Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

From watching Arena and Bradley, hardly touchy-feely types, I believed the United States needed a coach attuned to the American mentality. Most European coaches have come along in autocratic systems and would be put off by the American question, “Why?” I could not see Alex Ferguson, chomping gum as if he were grinding the egos of his hirelings, speaking the psychological language of Americans. But the theory was that Klinsmann, whose children were growing up in California, might work out in this culture.

  * * *

  The United States Soccer Federation was no longer the small-scale operation it once had been, with a few employees in a hole-in-the-wall office in the Empire State Building. It had moved to Colorado Springs for a time and then in 1991 to two mansions in the historic millionaire enclave of Prairie Avenue on the South Side of Chicago. Its net assets were estimated at $57 million in 2012, and it employed more than one hundred people. The federation made considerable expenditures on refereeing clinics and programs for millions of youths and had produced the championship women’s teams and in 2013 a promising under-twenty team coached by Tab Ramos.

  But how was the U.S. federation to be judged? In some ways, it was gaining in power and prestige with Gulati on the executive committee, but in the pragmatic world of soccer, the United States would mostly be judged by the results of the men’s team. After all the projects and academies, after the grand run in 2002, the United States had continued to produce admirable players who had learned the sport without much of an informal sandlot base where they could grapple and struggle and improvise, making moves on their own without Coach screaming in one ear and helicopter parents screaming in the other.

  Motivated, well-trained, intelligent players were proving themselves overseas, but the McBrides and Reynas had retired, and the United States was still waiting for an even higher level. One indicator of success used by the federation is the number of national players close to Champions League level, playing for the top four clubs in the top four best national leagues in Europe—Italy, England, Spain, and Germany. By the end of the 2012–13 season, both Spain and Germany had nearly seventy stay-at-home stars on their top four squads, but the United States had just four players in top clubs, none of whom quite fit the definition: German-born Jermaine Jones with fourth-place FC Schalke 04; Brad Friedel, now the second-stringer at Tottenham and no longer playing for the national team; Michael Bradley, who was highly respected by fans of AS Roma, which finished sixth in Serie A; and Clint Dempsey, an occasional starter with fifth-place Tottenham.

  One category that the United States has exported is superior keepers: Kasey Keller, Brad Friedel, Tim Howard, and Brad Guzan have all gone to the Premiership, partially because athletes with size and reach can be taught to play keeper. Talent is much more difficult to develop at the ten other positions.

  Probably the best American field player of the twenty-first century has been Landon Donovan, who had a productive spurt on winter loan to Everton but remained a homebody in California. In 2012–13, Donovan took a walkabout from the national team and the Los Angeles Galaxy, saying he needed to reconnect with his family as part of his growth as an adult. While the United States was preparing for the Hex, Donovan took a trip to Cambodia.

  Donovan’s sabbatical seemed like a classical American need-to-find-myself journey—“On the Road,” or “The Midfielder in the Rye.” Bruce Arena, the coach of the Galaxy, was characteristically sarcastic about Donovan’s “bad plan.”

  Establishing himself as the American coach, Klinsmann, while living in Southern California himself, came off as a demanding Bundesliga coach, the stern German papa. In an interview with Matthew Futterman of the Wall Street Journal, Klinsmann spoke of the need for higher competition within Major League Soccer.

  “We would say it would be great if our eighteen- or nineteen- or twenty-year-olds would have an environment where they get pushed every day, where they are accountable every day, where they understand what it means to be a pro, where they have eleven months of training, games, training games, where they have a chance to build their stamina to build their systems so you can really take in the game as a leading component, not just seven or eight months and then I go on vacation,” Klinsmann said.

  Major League Soccer was doing fine, producing players like Omar Gonzalez, Matt Besler, and Graham Zusi, who jumped to the national team in 2013 without taking the advanced course in Europe. Ultimately, these players might follow the money trail to Europe, but that is part of the process anticipated by MLS since the first season of 1996.

