Jurgen Klinsmann fired as U.S. men's national team head coach
After more than five years in charge of the senior men’s national team and almost three years in a dual role as U.S. Soccer’s technical director, German head coach Jurgen Klinsmann was relieved of his duties on Monday.
He compiled a record of 55 wins, 27 losses and 16 ties, winning the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup, guiding the USA to the 2014 World Cup and then out of a tough group and placing fourth at the 2016 Copa America Centenario.
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Klinsmann was appointed as head coach on July 29, 2011, after Bob Bradley was fired. U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati had pursued the German since 2006, convinced that he was just the man to finally lift U.S. Soccer to a higher level. Ironically, the manager let go by Gulati then, Bruce Arena, who was at the end of his contract and remains the only man to coach the U.S. at two World Cups, is now the towering favorite to step in and finish out this cycle.
During an up-and-down tenure, Klinsmann posted several notable victories in friendlies against major superpowers like Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands and recorded a first-ever win on Mexican soil, but he failed to deliver on his promises of more fluid, attractive and proactive soccer. Meanwhile, the 2015 Gold Cup was a disaster, ending in an upset ouster by Jamaica in the semifinals and first calling into serious question Klinsmann’s continued employment with the federation.
The beginning of the 2014 qualifying cycle was fraught with difficulties. And the start to the final round on the path to Russia 2018 was too, beginning with a first-ever home loss to Mexico in Columbus on Nov. 11 and an unsightly 4-0 beating by Costa Rica four days later.
Since then, pressure had steadily built on Klinsmann. Yahoo Sports and a slew of other outlets called for his firing after the meltdown in Costa Rica and while speculation ran rampant over who would replace him, a defiant Klinsmann hit out at his critics.
Still, it wasn’t exactly a foregone conclusion that he would be fired. Gulati has a famously slow trigger on managers. And given the amount of money, resources, time and credibility that had been sunk into Klinsmann’s tenure – his $3 million or so salary was more than three times that of Bradley’s – letting him go now would be an admission that the grand experiment had failed.
What’s more, eight qualifiers remained for Klinsmann to set things right and get the Americans among the top three of six teams in CONCACAF to secure a berth for Russia – or to claim fourth place and advance via a doable playoff with the fifth-place team in Asia.
But Gulati nevertheless made the decision to bring to an end the most ambitious stretch in men’s national team history.
“Today we made the difficult decision of parting ways with Jurgen Klinsmann, our head coach of the U.S. men’s national team and technical director,” Gulati said in a statement. “We want to thank Jurgen for his hard work and commitment during these last five years. He took pride in having the responsibility of steering the program, and there were considerable achievements along the way.
“Many are aware of the historic victories, including leading us out of the Group of Death to the Round of 16 in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, but there were also lesser publicized efforts behind the scenes,” Gulati continued. “He challenged everyone in the U.S. Soccer community to think about things in new ways, and thanks to his efforts we have grown as an organization and expect there will be benefits from his work for years to come.
“While we remain confident that we have quality players to help us advance to Russia 2018, the form and growth of the team up to this point left us convinced that we need to go in a different direction.”
No immediate announcement on a successor was made.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.
