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FOX Sports - USA - German legend to lead U.S. Soccer
Not many are soccer fans but I found this highly intriguing for the next World Cup.
Jürgen Klinsmann will be named head coach of the U.S. men's national team within two weeks according to a number of well-placed sources with knowledge of the deal.
His appointment as coach was perhaps the worst-kept secret in American soccer: Klinsmann publicly acknowledged that he was interested in the job and there has been persistent buzz since the World Cup ended in July that the interview process for the national team job was essentially a matter of going through the motions.
Warren Mersereau, who is both Klinsmann's business partner and representative, said "no comment" when contacted for this story.
There were two sticking points in signing Klinsmann: The first was Klinsmann's long relationship with adidas. The U.S. national soccer team is heavily underwritten by Nike, and sources at the shoewear companies said talk of the appointment initially caused some concern. According to a person connected with the shoe company today, Klinsmann has left adidas, solving the issue in one fell swoop.
The second issue looks to be more contentious. Speaking on condition of anonymity granted because they were not given permission to speak about the appointment, two sources confirmed that the issue of power-sharing was a major bone of contention. Former coach Bruce Arena had carved out a wide swath for himself during his tenure, and Klinsmann has reportedly demanded that he too be essentially the sole decision-maker on national team matters.
This has not sat well with some at the Federation, who were mindful of past friction. According to several people at the team level with intimate knowledge of the subject, relations between General Secretary Dan Flynn and Arena deteriorated to the point that the two men barely spoke to one another.
Klinsmann, who steered Germany to a third-place finish in the 2006 World Cup and won the 1990 World Cup as a player, has long been coveted by the Americans to restart a stuttering men's national team program. A star with VfB Stuttgart, Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich, the former forward has a reputation for being a pragmatist and displayed considerable acumen and political savvy during his tenure as German national team head coach.
Klinsmann inherits a program in dire need of fresh ideas. Under former coach Arena, the men's program compiled their best-ever record of 71-30-29, and reached the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals (losing, ironically, to Germany) but Arena took much of the criticism for the team's 0-2-1 performance at the 2006 World Cup. Ranked before the World Cup an unrealistic fifth by the now-defunct FIFA ranking system, the Americans, who have never performed well on European soil, faltered badly despite high expectations.
In addition, during Arena's tenure, the national team youth programs failed to achieve notable success despite the presence of some young talent, while his abrasive manner left many cold.
In hindsight, many people have begun to realize that Arena's record was padded out with many wins usually accomplished at home against opposition that fell short of the top level. In particular, Arena's pre-World Cup friendly schedule Latvia, Morocco and Venezuela was widely mocked as insufficient; of course the USA also managed to lose to Morocco in the process.
Klinsmann, who is fluent in English and German, is one of the most "American" former European pros out there. Married to an American, Debbie Chin, he has long lived in Southern California and was actually subject to heavy criticism by the German media and Federation prior to the 2006 World Cup for spending too much time in the States.
Moreover, he was questioned for injecting "American ideas" into a moribund German side. Klinsmann hired American-trained fitness trainers and a sports psychologist and displayed a relentless optimism that seemed to overwhelm the traditionally staid German sports culture.
In that respect, he seems perfect for the modernist American soccer scene, which has long depended upon the Bradenton-based academy partnership with IMG for top player development.
Klinsmann also knows a bit about American players, and clearly has a well-developed sense of humor: He played alongside a handful of them with a California-based USL development team in 2003 under a pseudonym, "Jay Goppingen."
Klinsmann enters at a fortuitous time but also with an extremely difficult task ahead. He has already won over the small core of "hardcore" soccer fans in America (he has been their consensus pick for months now) and is an internationally recognized name in the sport, even to the sometime removed editorial class of American sports journalism.
In addition, Klinsmann will benefit from a small wave of European-trained players now making their way through the ranks to challenge for positions. Jay Demerit (Watford), Benny Feilhaber (Hamburg), Marcus Hahnemann (Reading), Tim Howard (Everton/Manchester United) and Jonathan Spector (West Ham) are all playing consistently and can provide the badly-needed fills for certain holes. Only Hahnemann and Howard, both goalkeepers, were included on the 2006 World Cup roster.
Klinsmann surely has his work cut out for him. His biggest job may well be reforming a stagnant culture within U.S. Soccer itself. Too many areas of the sport's growth in the United States have stalled while too few in the soccer business seem to realize that corporate sponsorship does not mean mainstream success.
Both the men's national teams and the professional league (MLS) are finding it hard to attract consistent, significant numbers of fans at the gate as well. The fact remains that outside of World Cup years, most American sports fans pay little attention to soccer. Klinsmann will have to cajole not just sponsors but the media and the fans as well. He seems well suited for the task, but it is an open question whether sports talk radio still a bellwether for industry trends will warm to the affable German or pay more than the occasional minute of attention to the USA's games.
Klinsmann will also have to make peace with the players. There's no question that the drawn-out selection process has irked the men of the national team, or rather, the players who feel they will be or should be on it. By sitting idle for so long, they have lost paychecks, and more than one of them has said in conversation that they fail to understand why they aren't active on available FIFA dates. January's scheduled match against Denmark, likely to showcase a squad of home-based players rather than a full team if history is any guide, has done little to quiet those rumblings.
For now, Klinsmann will have a holiday honeymoon. He will likely spend the next month or two emailing players from that Starbucks in Orange County, and hire scouts to examine the overlooked Americans toiling in Scandinavia and England's Championship. If he's smart, he'll make overhauling the youth development system a priority while his political clout is at the apogee.
And then, like all of us, he'll have to wait and see just what he has to work with. All the charm in the world cannot alter the fact that the Americans still don't have the talent to win consistently at the elite levels of the game, especially on European soil. Changing that fact will be his biggest challenge. If he is successful, it would be an admirable legacy indeed.
Not many are soccer fans but I found this highly intriguing for the next World Cup.