  The level of play had improved incrementally in MLS, going into the 2013 season, its eighteenth, one longer than the North American Soccer League survived. MLS now had fourteen soccer-specific stadiums, with another expected in San Jose. The seventeenth season was the best ever, with an average attendance of 18,807, the seventh-highest league average in the world.

  Commissioner Don Garber has talked of wanting a rivalry in the New York area, and in 2013 the league committed to a twentieth team as a rival for the Red Bulls, who were based just across the Hudson in New Jersey. The new club would be owned by the New York Yankees of baseball and Manchester City of the Premier League, which is itself owned by the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. The new owners were planning another soccer-specific stadium, perhaps in Queens, with its ethnic enclaves, but more likely near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. However, urban priorities and a new mayor would determine if even more land was to be turned over to a private business like soccer.

  Meanwhile, investors owning the legendary Cosmos brand seemed to have missed the chance to get into the league, casting their fate with a secondary league. Ultimately, Cosmos is only a name. Pelé and Beckenbauer and Chinaglia are not coming back.

  Klinsmann did not insist that Americans leave for European clubs while still in their late teens, saying, “I was not ready to go abroad until I was twenty-four,” but he also noted that Michael Bradley had been ready to grow in Europe at nineteen. Klinsmann also said that Major League Soccer could not provide the twenty-four-hour indoctrination to soccer that the European system does: “This is the problem we have because we are not socially so connected so deeply to soccer in the daily life. They think, you get a tryout in Europe with West Ham, this is huge, you made it. No, you haven’t even made it if you have the contract with West Ham. And even if you play there and if you become a starter, which would make us happy, that still doesn’t mean that you made it.”

  Klinsmann began his tenure by recruiting in the territory he knew best—German players with an American parent who had never played with the German national team and were therefore eligible for the U.S. squad. The best of them was Jermaine Jones, a swaggering, broad-shouldered version of Rafa Márquez of Mexico and Claudio Gentile of Italy—every squad needs a hard man—but Klinsi’s Germans came off as Hessians, hired hands, who did not necessarily display commitment when they jetted in for a match.

  When the United States advanced to the Hexagonal in 2013, Klinsmann began to put his signature on the team by benching the popular captain, Carlos Bocanegra, before a dreadful 2–1 opening loss in Honduras and then not calling Bocanegra for subsequent matches. Klinsmann made an innovative move in calling up DaMarcus Beasley, a veteran of three World Cups, from his club in Puebla, Mexico, and moving him from wing to left back. Beasley was sometimes overmatched on defense, but he played the entire field, darting into open space, a true footballer. Klinsmann revived the national career of Eddie Johnson, who had moved to the Seattle Sounders in MLS.

  The coach seemed to have critics, including within the American locker room. A story broke in the Sporting News claiming that some anonymous American players were finding Klinsmann erratic, not clear in his expectations. The coach was remarkably sanguine about the criticism, dismissing it as normal. Public criticism of Klinsmann’s fluctuating lineup was a sign that some American fans were still not familiar with the normal World Cup cycle. The fans wanted to see a set lineup of familiar faces, but the reality is that the path to every World Cup involves
constant revision. Some players are just not available because of club schedules, injuries, slumps, coaching experiments, or personal and family priorities. Or the coach wants to take a look at somebody else.

  The long march of the Hexagonal moved from a sloppy loss in Honduras to a match with Costa Rica in a developing snowstorm in Colorado. FIFA officials probably should have called the match beforehand, but given the tight schedules of the assembled players, there was huge pressure to get the match done. With snow covering the field, Clint Dempsey scored a goal, and the United States held on for a victory. Costa Rica protested holding the match in the snow, but the complaint was denied by CONCACAF officials, and the United States had three points at home.

  Four nights later, still at altitude in Azteca, Major League Soccer paid off marvelously, with two home-based defenders, Gonzalez and Besler, negating the inefficient Mexican strikers, and Brad Guzan of Aston Villa filling in for the injured Tim Howard, making saves near the end of a 0–0 draw.

  With the team earning a point in that hard place, criticism of Klinsmann abated. He named the taciturn Clint Dempsey captain, suggesting that it was time for Dempsey to step up his leadership and acknowledging that Tim Howard and Michael Bradley were going to be leaders anyway.

