U.S. Men’s National Team v. Mexico, Glendale, Arizona, 4.2.14: Jurgen Klinsmann’s Treatment of Landon Donovan

I will not add much to the hosannas already heaped on Michael Bradley for his performance last Tuesday against Mexico in a 2-2 draw. Bradley was in exceptional form in the first half of the game, which the U.S. dominated. When Bradley is on, he can play with all the brutal efficiency of a cyborg in a sci-fi flick—a hairless, expressionless, relentless, inexorable force. He took over the first half, scoring off an (atrociously defended) back-post run on a corner kick and bagging an assist via a flicked-on header into the box. In short, he fully justified the “Il Generale” nickname bestowed on him by fans during his season playing for Chievo in Italy’s Serie A.

For most U.S. fans and media, and for his current U.S. national team head coach, Bradley can do no wrong, and his occasional ineffectual stretches of play (like the bulk of his second-half performance against Mexico on Tuesday night) tend to go overlooked or unmentioned. This state of affairs will in time change, and Bradley himself is no doubt acutely aware of the vicissitudes of professional soccer. He is currently the gold standard of American soccer players, but he hardly rates on the international level, perhaps in part because he is an American. Some have argued that U.S. players abroad have to overcome negative stereotypes involving unrefined technique, creativity, and soccer IQ, though of course that’s debatable. After all, the U.S. is a growing soccer market, and soccer clubs are presumably motivated by expanding their consumer markets and by signing quality players at good prices, not by keeping American players down.

But for whatever reasons, Bradley was unable to break into the regular starting lineup at his former club, AS Roma, and he felt underappreciated by management. Bradley said of his recent move from Roma to MLS’s Toronto FC: “[A]t a certain point . . . you need a coach who sees something in you. Because otherwise it’s just a one-way street. You’re working and fighting and scrapping and clawing for any little opportunity. But if the coach doesn’t see it, it’s never going to be any real opportunity to play consistently. . . . I was done with that. I felt like I deserved more. The coach there didn’t.”

I suppose some might accuse Bradley of whining, but I think he was being honest and perceptive. (And no one with experience watching his evolution as a player would accuse him of being a whiner or lacking professional dedication.) His point is worth remembering: one coach, teacher, or boss may have faith in you, see your qualities and your promise, while another may never appreciate those aspects no matter how hard you fight. And the fact that Toronto is paying Bradley about four times more than Roma did says something about the subjectivity inherent in player evaluation.

It seems to me that Landon Donovan has not engendered much confidence in his current national team coach, and that Donovan might even take some solace from Bradley’s thoughts on leaving Roma. Klinsmann’s decision not to start Donovan against Mexico on Tuesday is I think of a piece with his treatment of Donovan during his tenure as national team coach, particularly since Donovan’s decision to take a hiatus from soccer from January through late March 2013. Klinsmann made it clear at that time that Donovan’s past accomplishments would not guarantee the player a spot on the U.S. national team when the hiatus ended. After Donovan’s return to MLS, Klinsmann said of his position on the U.S. depth chart, “I am not tossing out names, but there are players clearly ahead of Landon Donovan right now.”

The coach subsequently left Donovan off the U.S. roster for some important World Cup qualifying matches. And when the 2013 Gold Cup rolled around last summer, Klinsmann assembled what looked like a B-team roster, leaving off such MLS national team regulars as Graham Zusi, Omar Gonzalez and Matt Besler, as they had played and proved themselves in recent World Cup qualifiers. Klinsmann did, however, call in Donovan, and he then pointedly made DaMarcus Beasley the Gold Cup team captain.

Far from sulking at his need to prove himself all over again, Donovan accepted his post-hiatus situation as self-imposed, and also accepted the challenge of winning back his coach’s respect. When he heard about the April interview in which Klinsmann indicated there were players ahead of him on the U.S. depth chart, Donovan responded, “I agree with him. . . . I’ve said from the beginning that I have to earn my way back and . . . I still have a long way to go.” Donovan then went on to play with enthusiasm and flair at the 2013 Gold Cup. His team won the final, and along the way he scored five goals, had seven assists, and was named the tournament’s best player.

That Gold Cup performance, though less than a year old, is now a distant memory. As Taylor Twellman noted during the ESPN broadcast of last week’s Mexico friendly, national team soccer is about “what have you done for me lately.” The consensus of Twellman and his ESPN colleagues before, during, and after the broadcast was that Donovan is no cinch to make the trip to Brazil this summer, and that if he does he’ll probably come off the bench.

