Players not good enough?!?

Only USMNT player that starts and contributes heavily to a team in a world top flight league is Tim Howard. (Sorry, MLS is not a world top flight league)

ETA: But, yeah, time to move on from Klinnsman.

You've typed a lot of words tonight to say basically "I'm not defending Klinsmann but now let me type 8 paragraphs defending Klinsmann".

It's hilarious how the concept of someone attempting to look at situations from both sides is immediately defending Klinsmann as a manager. He needs to go. The fact of the matter, though, is that some of you are so fricking obsessed with hating him that you have lost all connection with reality. I'm sorry that you don't see the difference between my current distaste for him as a manager and making an attempt to look at the other factors in play that are leading to us completely falling apart.

Frankly, the fact that all this board has been for the past year is constant bitching about every minute decision Jurgen makes or comment he makes is downright pathetic. It's not enough that I agree that he should be fired. I have to jump into every fricking circle jerk of angry one liners without any attempt to actually look at what really happened. When I'm wrong, I admit it. I've changed my opinion on Jurgen completely based on his actual performance.

Objectivity is treated like the fricking plague here sometimes. Even if we agree on Jurgen being let go, the fact that I'm willing to do something beyond read a tweet that satisfies a vendetta and look no further is somehow defending Jurgen. If I haven't made it clear, both Jurgen and a great deal of our players fricking suck, and even when he leaves we have big problems to fix. By the way, I made sure to make this one semi-long because I know how much you love that.

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Objectivity is treated like the fricking plague here sometimes.

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Oh come off it. No one has yet to explain to me why our inferior talent pool was able to do extremely well in CONCACAF for the last 15 years, and now suddenly for the first time since 1997 we've lost four games in a row to CONCACAF opponents.

The players do not suck. Their positioning and spacing do, but they are not being put into a position to succeed. For example Beckerman was constantly put in 2v1 situations in the middle of the god damn field. Where 2v1 situations occur so rarely that it's a small wonder how Mexico didn't do better than they did. Or why we have a defensive midfielder playing at LM. Or why we disregarded this whole year of a 4 year cycle to return to a lineup that hasn't played together since the end of the WC.

I'm not obsessed with hating him. We've played well at times under him, when we didn't play defensive midfielders in wide positions especially. The goal against Germany where we had 30 passes or so was among the best we've ever scored. But the form that we exhibited in friendlies has to manifest itself in games that mean something. Otherwise the friendlies are meaningless. And Klinsmann is exactly the person who has made the friendlies meaningless.

People might hate Klinsmann, but it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend like he's left massive question marks.

There was a tweet the other day from Lalas, which basically said that we could be a top 20 team in the world if we are organized. And that is the honest truth. That is our ceiling. If Mexico beat us when we were playing our absolute best 11 then we wouldn't have recourse to complain. But that Mexican side was a team under a new coach, a team that is so profligate in front of goal that it's hard to believe that some of their players are paid to kick a ball for a living.

The essence of the American game is to be organized, press the ball hard, burst upfield and create something on the counter-attack. We don't have the ability to play possession soccer, and we probably won't ever be able to. All I really want is to return to what made American soccer exciting. Not this garbage that looks like what Europeans expect American soccer to be.

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We still lack quality at a lot of positions. It was the same when we fired Bob, and it'll be the same when we fire Jurgen.

The players are not good enough yet to really compete at the highest level. Our best players are middle of the road in the top flight.

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And our talent pool will reflect that for a while.

But, we have played scared and without heart in these past four matches, and that is all on Klins.
To say otherwise is to be intellectually dishonest.

I'm don't disagree with anything you said. I said in another thread that all this hype built up over the "revolution" with the plan to transition to an attack-heavy style of play. He did all sorts of "experimenting" until he realized we didn't have the players for it, and after that, there was no plan. We just reverted to the way we played before with a few bright moments here and there, and we coasted on it.

We're not deep enough to "experiment" with formations and positions for players, and Jurgen would rather keep trying to force it than just accept that it won't happen. That's an issue, and we've been punished repeatedly for it. We're disorganized and have no vision even when the stakes are high. This is the entire reason I'm in support of him being axed.

The objectivity thing comes into play with the less football-based stuff. The fact that I am wary of just accepting that Jurgen sent Fabian home solely because he wanted to leave the game is apparently some covert way of supporting him. That's just today's incorrect opinion. Since the day Landon Donovan was cut, a large majority of the fanbase has devoted lots of energy and time to finding reasons to be pissed off at this guy and anyone who isn't in full agreement with them, which in some cases they have a valid reason to feel that way.

