The days and months leading up to the 2014 World Cup led, as they often do, to a voluminous airdrop of soccer player literature. Andrea Pirlo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic both released highly publicized autobiographies, and Neymar, all 22 years of him, had his first official biography hit shelves last April.

But perhaps the most interesting, for USMNT purposes anyway, was a book by Philipp Lahm released in Germany that had some damning things to say about Jurgen Klinsmann’s tactical naivete during his brief stint as the head coach at Bayern Munich. Those things are well engraved in the stone of U.S. soccer’s past now. But for the sake of memory, let’s take a brief glance back at what it was exactly that Lahm claimed.

“We practically only practiced fitness under Klinsmann,” Lahm said, according to excerpts published in German newspaper Bild and translated into English by several outlets. “There was very little technical instruction and the players had to get together independently before the game to discuss how we wanted to play.”

Interesting. OK. Moving on.

Or maybe not. In a recent interview, Klinsmann had some theories on the team’s recent struggles. That is, just one win in their last nine and some pretty atrocious looking soccer over segments of that stretch. Here’s Klinsmann’s most strident moment, where you can feel him pulling the ripcord.

Curious. Curious indeed.

In his introductory press conference in 2011, Klinsmann spoke a great deal on his broader vision for the team. In that press conference, much of which echoes rather loudly today, Klinsmann spoke specifically about a more proactive approach to the game (he never mentions fitness specifically). This is what he said about what reflects back an “American mentality” in soccer in his world.

Now, finally, a few more threads to help us knit together this International Man of Mystery.

Klinsmann is an egoist. Matthaus is incredibly astute in that analysis. All idea men are, to an extent. But in the way Klinsmann applies his ego, it seems to be more of an asset for a man painting a grand wall-length work of art than one operating month-long training camps and coaching players through World Cups on the operational ground level. In light of Lahm’s comments and the fading fitness of this USMNT side, it would seem little’s changed on that score in the past half decade.

Say what you will about the positives Klinsmann’s brought to U.S. Soccer. They certainly exist, and they’re not insignificant. In many ways, he’s begun an existential conversation about What Is American Soccer that will outlast his tenure by decades. But the senior team arguably still does not have an “identity,” – or lost one, depending on your interpretation of fitness – has not improved at a World Cup in nearly 13 years and has suddenly lost its once world class fitness level. Since the start of the World Cup, 14 of the last 17 goals the U.S. has given up have come in the second half. Nine came after the 80th minute. Those numbers are staggering.

Remember, this was once a team that had steel rods for legs and an iron lung purring in its collective chest. After the U.S. dropped Spain 2-0 in the 2009 Confederations Cup, one of the finest results in the team’s history, Spain coach Vicente del Bosque said this.

“The US play with a lot of energy. They are good in attack and very fast. They don’t spend a lot of time in midfield as they go straight for the goal. We were surprised by their play as a team. We tried to go down the wings because it was too tough for us through the middle. We created a lot of opportunities but we didn’t have the final touch today and they came up with a lot of close saves.”

In reality, this was the U.S. “identity” for years. Speed, no-nonsense down the spine, outstanding goalkeeping and fitness for weeks. Whether Klinsmann knew this identity existed at the time and simply didn’t accept it as viable, regardless of the talent he had on hand, we may never know. But judging by his comments, he wanted to go the technical route. And that’s fine. Nobody begrudges a team that plays beautifully. So on we moved.

It wasn’t long after, not even a year, when Klinsmann’s approach to fitness began attracting attention. In 2012, Klinsmann’s first January camp drew raised eyebrows, from media if not from players, particularly when Benny Feilhaber said this.

“I don’t know if everybody expected how much fitness we actually did,” said midfielder Benny Feilhaber, adding that the intensity was higher than in previous January camps under Klinsmann’s predecessor, Bob Bradley. “We were on the field or in the gym more often than we were with Bob.”

And Bob Bradley loved fitness. The internet doesn’t have enough bold for me to properly convey that fact. Hell, the guy wrote his own offseason fitness guide in 2003 that became well published and circulated among youth and college coaches.

Here’s Klinsmann from that same 2012 story. As an aside, you may notice he conducted these rigorous training sessions at Arizona’s Athletes’ Performance. The same center he referenced earlier this week. He’s nothing if not consistent.

“What we’re trying to do is catch up with the international game,” he said. “At the end of the day, the difference in different levels of soccer is speed of play; it’s the dynamic of the game. The transition will take time because the [players] are often not used to the level of work. You have to recover in a few seconds; you can’t take 30 seconds to get back. There’s still a lot of catching up to do, no doubt about it.”

