By Charles Boehm - WASHINGTON, DC (Jul 31, 2015) US Soccer Players - The USMNT and their fans may have thought last summer's World Cup hangover was rough. A year on, they find themselves carrying even more angst into the dog days of summer 2015.

The results of the Gold Cup state that the US are 4th-best in their region, even as the tournament itself falls deeper and deeper into disrepute. CONCACAF managed to muck up several aspects of the tournament at once this year. That held even for the winning team.

Days after lifting the trophy in Philadelphia, Mexico contentiously dumped manager Miguel Herrera after he scuffled with a reporter in the airport on the way out of the City of Brotherly Love. Nobody gets it easy in CONCACAF, at least not this summer.

A mood of fatigue, frustration, and second-guessing has settled over the USMNT's fan base as all parties begin a month-plus of downtime before the team's next game. Questions continue over the work of Jurgen Klinsmann, the limits of a constantly ambitious national-team program, and the way forward for both coach and Federation.

"Progress is not linear for anyone. There’s bumps along the way," US Soccer president Sunil Gulati told reporters after Saturday's loss to Panama in the Gold Cup 3rd-place match. "This is clearly a bump. The team was certainly on a high in the spring. And today’s a low. But those are the norms for everyone, because you don’t go through and win all your games."

Klinsmann's achievements and faults have been widely scrutinized, with good reason, over the past week or so. As it should, that process will continue at the very least until a win in the USMNT's next “big” game. October's Confederations Cup playoff against Mexico.

We know that Klinsmann is here for the long haul. Barring an even more sensational and uncharacteristic meltdown, he's in no danger of a Herrera-style exit from his job.

“Is Argentina happy about not qualifying for the Confederations Cup? And Brazil being out?” asked Gulati in the pedagogical style he often carries over from the world of academia. “But they don’t panic and throw everything out. We’re making progress in certain areas, and less so in other areas.”

So Gulati remains fully confident in the man he has long seen as the perfect fit for the USMNT's top job. With so much of the federation's decision-making concentrated among so few leaders at the top, that's more than enough to render any talk of a coaching change utterly moot. (The wisdom and usefulness of that organizational structure deserves some critical thought, too, but we'll leave it this time.)

As with any unsuccessful tournament run, many of the players will return to club duty feeling that they underperformed. The increased quality of smaller rivals like Jamaica and Panama is also a factor, though only a bit.

This month's results suggested that the continent's twin powerhouses played down to the level of their neighbors, rather than vice versa. Like other top teams, at their best the USMNT and their border rivals Mexico carry themselves with an edge, a pride bordering on arrogance. The Gold Cup is an optimal time to show it. It was fleeting this year for both teams.

It's hard to avoid thinking that for the USMNT, even factoring for Klinsmann's quirky roster selections, it's adding up to less than the sum of its parts at the moment.

There's been an air of weariness and fatigue around this side going all the way back to Brazil 2014. It's tempting to look for obvious explanations, like Klinsmann's relentless devotion to fitness training or the lurking effects of constant travel between club and country across wide oceans and continents for well over a year. Some players carry signs of it in both uniforms, while others don't. The code of professionalism generally prevents whoever is feeling it from admitting as much, but the signs are there.

Some would simply brand it “second-cycle syndrome,” shorthand for the enveloping sense of staleness that constitutes the biggest built-in challenge for long-serving national team bosses.

Whatever the causes, Klinsmann and his staff are the ones charged with identifying and fixing it. He himself took a managerial sabbatical after spearheading Germany's semifinal run at the 2006 World Cup, citing exhaustion and a need for quiet family time. Now he seems surrounded by others who still haven't shaken off similar sensations since the end of the 2014 cycle.

Most national teams turn this page by now under a different coach. Klinsmann, who used revolutionary, paradigm-shifting language when he accepted his post four years ago, has to create a similar effect despite having become an institution unto himself.

For years he's preached about the dangers of complacency and comfort zones. Now we watch and wait to see if and when Klinsmann extricates himself from the one provided for him by Gulati and the US Soccer Federation.

Charles Boehm is a Washington, DC-based writer and the editor of The Soccer Wire. Contact him at:cboehm@thesoccerwire.com. Follow him on Twitter at:http://twitter.com/cboehm.

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