Not so long ago,
the U.S. men’s national team was known for having players who would make up for
a lack of world-class quality by playing hard. We had guys like Brian McBride
and Alexi Lalas, who would not only play fearlessly, but bring it for the full
ninety minutes. So I find it strange, borderline bizarre actually, that head
coach Jurgen Klinnsman has repeatedly singled out physical fitness as a problem
for U.S. soccer players. As a recent article in The Wall Street Journal noted, Klinsmann believes that previous
U.S. teams “weren't
physically or mentally conditioned to press opponents with the relentlessness
of the best teams in the world. Long a believer in the constant monitoring of
players, Klinsmann has instilled a system of regularly testing the team's
strength and fitness and proscribing specific training regimens so each player can
mitigate his deficiencies.”
If Saturday’s 2-1
World Cup qualifying loss to Honduras is any indication, the U.S. players are
not responding well to Klinsmann’s program. Almost to a man, they looked
gassed. There are good reasons for this. For one, many U.S. players performed
in games over the weekend, and then had to travel great distances to get to
Honduras. (Most games were on Saturday, but critical U.S. forward/midfielder
Clint Dempsey played on Sunday.) And not only do many of our national team players
work for clubs in northern Europe, many of them also grew up there. Four U.S.
starters on Wednesday grew up in Klinsmann’s native Germany and play their club
ball in the Bundesliga. In any case, it should go without saying that
traveling in February from England or Germany to play a game in the hot and
humid weather of Honduras is bound to take a physical toll.
Still, I find it
ironic and a little irritating that Klinsmann has singled out a U.S. strength—or a
widely perceived U.S. strength—as a deficiency, and then, it seems, actually
turned that strength into a deficiency. I’ve seen dozens of U.S.
national team games, and I can’t recall a match that was as bad, in
terms of overall physical effort, as Wednesday’s performance against Honduras. In
my mind, the worst offender was Timmy Chandler, who is one of those German-bred
players I mentioned and a soccer product of all that Klinsmann extols. Well,
Chandler may come from a country and a league that has conditioned him to
“press opponents with the relentlessness of the best teams in the world,” but
that conditioning was nowhere on display against Honduras. Chandler was so
exhausted he might have gotten laughed out of an old-timers’ game. When he was
picked apart and nutmegged by a Honduras attacker in the second half, he look
like a member of an improv comedy troupe who’d been told to “freeze.” That’s
not an image you want to associate with your national team’s right back in a
World Cup qualifier.
One final word on
the subject of fitness and U.S. players. If Klinsmann really puts a premium on
fitness, and given this particular game played in Honduras, why oh why didn’t
he play Herculez Gomez? There is no U.S. national team player over the past
year, up to and including Michael Bradley, who has run as consistently hard and
played as tenaciously as Gomez. To add to that, Gomez plays in Mexico—not
far-off, chilly Europe—and knows all about playing in front of hostile crowds,
as this Grant
Wahl piece makes clear. I can understand not playing Edgar Castillo and
Jose Torres, both of whom also play in Mexico but who can be shaky defenders,
but the U.S. clearly would have benefitted from Gomez’s constant application of
pressure high up the field and from his willingness to track back into the
defensive third.
There were a few
other noteworthy facts about this game. Chandler and fellow defender Omar
Gonzales are now “cap-tied” to the U.S., which (despite Chandler’s performance
on this occasion) is reason to celebrate. (Chandler, readers will recall, had
held out hope of playing for Germany, and Gonzalez was, until Wednesday,
eligible to play for Mexico.) Gonzalez had an unfortunate hand in Honduras’s
game-winning goal, failing to mark New England Revolution striker Jerry
Bengtson on the play, but other than that he had a decent game, pace many of the media player ratings
I’ve seen. Also, the U.S.’s lone goal was a beauty, a one-time,
over-the-shoulder volley by Clint Dempsey, courtesy of a beautifully weighted
chip by Jermaine Jones (there’s a clause you don’t read every day). Almost
unbelievably, Honduras responded with an even more breathtaking goal, a laser
bicycle kick in a crowded U.S. box by fullback Juan Carlos Garcia. All U.S.
keeper Tim Howard could do after the shot rocketed past his head was clap both
his hands over his face in stunned disbelief.