  Klinsmann also let it be known that he was losing patience with Jozy Altidore, the big striker who had finally found a home with AZ Alkmaar and was the top scorer in the Netherlands with thirty-one goals in all competition but had not scored for the United States on Klinsmann’s watch. The criticism may have motivated Altidore: after a stinker of a friendly against Belgium, he scored in five straight matches, including vital Hex victories, one a 2–0 victory over Panama in Seattle in mid-June—a breakthrough of sorts for American soccer. The Sounders—a grand old Seattle soccer name—have been producing huge and boisterous crowds for their Pacific derbies against Portland and Vancouver. The national federation had tried to duck most big cities and stadiums, fearing that Latin American fans might show up, but the Hex qualifier in Seattle drew 40,847 fans, most wearing red and chanting and standing the entire night.

  The television cameras in Seattle showed Panamanian fans proudly displaying their flags and jerseys in the stands, unmolested. The mood was positive, like the U.S.-Ghana match in South Africa in 2010, when fans mingled and some even displayed both flags. By contrast, on the same night as the Panama match in Seattle, frustrated Mexican fans were heaving missiles out of the stands in Azteca to protest another wretched showing by the home team.

  With the United States in great position, thirteen points in six matches, Klinsmann had a major project over the summer of 2013—evaluating Landon Donovan, who had rejoined the Galaxy in the spring. Klinsmann echoed Arena, saying Donovan needed to prove he could still play in MLS before even thinking of rejoining the national team. Sir Alex Ferguson or Fabio Capello or José Mourinho could not have been more blunt. Then Klinsmann added Donovan to a B-list roster for the Gold Cup tournament, the odd-year summer competition in the CONCACAF region.

  My guess was that many of the American players who had been on the field when Donovan made some of his greatest runs, including against Algeria in 2010, were more pragmatic than their coach. They had experienced the way Donovan could transform a match. Now Klinsmann was getting empirical evidence that Donovan had not lost his speed and pace and touch, as he scored five goals and made seven assists in the American sweep through the Gold Cup. Later, Klinsmann said, “He earned every compliment he got in this tournament.” When asked about Donovan’s chances of playing in the four remaining World Cup qualifiers, Klinsmann said, “There is a high probability he joins us.”

  The Gold Cup tournament provided a new insight into the coaching ability of Jürgen Klinsmann. The great striker demanded that his second-tier players move the ball forward, expecting teammates to materialize in open space, and they began to show confidence and aggression rarely seen on American squads.

  “Collectively, they’re a very good team,” said Agustín Castillo, a Peruvian coaching the Salvador national team, after a 5–1 loss in the Gold Cup semifinal. Castillo added, “They almost play by memory. They can find the spaces. It almost seems like every time they pass the ball into a space it’s going to nobody, then somebody appears and actually meets the ball. Good work, good movement. They’re the best team I’ve seen in this tournament. They are a candidate to win it all.”

  It almost sounded as if Castillo was talking about Spain, the way its players trusted one another to keep advancing.

  The stern face of Klinsi returned in late August when Clint Dempsey left the Premier League, accepting a contract for $5,038,567 for each of the next four years with the Seattle Sounders of MLS. This salary would have been unimaginable in the socialist single-owner entity of MLS of seventeen years earlier, but the league was now paying to retain its homegrown stars.

  Klinsmann was not enthusiastic about Dempsey’s return. “There is always another level,” the coach had said, earlier in 2013, speaking about Dempsey. “If you one day reach the highest level, then you’ve got to confirm it, every year. Xavi, Iniesta, Messi. Confirm it to me. Show me that every year you deserve to play for Real Madrid, for Bayern Munich, for Manchester United. Show it to me.”

  Dempsey declined to apologize for taking the high salary and the chance to raise his children in the United States. Klinsmann had to know from observing the cranky screwface Dempsey displayed in public that this was no moonbeam of a player. Dempsey played with a poor boy’s drive, having grown up in East Texas, playing against older Latinos in highly physical and nasty matches. Still, Klinsmann reserved the right to goad the man he had named captain. This was the Bundesliga way.

