On Sunday night, Klinsmann joined the United States Soccer Federation’s president, Sunil Gulati, and several other top officials and offered the latest plan to close that talent gap by enhancing soccer development in the United States. The presentation, made to about a dozen news media members and released publicly on Monday, could have been titled “Growing Pains in the Birth of a Soccer Nation.”

It included measures that will increase the federation’s reach, like extending development programs to the under-12 level; adding two youth national teams to fill in gaps in the development system; and raising standards for coaches, partly through a partnership with Sporting Kansas City for a National Coaching Education Center. Scholarships will be increased for club programs affiliated with U.S. Soccer, in the hope of removing the pay-to-play barriers that sometimes keep children from low-income families out of the talent pool.

In an effort to better understand how the United States compares with countries like Spain, Brazil and the Netherlands, a consulting firm will be hired to assess the youth national teams and development academy clubs. In addition, U.S. Soccer is considering building its own facilities — it currently rents fields and offices here in Carson from the Los Angeles Galaxy’s parent company, Anschutz Entertainment Group, and lacks dormitories — or more modest satellites in different parts of the country.

Gulati said U.S. Soccer, which budgeted $53.4 million in operating costs for the current fiscal year that ends in March, had budgeted an additional 50 percent next year.

“Obviously, with all the initiatives, we want to push the envelope,” Klinsmann said.

Since Klinsmann was hired three years ago, he has emphasized increasing competition and the value of placing players in uncomfortable environments. For the national team, that emphasis has manifested itself in a more rigorous schedule for the first six months of 2015, a slate of games that includes exhibition games at Chile (Jan. 28), home against Panama (Feb. 8), at Denmark (March 25), at Switzerland (March 31), home against Mexico (April 15), at the Netherlands (June 6) and at Germany (June 10).