Jurgen Klinsmann to England? How seriously should the rumor be taken?

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It’s just a rumor. And it actually isn’t even really that.

It started, like many things do now, with a tweet.

That means … very little.

Firstly, it’s hard to tell if it’s true. Klinsmann apparently has never had an agent, instead negotiating deals through a “business partner” – a quiet, friendly man named Warren Mersereau, who is a co-vice president in the Soccer Solutions consultancy they run – while remaining heavily involved. So there probably isn’t someone out there testing the waters about potential jobs on his behalf. That makes it unlikely that Klinsmann would be putting out feelers.

The fact that he’s under contract with the U.S. through the 2018 World Cup, on the other hand, means even less, though. Soccer contracts are seemingly written just to be ripped up. Few players or managers now serve out a contract fully without it either being canceled or extended early. Indeed, Klinsmann’s deal is an extension to his original contract signed in 2011.

Secondly, just because Klinsmann is interested in England doesn’t mean the reverse is also true. The talent pool in England’s managerial ranks may be desperately shallow. Of the 18 Premier League jobs currently occupied, just five are held by Englishmen – and Steve Bruce, Sean Dyche, Eddie Howe, Alan Pardew and Sam Allardyce hardly get anyone excited as future England managers. All the same, the English still seem to feel that they know something about soccer the rest of the world doesn’t, and that after spells of a Swede (Sven-Goran Eriksson) and an Italian (Fabio Capello) in charge, they seem to want Roy Hodgson’s successor to be from England as well. Why that is so, nobody knows.

All of that said, the fit is intriguing. The job is strikingly similar in scope to the Germany role Klinsmann accepted in 2004, which remains to this day the only unqualified success he’s had in management. Germany then, like England now, had just come off a disastrous Euro, had a national team program stocked with young talent but no idea how to make the most of it, and was, as a whole, badly dated and in need of new ideas. He laid the groundwork for a World Cup title a decade down the line. And his record in those conditions is a perfect one-for-one.

But all of this assumes that Klinsmann really is interested and that U.S. Soccer would let him go without a fight – the latter is less of an obstacle, as want-away players and managers can almost always twist their employer’s arm somehow.

Klinsmann might be tired of swimming upstream in the U.S., where the skepticism of the German and his methods peaked before the Copa America Centenario, before ebbing somewhat with an unexpected semifinals run. And where the shoddy structure of the game as a whole still conspires against his efforts to build something solid and lasting. But he likely also wants to see out the big task he has been plugging away at for half a decade.

He’s now been the U.S. manager 2½ times as long as he was in charge of Germany. And he has yet to come through on his promises of a national team that can consistently compete with the world’s best and play good soccer. But there are glimmers now. The youth national team program has performed poorly collectively in recent years, but thanks to globalization – and Army servicemen who continue to be, um, productive overseas – there’s more talent in the pipeline than ever.

And that Copa performance represented a breakthrough of sorts in that the U.S. finally won another knockout game at a major tournament, beating Ecuador 2-1 in the quarterfinals – the first such achievement since the 2009 Confederations Cup and the 2002 World Cup. Although the U.S. was simply beaten by Colombia in its opener and Argentina in the semifinals – 2-0 and 4-0, respectively – the wins over Costa Rica, Paraguay and Ecuador, and the much 1-0 narrower loss to Colombia in the third-place game, showed progress. Not just in terms of results, but stylistically as well.

If the Klinsmann revolution, or doctrine, or experiment, or whatever, is ever going to come off, it seems like such an inflexion point is imminent. Klinsmann surely senses that. U.S. Soccer probably does as well, after its president Sunil Gulati implicitly threatened Klinsmann’s continued employment with the federation just before that breakthrough win over Costa Rica.

Then again, if he’s looking for a new challenge, or is fed up with the Klinsmann fatigue, leaving now would guarantee an exit on a high. A fourth-place finish at Copa America is nothing to sniff at, no matter how badly the Yanks were beaten by Argentina. And optically, at least, his tenure would look positive – the Copa run reinforced by survival of a tough group at the 2014 World Cup and a 2013 Gold Cup title.

But there’s also this: Part of the reason Klinsmann’s stint with Germany was so short was that he burned out in just two years. The searing criticism and scrutiny from the German press weighed on him, while he didn’t want to leave his home in Southern California for more than a few weeks at a time. That’s a long commute.

While his son is now off to college, his daughter isn’t yet, and we have no indication that Klinsmann – the embodiment of the New Californian with no interest in returning from whence he came – is any more eager to live in Europe again, even if it’s London where he remains a cult hero to Tottenham fans. The English press, meanwhile, won’t go any easier on him than their German brethren.

And all of this still assumes that there’s something to this rumor – correction: tweet.

There likely isn’t. Because while arguments can be made for such a move, the larger body of evidence and logic overwhelmingly rules against it.

Like it or not, Jurgen Klinsmann is probably here to stay.

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