  * * *

  The qualifying round resumed in early September, with the United States losing, 3–1, in Costa Rica, where fans and players seethed with resentment over the snow game in Colorado earlier in the year. Michael Bradley rolled his ankle taking a kick in warmups and would miss four weeks. Altidore, now playing for Sunderland in the Premier League, reverted to immaturity by taking a needless yellow card in extra time, which meant he was out for the Mexico game four days later in Columbus, Ohio.

  After winning the 2012 gold medal at the Olympics in London, Mexico was a stunning disappointment in 2013. Hours after his team coughed up two counterattack goals to Honduras in a rainy Azteca, coach José Manuel de la Torre was fired.

  Short on leadership, maybe also short on talent, Mexico seemed to have never recovered from being humiliated by the Yanks, 2–0, in the knockout round of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea. Some loyal Mexican fans brought their sombreros and their aspirations and managed to buy tickets for the qualifier in Columbus, the scene of three previous qualifier defeats, all by scores of 2–0—the same score as the World Cup loss. Hence a new American chant for their neighbors from the south: “Dos a cero.”

  The impact of Jay Göppingen, the former striker for the Orange County Blue Star, was evident against Mexico. In the absence of the injured Michael Bradley, players were expected to take control of their positions, move the ball forward, make something happen, and the constantly rebuilt defensive line rebuffed Mexico’s unimaginative long balls.

  In the forty-ninth minute, the resurgent Eddie Johnson met an outswinger corner kick from Donovan and blasted home a header, after the keeper had strayed in pursuit of the ball. Later, when Johnson felt woozy after a collision, he was replaced by Mix Diskerud, a Norwegian whose mother was from Arizona, which made him eligible to play for the United States. Two minutes after coming into the match, Diskerud showed the empowerment from his coach by turning the corner from the right side and releasing a perfect low pass in front of the goal, where Donovan converted it. The fans chanted “Dos a cero,” and later in the evening, after the two other qualifiers were finished, the United States celebrated qualifying for its seventh consecutive World Cup.

  With the stadium in Columbus shimmering with red-clad fans, I remembered that dismal loss to Costa Rica back in 1985, when Gregg
Thompson asked his coach when the United States would ever feel like the home team, and poor Alkis Panagoulias could only respond, “Never.” Now it was happening. The United States had developed fans worthy of its players and vice versa.

  “The biggest change in American soccer in the last ten years has been the fans,” said Hank Steinbrecher, the American federation executive who had blistered a television official for ignoring the American women at the 1996 Olympics. Steinbrecher was talking not only about the numbers but also the way fans now chanted and bounced up and down for a full ninety minutes, passionate but generally sportsmanlike.

  Klinsmann had raised the expectations—testing Donovan, prodding Dempsey, dropping Bocanegra, all the self-aware actions of a man who has played and coached at the highest level. Maybe the question for American soccer was not merely how to recruit better athletes away from basketball, football, and baseball. In the time of Klinsmann, the issue seemed to be how to demand more from players already succeeding in their life’s work.

  The United States had not produced a Maradona, swirling through the English defense in 1986, or a Zidane of the dancing feet, levitating for headers in 1998, the feral genius who wants control of the ball. In musical terms, American women had already evolved into talented divas, our Barbra, our Aretha, our Loretta, but where was our Chuck Berry, our Johnny Cash, our Frank Sinatra, doing things his way?

  Still, America was accumulating its own highlight film of epic moments—Joe Gaetjens’s flicked goal against England in 1950, Paul Caligiuri’s boomer at Port of Spain in 1989, the desperate full-field rally against Algeria in 2010.

  That latest dos a cero victory over Mexico demonstrated that American fans were becoming conditioned to the reliable run, the dependable stop. Genius might have to wait.

  On October 11, 2013, the Americans clinched first place in the Hex with a 2–0 victory over Jamaica in the new high-tech soccer stadium in Kansas City. The United States now lobbied for better seeding in 2014.