Kroos the latest German star to admit he wasn't impressed by Klinsmann

United States head coach Jurgen Klinsmann enjoys the respect and admiration of the entire soccer world – except for his home country of Germany.

While America increasingly questions whether he's the right fit for the United States men's national team program, that criticism tends to center around his methods and vision, rather than his knowledge of the game. But for a second time, a prominent German national team player has taken a big and public swing at the former Bayern Munich and Germany manager.

Klinsmann's ill-fated stint with the German powerhouse didn't quite last the length of the 2008-09 season before he was fired. And Toni Kroos, now a Real Madrid and Die Mannschaft star who rode the bench for much of that season, amplified the criticism of Klinsi's only club job to date in an interview with German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

Rene Maric was the first to bring this to our attention on Twitter.

In discussing his former managers, Kroos was laudatory of all of them, except Klinsmann. (It should be noted here that in the season before Klinsmann arrived, Kroos made 20 appearances as an 18-year-old and then 19-year-old. In 2008-09 he saw the field just nine times. The following year, he became a regular. The two did not coincide on the national team.)

"What about Klinsmann?" Die Zeit asked Kroos.

"During his time at Bayern, I personally didn't see anything: a game idea, adequate communication – and success," Kroos answered.

Towards the end of the interview, in a quick true-or-false segment, Kroos rubbed salt into the wound. Because if nothing else, Klinsmann is credited with modernizing the German national team and enabling its ongoing success. But Kroos denied him those plaudits as well.

"Jurgen Klinsmann had a large impact on the development which eventually led us to the world title," the newspaper stated.

"Not true," Kroos responded.

This isn't the first time a former player has come at Klinsmann. In 2011, Philipp Lahm savaged him in his autobiography.

"We practically only practiced fitness under Klinsmann," Lahm said of the manager's time at Bayern, even though Klinsmann had made Lahm a prominent national teamer. "There was very little technical instruction and the players had to get together independently before the game to discuss how we wanted to play. … All the players knew after about eight weeks that it was not going to work out with Klinsmann. The remainder of that campaign was nothing but limiting the damage."

Meow.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.