The USMNT's 6-0 win over Honduras showed exactly why Jurgen Klinsmann had to be fired
SAN JOSE, Calif. — You can breathe a sigh of relief, American soccer fans. The United States men’s national team is back on track.
And they might even have some momentum behind them as well.
It’s amazing what a blowout win can do for a team.
The USMNT’s 6-0 beat-down of Honduras Friday night at Avaya Stadium was many things: gobsmacking, comprehensive, inspiring, eye-opening, and impressive.
But more than all of that, it was cleansing.
Whether you wanted to call Friday night’s game must-win game or not, it was a critical one for the whole of American soccer. The Yanks needed three points in the worst kind of way, lest they seriously risk missing out on World Cup 2018 and possibly jeopardize a generation of American soccer growth.
The pressure was on, and against an opponent that was keen to pack nine players in front of their goalie, there were legitimate questions bout how the United States would fare. Would the backline be able to quell the Hondurans’ possibly lethal counter attack? Who on this U.S. team that looked so listless in their first two World Cup qualifying games would be able to make the decisive pass in the attacking third? What player would prove to have the necessary scoring touch that could put the United States on the scoreboard, should a chance come their way?
Those questions were founded leading up to kickoff Friday, and that has to be reiterated, because revisionist historians will forget how panicked they were before Sebastian Lletget’s fifth-minute goal.
It does, in retrospect, seem silly that Friday’s contest was ever in question — the USMNT has significantly more talent than Honduras, and they’re a dominant team at home in World Cup qualifiers [before the USMNT’s loss to Mexico on Nov. 11, they had not lost a home game in "the Hex” (CONCACAF's final World Cup qualifying round) in 15 years).
But that’s where the USMNT was. You can thank Jurgen Klinsmann for that.
Friday’s game showed why Klinsmann had to be fired in November. The trust — between team and manager, between the program and its supporters — had been broken.
Under the old regime, the benefit of the doubt had been lost at all levels. After decades of progress, it seemed as if the national team was heading backward,
But you can consider the USMNT recalibrated.
It really is amazing what one blowout win in a pressure-packed situation can do.
It’s a long road ahead yet — the USMNT needs to finish at least fourth (and preferably third) in the six-team Hex to qualify for the World Cup in Russia next year, and they only have three points through three games of 10 games with a tough test at Panama looming Tuesday — but it was clear that a different USMNT took the pitch Friday.
Bruce Arena, hired to succeed Klinsmann as the USMNT’s coach in November after the Americans’ 0-2 start to World Cup qualifying is no genius, but he put his players in a position to win Friday.
That process, which Klinsmann made more complicated by the match, wasn’t all that difficult for Arena either — he scouted Honduras, he predicted how they would line up for the contest, and he put out his best-attacking team and told them to be aggressive from the opening whistle. They did what was asked, and the U.S. handily won.
Instead of Klinsmann’s avant-grade tactics and bizarre changes ahead of critical games, the USMNT was almost comically rigid in its formation Friday. Four in the back, a holding midfielder in Michael Bradley in front of them and behind three attacking mids and two strikers who all moved in beautiful unison, overlapping and cutting, but rarely leaving susceptibilities and never losing understanding.
It’s that understanding that was the first thing to go under Klinsmann — the USMNT players wouldn’t come flat out and say it Friday, though the coast was clear, but towards the end of Klinsmann's reign, his players had no idea what they were supposed to be doing in a game they played at the highest levels.
No national team coach has the time to install intricate game plans, even before a World Cup, but Klinsmann, in his seemingly never-ending quest to prove he was the brightest soccer mind on the planet, spent his post-World Cup 2014 days trying to create systems that would take the USMNT from good to great.
Instead, all that tinkering put the USMNT in near dire straits.
Arena is working with the same player pool as Klinsmann, but he used that pool (even in its currently depleted form) in a significantly better manner Friday.
The best player on the pitch — and it really wasn’t close — was an 18-year-old.
That, in itself, was incredible, but incredible might understate the influence of Christian Pulisic had on his team and the game Friday night.
Arena opted to play the kid as a No. 10 — a central attacking midfielder, right behind the strikers — Friday, and to some, that was a bold decision. But Arena’s lineup wasn’t revolutionary; Jurgen Klinsmann had played Pulisic as a No. 10 (if not literally than in a de-facto style) in the USMNT’s first two World Cup 2018 qualifying games.
The difference is the nine-man lineup Arena put around Pulisic.
There was order, logic, and trust.
Arena believed that he had the better team on the pitch Friday.
“Nothing I saw tonight surprised me,” Arena said after the 6-0 thrashing.
Would Klinsmann have held the same belief?
