Tim Howard's apparent questioning of dual-nationals was naive and short-sighted

Tim Howard said some things and then said he didn’t mean those things.

The longtime United States men’s national team and short-time Colorado Rapids goalkeeper told USA Today in an interview published on Wednesday that part of the USMNT’s recent problems are to do with a lack of passion for their national team by some players. He seemed to be saying pretty unambiguously that the dual-nationals who weren’t born in the U.S. were the problem.

“What I think [Bruce Arena] will add is this ability to truly believe in the shirt and I think we lost that a little bit over the last couple of years,” Howard said, referring to the new head coach, who in November replaced the fired Jurgen Klinsmann – who recruited and played a lot of dual-nationals.

“Jurgen Klinsmann had a project to unearth talent around the world that had American roots,” Howard said. “But having American roots doesn’t mean you are passionate about playing for that country. I know there were players that came in that it didn’t matter as much to. If you get enough of those players, one or two can get found out, but if you get enough of those players you lose sight of what you are all about. While it was a good idea in theory, it had its flaws. Bruce will 100 percent get that back.”

Arena, by the way, has also said he prefers his national teamers American-born, although he, too, has apologized and taken that back.

Howard added that he felt Klinsmann had been kept in the job too long and suggested things had gotten stale. Later in the day, Howard walked his comments back in an interview with ESPN FC.

“Some of them are [dual nationals], but I think others are players who have their roots here in America too,” he said, in reference to his earlier accusation, arguing that it isn’t the dual-nationals who are at fault after all. “It’s not exclusive to them because some of our dual-nationals have been brilliant. Jermaine Jones has been a rock for our national team. He’s been one of the heartbeats. Fabian Johnson has been brilliant for us. So, no, that wasn’t aimed at any one person in particular.”

Howard’s defense of his xenophobia-tinged utterances was hardly convincing. And that was disappointing, because Howard has consistently been one of the most thoughtful and cerebral national teamers – not to mention an impeccable role model.

His views are questionable not only because there’s no demonstrable proof of any kind that American-born national teamers will play harder than foreign-born ones – a point underscored by his own example of Jones, the most hard-nosed USA player perhaps of all time. But also because there isn’t any kind of test that will measure heart. It’s all nebulous, a pursuit of evidence for a void narrative.

And what’s sort of incongruous here is that Howard, just like Landon Donovan, the other American star to question the motives of dual-nationals recently, actually took a sabbatical from the national team at one point. Whereas Donovan took a break from soccer in late 2012, which was ultimately the first domino to get knocked over in his exclusion by Klinsmann from the 2014 World Cup, Howard took a year off from USA duty following that tournament, missing the 2015 Gold Cup.

It’s strange to talk about passion for the national team when you’ve willingly stepped away from it for an extended period.

But aside from being a baseless accusation that rings especially ugly in these touchy times, belittling dual-nationals is also naive and short-sighted. Like it or not, we live in a highly globalized world. A great many people now carry more than one nationality. And that’s also true for soccer players.

Spain’s starting striker Diego Costa is actually a Brazilian by birth. England’s biggest talent Raheem Sterling was born in Jamaica. Italy striker Eder? Originally Brazilian. Young Barcelona and France defender Samuel Umtiti was born in Cameroon.

To structurally and systematically shun dual-nationals for no other reason than that they were born someplace else isn’t just to plug your ears to our new global reality, but also to risk getting left behind. This is the way it works now. Excluding any player not born in the 50 states or the territories will drain an increasingly large number of them out of the national player pool.

We hope Howard meant it when he said he was targeting no one in particular with his words – even though his elaboration was flimsy – because if he was, it’s a pretty silly argument to make. Not to mention icky.

UPDATE: Jermaine Jones has now chimed in as well. “It’s dangerous stuff where you have to be careful what you’re saying,” he told ESPN FC. “With all the respect for Timmy, I feel it’s not if you’re half American or full-American. It’s more what you have in here [taps his chest]. If you go on the field and you give everything for this country, then of course sometimes there’s a situation where you’re not playing good. But it’s normal. That can happen to everybody, and that’s what you have to understand. Now, where everything goes wrong and we lost the first two games, we say maybe the German-Americans are the problem. But when we played the World Cup, I scored. [John] Brooks scored, and it’s ‘oh, the German-Americans are American boys.'”

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