In a halftime interview that seemed to confirm these sentiments, Klinsmann told a sideline reporter that he was going to bring on Donovan, Clarence Goodson, and young national team German-American newcomer Julian Green at about the 60-minute mark, “If,” Klinsmann stressed, “things go okay.” That “if” can be read as a jab at Donovan. Klinsmann implied he was only going to bring him on if the game was well in hand.

In the event, things did not go okay in the first 15 minutes of the second half. Mexico thoroughly dominated the U.S. starting 11 during that stretch and cut the lead in half. But Donovan (along with Goodson and Green) came on anyway, and his performance was lackluster. Whether the pedestrian play resulted from tendinitis in his knee as reported, age and declining skills, Klinsmann’s lack of confidence in him, or from some combination of those and other factors is impossible to say. But after the game, Klinsmann himself downplayed the effects of Donovan’s injury and emphasized instead Donovan’s poor performance in recent trainings; not starting Donovan “was a simple decision based on where he was the last couple days. . . . He told me also this morning that he had some issues with his left knee. But he didn’t train well. He had no tempo in his training sessions. He had no higher pace, higher rhythm. He didn’t take people on.”

Donovan is not one of Klinsmann’s “core guys,” as coaches of American football often put it. As Klinsmann made clear in a February interview, his core guys are Bradley, Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore, and Jermaine Jones. And no matter how inconsistently those last three individuals might play—and you could make strong, probably watertight arguments that each one of them has been less consistently effective for clubs and country than Donovan has been during the whole of this World Cup cycle, even accounting for the hiatus—it’s hard to imagine Klinsmann not starting any one of them against Mexico had each been available. It’s equally hard to imagine Klinsmann publicly denigrating any of them as he did Donovan in the wake of the Mexico game.

I mentioned professional dedication earlier. Some might argue that Donovan’s hiatus infuriated Klinsmann so much, that he regarded the layoff as such an egregious breach of professional etiquette that he has made it his mission to use Donovan as an example of the dire consequences of unprofessionalism. If true—and I think there’s more to Klinsmann’s treatment of Donovan than his reaction to the vacation—then I think Klinsmann has been shortsighted and uncharacteristically rigid. Off the top of my head I can think of two accomplished athletes—Michael Jordan and John Riggins—who stepped away from their respective sports for a lot longer than Donovan did, were welcomed back by their coaches, and subsequently rewarded those coaches with MVP performances in championship games. Even Vince Lombardi—supposedly the ultimate exemplar of meritocratic coaches—treated his best players differently.

Furthermore, we should not forget Klinsmann’s own kid-glove treatment of one of his core players—Jermaine Jones. Jones had a self-imposed two-month hiatus of his own in late 2011 and early 2012, courtesy of a Bundesliga suspension for stomping on an opponent. Jones has a reputation for erratic, hotheaded play, and the incident and subsequent penalty were not widely greeted with surprise. But rather than chastise Jones for continued unprofessionalism, or move players above Jones on the U.S. depth chart, or use Jones as an example to other players of how not to act, Klinsmann rushed to his core guy’s defense: “[Jones] did something where he got punished heavily, which we think was very harsh based on what he did. He apologized to everyone involved and [he’s] not getting even the opportunity to play friendly games with his club team.” Remarkably, Klinsmann not only called in the suspended Jones for the U.S. 2012 January camp, he rewarded him with a team captaincy for the U.S.’s January 21 friendly against Venezuela. If I’m not mistaken, for all of Donovan’s accomplishments in a U.S. shirt, Klinsmann has never once appointed him team captain.

Why go into all of this? Mostly to emphasize the point—made by Bradley after his move from Roma to Toronto—that soccer players, like other workers, are to an important extent at the mercy of their superiors. And they sometimes aren’t afforded the respect and rewards they, you, or I might feel are deserved under the circumstances. Other national team coaches would undoubtedly have treated Donovan differently over the past year or two, and based on his experience, recent form, and accomplishments (unparalleled in U.S. men’s soccer), many would have named Donovan as a core player, a player virtually guaranteed a spot on the 2014 World Cup finals roster. But Klinsmann seems intent on knocking Donovan off his perch and ushering in the post-Donovan U.S. soccer era sooner than many of us would wish.