artificial turf last year because FIFA takes women’s soccer about as seriously as Jim Rome takes the sport in its entirety, US Soccer sent them on a “Victory Tour,” and did such a poor job of vetting venues that one of the matches had to be cancelled because of how bad the field was. That’s after forcing them to put up with substandard practice facilities.
This is the United States Women’s National Soccer Team: the reigning World Cup champions, the most decorated team in the history of women’s soccer, the crown jewel of American soccer, and they’re playing and practicing on fields that they don’t even feel safe on? Follow that up with the commencement of litigation over impending collective bargaining between the team and the federation and it does not add up to a good look.
I could go into a diatribe about how Sunil Gulati, the head of the USSF, should have been dealing with these issues rather than playing powerbroker at the recent FIFA election, in which the federations simply got to select a new breed of corruption from the large assortment, but the fact is that there was and is nothing stopping him from multitasking these issues. Maybe he learned something from the USWNT field debacle and maybe the collective bargaining process is going on as all sides expected. It still isn’t a good look, but maybe he’s doing the best he can with the circumstances.
It is fairly clear that Gulati thinks things are okay with the men on the field though, or at least that the idiotic contract extension he gave Klinsmann before the World Cup has boxed him in so tight that all he can do is watch as the disaster slowly unfolds in front of him. That’s the BEST case scenario and if that’s what’s going on then there is hope for him to learn from that. The worst case is that he still doesn’t get that Klinsmann is a disaster of a coach (though he seems to be more suited to the Technical Director role that was included in his extension). He could still be clinging to the idea of the great German international coming and showing Americans how to futbol. If that’s the case, there is no hope as long as Gulati is in charge.
