“We are ourselves” — that’s what Jürgen Klinsmann wanted to teach the players of Bayern Munich. He wanted them to “open up”; he wanted to get to know them, to “look inside” them, to meet their emotional needs. It was a philosophy of liberation — of helping players to get beyond the 
inhibitions of consciousness, back to some easy inner self. The Inner Game of Football. Zen. From Songs of Experience back to Songs of Innocence. (From “The Tyger” to “The Lamb.”) “It is very unhappy,” wrote Emerson, “but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man.” You are wrong, Waldo, says Klinsmann. It is not too late. These players can forget their existence; they can once more play innocently, as though no one were watching; they can recover authentic Being. Each of them can be Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, looking down with assured tranquility upon the quotidian world, far, far below.
Yeah, well, tell it to Jonathan Bornstein. Klinsmann’s Romanticism — or the version of it he articulated while at Bayern — makes a ton of sense if your players are well-trained, technically accomplished, and highly gifted athletes whose primary problems are a lack of confidence and a tendency to wilt under extreme social and/or on-pitch pressure. Watching the USMNT for the past few years, I haven’t seen a great many players who fit that description. The one U. S. regular who plays the way Klinsmann likes people to play is Clint Dempsey; it’s a safe bet that Deuce will be Deuce regardless of the coach, and for good or ill. The one U. S. regular who might well benefit from (what has to date been) Klinsmannismus is Landon Donovan. For much of the rest of the team, “We are ourselves” is pretty much what supporters are afraid of.
Not that they’re bad players, by and large — but the USMNT is populated chiefly by athletes who have skills in some areas while manifesting highly visible deficiencies in others. The midfielders are reasonably energetic and some of them see the field well, but they tend to be deficient in on-ball skills and passing accuracy; the defenders lack pace (and in some cases, lack awareness of their lack of pace). The forwards are admirable except for their inability to score goals or even get off shots. What can Klinsmannismus do for them? Very little, I fear.
So it seems to me that the first question to be asked about this new coach is whether he can adapt his preferred strategies to a very different cast of characters than the ones he oversaw at Bayern Munich. He is going to have to think about technique and tactics more than he has been inclined to do in the past; and, more important, he’s going to have to be able to teach technique and tactics. On the surface, this seems the kind of thing that Bob Bradley would do better than Klinsmann . . . which is not an encouraging thought. But if Klinsmann shows hitherto unsuspected abilities as a teacher, his manifest enthusiasm and charisma, coupled with his confidence in difficult spots, will be big plusses for the team. And thus for its supporters. I’m trying to be hopeful.
Read More: Jurgen Klinsmann, USA
by Alan Jacobs · July 29, 2011
We’re all trying to be hopeful.
One among many reasons to be concerned about the afterlife of Romanticism in the 21st Century. But didn’t Klinsmannismus also involve JK’s (ha) overhauling of the youth system in Germany? My 90s-era experience of the US youth system (I coulda been somebody, until everybody else kept growing), outdated though it may be now, suggests some of the same could be useful. Gulati’s comment about off-field leadership could point in a good direction there. Otherwise this ‘perhaps not a teacher’ tack could help explain US Soccer’s usual preference for US coaches.
I think the first step might be to stop referring to the United States as “USMNT”. How do we expect them to play like footballers or be themselves if they’re made to sound like some obscure division of government?
@ Walter Berglund : Indeed. It would seem as though Klinsmann’s appointment shows a desire for a (somewhat) complete systems overhaul from the USSF.
@James C. Taylor I like “USMNT.” It fulfills both the macho imperative of sounding like a commando squad and the feminist imperative of not crowding out the women’s team.
@Walter Berglund Klinsmann had 0% to do with the German youth overhaul. They started their program back in ’99 and ’00. So any notion of Klinsmann coaxing American Mesut Ozil out of the ether should be expunged immediately from your mind; if it happens, it will be sheer coincidence.
@Brian Phillips Well, it’s a country that likes its acronyms, I suppose. Though I’ve been known to walk away from conversations the minute anyone calls Madison Square Garden “MSG.”
Terrific site, by the way (btw).
whether or not Klinsmann was responsible for the overhaul of the German youth system, he is mooted to perform such an overhaul here in the U.S. of course it wouldn’t be the effort of one man, but such a concerted plan to overhaul the U.S. soccer system could indeed turn up the American Ozil. as i read in a rather cogent ESPN article-related comment, the U.S. youth system has no method of turning up those players who can’t afford club soccer. the U.S. doesn’t just need better training/technique/tactics, it needs better talent … i think this choice is at least a step in the direction of trying to see whether the U.S. really does have untapped talent.
let’s all just be excited that bruce arena is STILL not the coach of the usmnt.
I hope we get someone to develop the youth program and someone else to coach the United States Men’s National Team. (Now let me take a break and rest my fingers after having typed that out. From here on out it’s acronyms FTW.) Each should be a full-time job, it seems to me; and the skills required for the first don’t overlap a great deal with those required for the second.
