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.