We’ve already established Klinsmann as the eternal ideologue. The dreamer. But this was and is puzzling, even for him. American soccer had little trouble with athletic transition. For Klinsmann to say American soccer players are somehow divorced from the wider American offseason training zeitgeist is asinine. Comb through U.S. Soccer’s archives and the one thing you’ll find in overabundant supply? Industry. Applying it in exactly the right places got the U.S. through in 2002. Relying on it to a fault doomed the U.S. in 2006, and 2010 settled somewhere in the middle. As it usually does.

What it needed, and still needs, was tactical transition training. The legs were always there. The brain often was not. This is where I think Klinsmann’s done admirable but understandably incomplete work. You saw it in the first half of the team’s eventual 3-2 loss to Chile in late January. There are flashes of truly literate interchange between the lines, and they seem to shift and morph relatively well as the team flips between attacking and defending, and vice versa. Nothing revolutionary, but most can see improvement in this arena. The dead legs in the second half, however, illuminated the scuffed side of the coin.

What Klinsmann did with his fitness approach, both at Bayern Munich and here, was enter the chamber with a shoulder-propelled rocket in a space that demanded more nuance. The U.S. needed some tactical gravitas applied to the fitness it already had. Even if that fitness training wasn’t quite as robust even as Klinsmann’s predecessors, the U.S. still would’ve been operating at a world class level. American athletes are nothing if not driven by the gym. It’s in the national sporting blood. But Klinsmann cranked the dial in the opposite direction. Whether it was an assumption or some misguided principle that “American training isn’t European training,” suddenly the legs are undercut.

Klinsmann ended the aforementioned training article by calling a match a “training session,” and notice the piece about Klinsmann putting the team through yoga sessions. He did the same as a forced exercise at Bayern Munich. Reportedly, the players widely hated it, and it was cited alongside reasons Lahm listed for their mutiny after just two months. Another? The introduction of American fitness coaches. The irony.

This is a strange hill for Klinsmann to climb, plant a flag and rush to the battlements. There are plenty of things wrong with the state of American soccer. Its lack of a true technician stretches on. There hasn’t been a real No. 10 on the national team on a consistent basis in 20 years. Elite development is still finding its way. But fitness? What of it? The very thing that carried the U.S. through its most wayward moments over the past quarter century is suddenly the errant nail peeking up from the wood grain? When did that happen? Certainly not before Klinsmann arrived?

This bears all the hallmarks of an issue Klinsmann created by over-training perfectly fit players and then blaming it on the nebulous “system” for failing them. If you accept that we all have agendas (mine being the vociferous support of an Emile Heskey-fronted boy band), Klinsmann’s continually slant toward Europe and Latin America, and specifically the former. That’s occasionally OK. European soccer is higher level soccer. But everything Klinsmann does seems to be with an eye toward changing the focus to another country entirely rather than adapting the game to American practices and strengths, as he said in his opening presser.

To wit, Klinsmann’s railed against the MLS schedule since he took over (and be damned the fact that the northern half of the Eastern seaboard, Toronto, Chicago and Montreal turn into an occasional Hothscape for several winter months). Check the time stamp on this tweet.

Klinsmann said he wants to see an 11 month MLS season to compete with the international standard. — Kristian Dyer (@KristianRDyer) October 10, 2011

And now look at this one.

Jurgen Klismann told @RobStoneONFOX he’d like to see MLS go to an 11-month schedule. — Will Parchman (@WillParchman) January 23, 2015

So to make it a point to tell the league website that the gap between October and January and the players’ general training malaise is what created this little soapbox proclamation of his rings just a mite self-serving here. Is it really a player problem now, suddenly, inexplicably? It loses even more steam when you realize a number of injuries conveniently arrived after Klinsmann’s training-heavy camps, which certainly haven’t helped the team during its horrendous run of concessions in second halves.

Klinsmann is weighted by the heavy burden of both coaching a national team and setting its future agenda as its technical director. This is very literally an impossible task in a country like the U.S. The requirements of a TD here are so comically immense that to do them well requires the full attention of a man unencumbered by sideline duty. Klinsmann has that look. Like a man who yearns to lead enthusiastic conferences on what we need to do better. Like a man who can ably and nimbly step through the political realities of youth soccer and try to join sides and philosophies that have never before met. Like a man tired by the mundane of the day-to-day and enthused by the prospect of setting an agenda that will outlive him. You know. Like a technical director.

Klinsmann still has the better part of four years to leave his coaching legacy, whatever that looks like. There is time. He’s done marvelous work attracting young dual-nationals from all corners, and there’s reason to believe, based on the talent trickling up through the pipeline, that his second term will be that of the youth movement. And all those are good things. Optimism isn’t out of place here.

But until Klinsmann stops over-drilling and strategically over-blaming a system he wants changed, he’ll have a difficult time crafting an American style out of European clay.