Klinsmann interview with Roger Bennett

He was the dude I hoped we'd get even before Bradley was sacked in '11, and I'm still amped that we got him. The guy seems to genuinely want to push the American game to a new level.

Plus, the man who successfully build the US and takes them deep into the International game is going to be a legend. If anything, Jurgen just wants to show that he's the ultimate being by making the US an unstoppable force.

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Even if he wasn't the best manager for any of the teams he's managed, he still was responsible for Germany's youth revolution, so if he can institute stuff like that I'm A-OK with him.

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I think that's a big reason I could see him spending a while here. He's a big reason Germany has quickly turned into the mecca of attacking football recently. Why? Because he and Jogi decided that instead of molding their gameplan to the national pool, they'd make the insane decision to instead mold their national pool to the style they wanted to play. That's a very huge, difficult task to undertake, and under an incompetent manager, it had all sorts of potential to go horribly awry.

The biggest thing was them forcing the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 to build youth academies to produce German talent with the requirement of 12 German eligible players admitted each round. In essence, they pushed a lesser form of the 6+5 rule on the leagues. They needed to be training and refining young German players to continue to be successful in league play, and in turn, they're also giving their national pool a huge boost. Not to mention, it gives them years of monitoring of progress and talent just through their domestic league, which happens to be a top-tier league.

The Premier League has their 8 homegrown player rule, but it doesn't have the same impact since players like Fabregas who come up through the academy are considered "homegrown" after 21. This does absolutely nothing for England because it's just putting duct tape over a crumbling foundation and calling it fixed. Germany, on the other hand, seems to be churning out more talent than they could ever utilize, and it has everything to do with the fact that German teams are forced to find the best German talent to compete. Changes like these and their impact in the future are not easy to see to a lot of people and a lot of people thought it would destroy the quality of the league.

German fans were appalled by him because of some of the same reasons American fans disliked him for a while. He'd rotate players regardless of how well or poorly players had played, he wasn't playing the style they liked, and overall, they weren't getting the results they expected. After it was all said and done, though, they were giving him medals and people were calling him "Kaiser" because of what the team had done. The foresight to see that they'd be building the strength of their national team through forcing their domestic league to find talent for them is incredible. It seems obvious as a concept, but it takes a special group to pull it off as well as they have. Klinsmann was a huge part of that, and that says something about him as a manager, even if he may not be the best tactician. Jogi gets a lot more credit than him, which he deserves a ton of, but Jurgen is a major reason why Germany has evolved so much.

He's definitely the type of person we need where we are at this point. Not to mention, he's a very likable person with a ton of pedigree to back him up, including a World Cup. This definitely goes a long way in terms of recruiting talent to play here, having the respect of his players, and getting the changes that need to be made done. This also gives us a figure who has lived in America for a long time and married an American woman that both fans, long-time and new, can get behind and use to market the sport to the next generation of kids coming up who isn't out of touch with the American way of life. If he can get half of what he did in Germany done here in terms of developing talent, the quality of the American game will skyrocket simply because of how massive the pool of talent would be. This is what I want to see in the national team. I want to see a vision or a direction instead of just getting a few wins now. It helps, though, that the results have been pretty good for the most part. I just think that he's giving the USMNT a little more confidence and giving other countries a reason to take us a little more seriously.

TL;DR: The man has done it all and built up a German force that would make Hitler ejaculate. At the very least, he's an Americanized ultra-successful German footballer who can give the American people a team and manager that they can support without seeming too out of touch and "foreign" or being an American with typical flawed tactics and direction. He's the manager that US football both needs and deserves right now, and he's going to lead us into a Golden Age of having international respect, owning Mexico, and being able to watch the sport in public without fear of having a hatecrime committed towards you for seeming like a "homosexual" for enjoying it.

Agree on all points. Well said.

That said, I can't wait for him to become full time technical director when Pep takes over in 2018

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but Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, and Argentina are better than in 2010

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Germany's about the same (and has no strikers)

France got extremely lucky to get in.

Italy goes as Pirlo goes. Same as 2010.

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They played very well at Euro 2012, but maybe you weren't paying attention.

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With Pirlo.

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The 2010 iteration went 3 and out.

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Without Pirlo.

Do tell.