@dojo I think we as americans have differing definitions of talent as well. We certainly have the eye for athletes, we don’t seem to have the eye for technique. I grew up in the European system and came to the US for college, and what the European guys were looking for was quite different than what the coaches who wanted me in the US were looking for.
Guys who play in college (PARTICULARLY division one) tend to say it’s sort of a different sport- a brutal diminishing returns game that emphasizes athleticism and speed at the cost of all else (and, for the most part, I think the refs are to blame- they let things get too physical). I would argue that we’ve kind of maximized our ability to find the talent- people do pour a lot of money into it, it’s just how we define it and develop it that needs work.
@Alan Jacobs We had a guy who did that (the old U23 coach). We fired him as well, and he was, you know, pretty good at his job
I’m going to be positive, for a little while, anyway. We do have huge number of registered players… I think maybe even the most in the world. We’ve made the jump to having a critical mass of fans that are interested in the game, so I think it’s safe to say it’s time to go back to a foreign coach to help identify and forge the intangible skills that make a great footballer over the skills that make a great athlete. I do think there’s something to be said for a coach that’s grown up and played in a soccer culture. Is Klinsmann supposed to responsible for distilling these skills? No, but I’m counting on him to have someone in mind.
Steve Sampson must be heartbroken.
Interesting take on Klinsmann’s suitability for the role.
Will he really spend enough time with the players to significantly improve their technique? It seems like their club coaches would have far more control over how they develop.
I’d argue an ideal national team manager would be a motivator first, a tactician second and a trainer third.
@Brian C. That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? How much can the coach of a national team do to give players who are already in their 20s technique that they didn’t master a decade earlier? But there seems to be at least one coach/manager who can do that sort of thing: Guus Hiddink. He has a history of taking teams and in a remarkably short time significantly improving both their tactics and (it seems to me) their technique. So that suggests that it’s possible.
By the way, and off-topic, the basketball equivalent of Guus Hiddink is Doug Collins. Hire him and your team will get dramatically better immediately. But then evetually they’ll regress back to the mean. If you need a quick fix, though, Hiddink and Collins are your guys. (This is an off-topic comment because the USMNT doesn’t really need a quick fix, but rather a long-term strategy.)
@Brian C: Which is why national managers have little to do with bringing through youth. They’re responsible for bleeding them into the first team but that’s about it. Actually developing the next generation of players (something that is the preserve of the national FAs BTW) is the responsibility of a vast number of officials, underage managers, youth coaches, scouts, etc, who comprise the lower levels of the pyramid. Managing that talent is a structural issue, not a personnel one
No one suggests, for example, that Vicente del Bosque has any real input into preparing the next generation of Spanish players. The only national manager that is significantly involved in this (AFAIK) is Brian Kerr of the Faroe Islands. Obviously the US is a completely different case
@Alan Jacobs “FTW”?
While Jurgen may not have created the youth overhaul in Germany, didn’t he display a commitment to playing those young players that was rather surprising? I don’t expect Klinsmann to suddenly turn deep-lying midfielders into attacking-mids with loads of vision and pace. But I do expect him to be willing to abandon older players to let younger players get more experience. Hopefully, in that way, he’ll be better than Bradley. Of course, if he’s just worried about losing his job, that won’t happen and we’ll still be waiting for skillful players to magically assimilate from water vapor and grass, providing a useful number 10 or, dare I say, a striker who can actually score goals.
The delight of “USMNT” is that it can be repurposed to code for something else, like say “United States Mutant Ninja Turtles”.
Bradley had zero problems getting most of the players to work very hard during the games. However, I suspect that tactically, he never worked out a truly coherent midfield, failed to adjust well to much faster teams and had some backstage problems with authority above (see history of Bradley outburts from both father and son).
I’m not sure Klinsmann is a savior either, but he’s certainly well schooled in tactics and has a cachet that may make the coaches/progam directors below him really pay attention to the proposed changes that need to be made.
@Joe you make a strong point on the nature of talent and what American coaches choose to define it as. additionally however, as the ESPN article comment i mentioned earlier stated, the youth system in the U.S.A. really only exposes those soccer players who can afford the club system in the first place. those players are funneled into the college programs, and as you say the idea of athleticism as “endless undirected stamina and physicality” (as opposed to touch, agility, technique, coordination w/ teammates, etc.) is further drilled in. still, as far as the initial spotting of talent, kids on the street in the U.S. don’t play soccer (for the most part). everywhere else in the world, soccer is the poor man’s sport of choice (again, for the most part). a lot of the guile, and flavor of technical wizards like Messi, Ronaldinho, Maradona, Zidane etc. was acquired early on in their lives, then spotted and developed through very local scouting networks … although the U.S. has a widespread youth program, i’ve never gotten the impression that kids in the cities have really been targeted and incorporated into it.
Is it true that part of Klinsmann’s insight was that the German national-team setup had a sort of blindness when it came to selecting talent from certain immigrant communities? And is a similar charge not leveled at US Soccer – i.e., that the US has done virtually nothing to mine the hordes of first-gen immigrants in the country who speak Spanish in the home?
