Klinsmann is hardly the main reason for U.S.' lack of success

Firing their coach doesn't solve Team USA's long-term problem

Even before the final whistle was blown on the U.S. World Cup qualifying loss in Costa Rica and a debacle of historic proportion, the siren scream that had been building for more than a year was deafening.

Yet amid the calls for Jurgen Klinsmann's head, hysterical as they were predictable, Team USA captain Michael Bradley offered up a moment of clarity and truth as applicable to American soccer's future as the nightmare the U.S. had just stumbled through.

"In moments like this you have no choice but to step up and be strong and take responsibility and say we were just not good enough," the midfielder told reporters not long after the U.S. team's 4-0 loss last Tuesday.

A moment when U.S. Soccer has to finally step up and acknowledge that U.S. players just aren't good enough.

U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati's decision Monday to fire Klinsmann might be the right short-term answer but it doesn't solve Team USA's long-term problem-that the current generation of American players is not good enough to beat the world's best teams in the world's top tournaments. Or apparently even their top regional rivals.

If the first two World Cup qualifying matches-the loss in Costa Rica and a 2-1 defeat by Mexico four days earlier-further raised questions about the direction of the U.S. program under Klinsmann, they were also a damning indictment of level of the U.S. player pool and Major League Soccer, a league that is major only in name and commissioner Don Garber's imagination.

The biggest problem undermining U.S. Soccer and all its promise, preventing from Team USA from establishing a regular place among the world's best sides, was not Jurgen Klinsmann but the lack of ambition and courage of all too many American players to step up and challenge themselves on a weekly basis against the planet's best players in Europe's top leagues.

It's hard to argue that it wasn't indeed time for U.S. Soccer to send Klinsmann packing. Klinsmann certainly didn't do himself any favors in recent months.

Coming off a troubling summer campaign, Klinsmann's decision to start in a 3-5-2 formation in the Nov. 11 World Cup qualifying opener against Mexico in Team USA's historic fortress of Columbus was unfathomable. The U.S., playing in a formation it hadn't used in 10 months, found itself repeatedly exposed by a superior Mexican side through an opening half-hour that was a pair of Tim Howard fingertip saves from leaving Team USA down 3-0. Instead the U.S. trailed only 1-0 when a break for a Mexican injury provided Klinsmann the opportunity to come to his senses and switch to a 4-4-2.

Bolstered by the formation shift, the U.S. tied the match up 1-1, only to lose on goal in the 89th minute by Mexican captain and longtime U.S. nemesis Rafael Marquez courtesy of a blown U.S. assignment on an El Tri corner-kick.

Last Tuesday in San Jose, Calif., Team USA was simply flat and uninspired in the nation's worst shutout loss in a World Cup qualifier since 1957, the U.S. repeatedly shredded by a vastly technically superior and focused Costa Rican side. And it could have been much worse. The best U.S. player on the pitch at Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica might have been goalkeeper Brad Guzan, whose early point-blank heroics at least temporarily delayed the romp.

The U.S. doesn't play another World Cup qualifier until March 24 when it hosts Honduras. This extended window gives Klinsmann's replacement, former U.S. national team coach and current Galaxy boss Bruce Arena, plenty of time to get settled. The sense of panic over the 0-2 U.S. start, however, is more than a little over the top. With eight matches and 24 points remaining-and half of the CONCACAF group qualifying for the World Cup and a fourth country earning spot in a playoff-the U.S. will almost certainly advance to Russia 2018, whether it was coached by Klinsmann, Arena or someone else.

The focus on Klinsmann. however, misses the larger about point the U.S. program's future.

The U.S. has never produced a world class player who wasn't a goalkeeper and never will as long as the core of the national team plods in MLS, the league where Europe's once greats and almost-greats head for a final payday, the sport's version of the PGA's Senior Tour.

The most disturbing set of numbers last Friday night in Columbus wasn't 3-5-2 but 30-9. As in Mexico's starters have played a combined 30 UEFA Champions League matches this season to nine for the U.S. starters. Eight of El Tri's starters play for teams in Europe's top leagues, six of them for clubs competing in the current Champions League. And that doesn't count Marquez, who earlier in his career won two Champions League titles and four La Liga crowns with Spanish superpower Barcelona. Two U.S. starters-Fabian Johnson at Borussia Moenchengladbach and Christian Pulisic with Borussia Dortmund-have played in the Champions League this season.

Three other U.S. starters against Mexico-defenders John Brooks and Timmy Chandler and forward Bobby Wood-also play in the Bundesliga. What success the U.S. has had under Klinsmann is due to the play of Johnson and midfield enforcer Jermaine Jones, who like Johnson, Chandler and Brooks is the son of an American serviceman and German mother, was raised in Germany and developed in the Bundesliga system from a young age. Pulisic and Wood, the Hawaii-born former Irvine Striker, headed to Germany at young ages-Pulisic at 17 and Wood, scorer of the lone U.S. goal against Mexico, at 15.

Unfortunately few others have followed their path, and the core of the U.S. team remains MLS-based, which is why, more than Klinsmann's tactics, the U.S. has so often looked overwhelmed recently. Just as you wouldn't expect a player who spent all summer in the minor leagues to be able to hit major league pitching in the World Series, it's unrealistic to think players used to the all-too-friendly confines of MLS are going to be able to hang with players who not only play against some of the game's best players every week but train with that same caliber of player every day.

Mexico forward Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez has scored 101 goals for Manchester United, Real Madrid and his current side Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Miguel Layun, who scored the first goal against the U.S., led Portugal's Primeira Liga in assists last season while playing for Sporting Lisbon. Two of Layun's teammates at Sporting are Costa Rica's Joel Campbell and Bryan Ruiz. Campbell scored two goals in four minutes against the U.S. Before arriving in Lisbon, Ruiz in 2010-11 topped the Dutch league in scoring and led FC Twente to its first league title. Costa Rica goalkeeper Keylor Navas starts for Real Madrid.

Now consider the resumes of U.S. "stars" Bradley and forward Jozy Altidore. Bradley showed encouraging signs at Borussia Moenchengladbach and AS Roma. But when he struggled to crack the starting lineup at Roma in the first half of the 2013-14 season he agreed to a $10 million transfer and soft landing at Toronto FC, where his once promising skills have been in steady decline.

Altidore, billed not so long ago as the next big thing in American soccer, was a bust at Sunderland in the English Premier League, scoring just one goal in 18 months. So like Bradley, Altidore took the easy way out, heading to MLS, another move that inspired what should be the league's slogan: When the going gets tough in Europe, the Americans go to MLS.

Most of Klinsmann's most vocal critics, especially those self-appointed keepers of the game on Fox Sports' Grassy Knoll, have never forgiven him for not taking Landon Donovan, the all-time U.S. leading scorer, to the 2014 World Cup. But Donovan is also in many ways the poster boy for why the U.S. remains a second-tier soccer nation.

Donovan took several cracks at the Bundesliga, each time returning to the security blanket that is the MLS when things got tough. Donovan is the greatest American field player ever. But he was never a world-class player, never even close. For all his gaudy numbers, his legacy is a glittering yet ultimately empty one that continues to raise a nagging question: How good could he have been, how good could the U.S. have been, had he toughed it out in Europe?

It is a question that will continue to haunt U.S. Soccer under Arena. Until more top U.S. players adopt the mindset of Pulisic and Wood instead of following the all-too-familiar paths of the Altidores and Bradleys and Donovans, the only thing "Major" about American soccer will be disappointment.

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