#umsnt

If you know me, I beat this drum frequently.  There is very little evidence that Klinsmann knows what he’s doing as a coach, and quite a bit that he is bad. But tonight’s disastrous loss against Brazil showed why he is particularly bad:

1.  He set Alejandro Bedoya and Michael Bradley up to fail.  He had Bedoya and Bradley switch positions from what they they normally play.  Bradley had to play further up the pitch than and Bedoya had to play more defensively.  It failed miserably: both looked out of sorts.  Bedoya was so bad that Klinsmann hauled him off in the first half.  Bradley just seemed off - he wasn’t getting service into Altidore and was even mishitting some set piece deliveries.

2.  Yedlin misused.  Strategically, DeAndre Yedlin on the wing is interesting because it provides width and verticality, particularly when Gyasi Zardes is doing the same on the other side. 

But let’s be honest: Yedlin is not the player you want for midfield tiki taka.  Yet that’s exactly what we got in the early minutes of the game.  Short passes in compressed space led to Yedlin giving the ball away badly several times, and one of them led to Brazil scoring.

It’s possible that the players didn’t execute the game plan well.  But personally I’d have been looking to push Brazil’s left back Marcel into playing closer to his own goal by playing a few balls in behind Marcel to let Yedlin chase.  Just a few long diagonal balls would be effective in keeping Marcel back: Yedlin is fast, and Brazilians are quite likely to believe we’ll play long balls.

3.  What is Klinsmann doing with Geoff Cameron?  When Cameron was starting at right back for Stoke City the last couple years, Klinsmann didn’t play him because he said Cameron was a center back or defensive midfield destroyer.  

This year, Cameron is starting at center back for Stoke, so of course Klinsmann started him at right back.  You can’t make this up.

4.  Jermaine Jones in the starting lineup?  He turns 34 in a few weeks.  For almost all professional soccer players, the decline starts at 28 or 29 and hits exponentially.  There’s a reason you never see 34 year olds in the national team of any good soccer nation.  On the rare occasion that you do see someone that old, it’s almost always a goalie or a legend.  And even the legends almost always shouldn’t be starting by that age.

We actually have people who can play at his position (ahem, Geoff Cameron!).  Early in the World Cup cycle, good national team coaches start giving experience to younger players in friendlies like this, so playing someone young would also have had lots of merit.  Instead Klinsmann started a nearly 34 year old who will quite possibly be out of the team in 6 months.  Or sooner.

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