I’m just wondering if this whole scenario isn’t taking place in Paul Gardner’s mind, perhaps while dreaming after a lovely meal. On the other hand, if Klinsmann immediately turns up an American Ozil from one of those communities, we’ll all have a bit more respect for mean ol’ Gardner.
I think the worth of this hire is almost entirely about the redevelopment of our youth program and tapping into the immigrant communities more in developing our football players. For me, the point isn’t immediate results. Let’s be honest, with the current lineup, we’re never going to be more than a top 20 team that can, with a little luck, make a run in an international tournament or steal a North American trophy from El Tri.
So it doesn’t really bother me that Klinsmann may not be the best hire to coax the best out of Jonathan Bornstein or Jermaine Jones. This team – and this generation, I’m afraid – have peaked. The two big tasks for Klinsmann are the development of the next generation of stars – Bedoya and Agudelo being foremost – and the retooling of the youth system to get other young players alongside those two. I’m not sure that I’m as optimistic about the hire as some seem to be, but I do think this is certainly the most ambitious and logical choice (and how often do those two traits go together?).
Just for the record, none of USMNT, USSF, MSG, btw, or FTW are acronyms, unless in your head you’re saying “usmeant”, “ussef”, “missig”, “betow”, or “fatwa” when you use them.
Although I really would like to hear someone say “fatwa” as a shorthand for “for the win”.
@mlyons It’s fu-TWA!
@mlyons whats the difference between a fatwa and FTW?
@dojo There just needs to be a realty show, like Who Wants To Get a Multimillion Dollar Soccer Contract. Use it as an initial talent scouting, and plant the seed that “hey, this is another way to get rich everybody.”
I don’t think that many kids know the kind of cash you can make in Europe if you’re a good footballer.
It could be a really good kickstarter.
(I’m only partly joking.)
@stowe Hip, hip..Hooray!!
@Alan Jacobs I would argue that having a coherent footballing philosophy in the youth setup is EXACTLY what makes for major transformations in a program. Take, for example, Slaven Bilic’s or Pep Guardiola’s respective promotions. Both were able to catapult their programs to spectacular levels of success because the transition from U-21 to the senior team was seamless.
Personally, I think the “usmeant” would have benefited more from hiring Klinsmann to run the youth program first. After he had put his stamp on the development program, he could ascend to the head coaching role. To me, this promotion reeks of short-term thinking. I hope I’m wrong, though!
@Brian Davis is it realistic to assume klinsman would accept that position?
@Brian Davis
You don’t think that’s what they’re doing with Reyna?
@Matt C. I like that idea! (Let’s not use American judges.)
Hharumph, all this talk of overhauling the youth system. What is our current youth “system”? Youth soccer is so fragmented in the Philadelphia area alone. The whole state of Pennsylvania is a Bad News Bear’s version of the wild, wild west. What is the US system presently? And, how good is it really?
Oh. And, let’s call on folks to refrain from suggesting that a Tabarez-like operation-transformation could occur. The Uruguayan Football Association includes the national teams and 16 professional teams in a space the size of Wisconsin. Kids play football in the streets and fields from the time they can walk. Parents leave coaching to professionals, at least they do in Argentina, where I lived.
@Jake Meador You’re right, most ambitious and most logical. And they go together almost never.
Watching a ton of USMNT games in the last couple of years they clearly suffer from a philosophical problem. One game they may attack. Another game they might defend. Another game they might all stand around looking like they don’t know what the hell is going on. Do you have this problem with Barcelona? Spain? Other top teams? No. These teams know who they are and they know how they play. USMNT doesn’t know who they are or how they are supposed to play. So how can we develop players to fit into something that is a grand unknown? Somebody please tell me. Since we aren’t looking for another, better Xavi, or Sneijder, or Rooney… who are we looking for? We don’t have an answer for this question, so why would we expect an answer to show up?
Can Klinsmann fix this? He seems like the best man for the job. And even if he can’t, at least we can look forward to never seeing Robbie Findley or Sasha Klesjtwiehnbjiwn ever again. Fun fact: In 166 minutes of World Cup play across 3 games, Robbie Findley had ONE shot. In 7 international apperances including the 3 world cup games (4 just months, even days prior to the WC), Robbie Findley had ONE shot. What kind of world do we live in where a striker plays 4 games, doesn’t get a single shot, then starts 2 games in the World Cup, doesn’t get a single shot, then starts a 3rd game in the World Cup, which sees him get one shot and subbed at the half (again, like the previous WC game). I’m not going to say Bob Bradley is the stupidest person in the world but I feel like he should be included in the discussion.
I am on board. Let Klinsmania commence!
its not the x’s and o’s but the jimmy’s and joe’s
Nice piece Alan, but it’s not really true that Klinsmann wanted to teach the Bayern players the mantra ‘we are ourselves’. That has been Bayern’s motto for decades. Mia san mia.
That said, although Klinsmann was a failure for Bayern Munich, his was a necessary revolution for the national team. It is a safe bet that without the interventions of Klinsmann during those dark days post Euro 2004, Germany would not be among the three top sides in the world today.
@chris1 I agree.