What's frustrating is that unless you agree 100%, your opinion is invalid. It's ridiculous. It reminds me of the Obama birth certificate type of people where at some point everything becomes a conspiracy and innocuous comments and actions are turned into headlines with some hidden subtext. Matt Besler's not on the Gold Cup roster? Must be Jurgen punishing him for speaking out about the excess training, right? Tim Howard's riding the bench? Yeah, he's driving another legend away due to his ego.

Tim Howard does an interview saying that he and the team are 100% behind Jurgen, and somehow, that's ignored completely? I don't think it's ridiculous to assume that there was probably more to the story about Fabian than what some tweets and short quotes have to say. That in no way is defending Jurgen the Manager, and yet, multiple people feel the need to accuse me of defending him. Anyone who doesn't jump right in to blame everything from the team's collapse to all incidents of child cancer on Jurgen is immediately supporting him.

It doesn't matter that my goal is really to point out that he's just one issue in the program along with our best players aging with seemingly no one to step up and fill their shoes and a lack of a vision as to what we want to be by everyone from casual fans up to Sunil Gulati. By pointing out that Jurgen isn't the entire problem, I'm accused of defending him. It's fricking absurd. I can't even agree with certain people without them labeling me as an enemy and Jurgen sympathizer. Hell, it's not even just here. It's the same shite on /r/MLS, and the people on /r/ussoccer are constantly pissed off for the same reason. Hey, I don't like what you said because it differs from what I think so you must oppose me completely. That's what I mean when I say objectivity is not allowed in these parts sometimes, and I'm not the only person to say that.

I agree, though, that we are playing well below our potential due to plain bad organization. We let every single team control the match however they want outside of a nice 15 minute stretch every one or two halves.. That's not something that is acceptable after this long. If we can't revert to a basic formation with guys in positions they're comfortable with, we're fricked. Also, let's not forget that CONCACAF as a whole is improving. Canada beat Ghana. Most of the teams in the Gold Cup were playing very competitive matches. We're going to have to work to get to the World Cup regardless of who manages this team. We went into both the Gold Cup and Mexico match without a vision or plan, Jurgen made awful choices, and we shite the bed. He's not the answer. Period. It's important, though, that we also accept that we have some issues that we'll still have to deal with after he's gone.

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We may not have all the pieces, but a toddler trying to smash them together is exactly how I'd describe Klinsi's reign at the helm. He's spent 5 years throwing shite at a wall to see what sticks, and it's time to fricking move on.

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I agree with you for the most part. The fact remains that we don't even have the pieces for a solid starting XI outside of 4 or 5 guys who have been around forever. Any manager can put together a safe lineup out there and get results, but we're never going to take that next step without an increase in baseline player quality and a more focused, proactive style of play. That's the entire reason we bet the house on Jurgen. We wanted a bigger, more talented pool and to progress to a style of play where we weren't just sitting in there and hoping to catch them offguard. It didn't happen. That doesn't mean that the next guy won't try to do the same thing and have similar issues with struggling to find something that works (hopefully without all of the drama).

Again, I mean that we'll never find success playing a more proactive game where we're able to dictate how the game is played until we see an increase in player quality. We could easily revert to simple semi-defensive, counter-attacking football and qualify for the World Cup and be fine. The problem is that one of the main reasons that Jurgen's seen as being such a bust is because he was supposed to take us to the next level where we don't have to play completely reactionary football to handle business. Everyone is ready for us to take that step in any small way possible, but I'm not sure we even have the talent to do that within a generation or two.

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The problem is that one of the main reasons that Jurgen's seen as being such a bust is because he was supposed to take us to the next level where we don't have to play completely reactionary football to handle business. Everyone is ready for us to take that step in any small way possible, but I'm not sure we even have the talent to do that within a generation or two.

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the problem was we believed he would be the rah rah guy, recruiter, and overseer of our developmental system while he hires X/O guys to implement the tactics to take that step. he has insisted on doing a bunch of frickery, often completely derailing any progress we may make (constant formation changes, weird roster choices, getting into grudge matches with good player that we need like landon, feilhaber, and now fabian, etc)

we believe in jurgy

he has been a complete failure in terms of tactics and any progress we may have made in terms of tactics

Of course the talent has to go up for the USMNT to compete with world footballing powers. However, this team has plenty of talent to do well in CONCACAF. There's no excuse for losing games to Jamaica, Panama, Mexico and Costa Rica in such a short period.