The more Joachim Löw pored over his options, the more his problems danced like demons on the periphery.

The German camp at the 2012 Euros had been more fractious than most knew, a giant rift pulling the Dortmund and Bayern players apart at the seams. Germany suffered for it in the end, winning three quiet one-goal games in the group phase, dispatching Greece in the quarters and then bowing out to Italy in the semifinals.

In the two years between 2012 and the World Cup, Löw operated like a coach-cum-armchair psychologist. He pulled in players as mediators between the fire of the two warring Bundesliga factions, and by the time 2014 rolled around he was still unsure of his purchase. German soccer is not without its egos, and Löw was tasked with juggling the most fragile of them all at once.



As Löw put the final touches on his 2014 World Cup squad, one name stood aside from the rest, muted in its inclusion but notable all the same.

According to Raphael Honigstein in his excellent Das Reboot, Löw had all but guaranteed Real Madrid defensive midfielder Sami Khedira a place in the squad weeks before he’d announced his final list. This was notable because Khedira tore his ACL the previous November, and the scheduled date of his return wasn’t until the following May, a month before the start of the World Cup. At the time, doctors weren’t even sure he’d be able to play full speed by June, let alone compete at the most important soccer competition in the world.

But Löw saw something else. Germany probably had better defensive midfielders – it certainly had more in-form ones – but it did not have a single camp presence with the ability to mediate between warring factions as well. Here’s Honigstein.

“The Stuttgart-born son of Tunisian steel worker was somebody who could influence others with his positive attitude and bridge rifts between Bayern and Dortmund players as a neutral. Löw needed him in the dressing room.”

It worked, ultimately. Despite an acrimonious end to the 2014 club season between Bayern and Dortmund, the clubhouse was unified in Brazil and Germany won the World Cup in smashing form. Khedira did not start every game, and when Löw called him into the squad there was no guarantee he would be anywhere near World Cup form. It hardly mattered in the end. Khedira may not have been the talisman that kicked them through their on-field trials, but there’s little question he pulled his weight off it.

Taken on its own, apart from a vast series of falling dominoes, it seems like a single decision made inside an endless vacuum. But it is not.

The German revolution of the past 15 years was holistic, encompassing everything from youth development to player integration to national team ethos. Part of that, undoubtedly spurred in part by Jurgen Klinsmann, was in man management. It did not always work, and Klinsmann could easily lose those players thirsting for more specific tactical instruction. But as far as national team harmony? Klinsmann found his Players’ Coach doppelganger here in the States in the Seattle Seahawks’ Pete Carroll. It worked. He worked. To a degree, anyway.

This is all preamble to Klinsmann’s latest USMNT roster on the eve of a pair of eminently winnable World Cup qualifiers against Saint Vincent & The Grenadines and Trinidad & Tobago beginning this weekend. There were surprises, namely the inclusion of Freiburg midfielder and former U.S. U20 World Cup captain Caleb Stanko. But there are always surprises, certainly with Klinsmann running the show.

If one of them in your own reckoning was Chris Wondolowski, then perhaps you don’t know Klinsmann as well as you might.

The abstract concepts of coaching, fundamental as they may be, are always the easiest to miss. And in this Klinsmann is perhaps most misunderstood, because he lives in abstractions more than certainly any USMNT coach in history. There are his mentions of desire, and belief, and drive. The motivational speeches that lean on just doing better guys rather than anything viewed through a tacticians’ eye. This is why perhaps his greatest USMNT acolytes – the Zardeses and the Bedoyas and the Woods and even the Bradleys – re red-line effort guys.

There is little room in Klinsmann’s USMNT universe for planets laggardly orbiting his sun.

Wondolowski has never been particularly good for the USMNT. He’s been fine, but never fine enough to justify his inclusion over younger players (the exact kind of players Klinsmann became so well known for calling up during his time leading the German national team). He more or less established himself as a CONCACAF minnow killer, and you’ve probably internally buried his national team career a half dozen times since That Miss against Belgium.

From a playing standpoint, Wondolowski is fine, really. For every time Wondolowski’s been included in a camp roster over the past two years, there has been at least one young striker who could’ve done more with the opportunity projecting outward. But Wondo isn’t bad, exactly. He’s just kind of there, like worn but serviceable piece of furniture you’re too lazy to replace.

And yet digging into Klinsmann’s past – into Germany’s coaching past – digs out the real reason the likes of Wondolowski and Beckerman (who is more serviceable than Wondo but would likely get call-ups even if he were not) will continue to be roped into camps. And it has less to do with form – part of the equation, no question – and more to do with holistic utility.

Klinsmann knows them. He trusts them. And he leaves them with the tender hooks of what can otherwise be a locker room barbed with egos and infighting. Not that the American locker room specifically is any of those things, but every locker room threatens to unravel into degenerative chaos without the proper attention. Klinsmann is simply more attentive than most. Sometimes detrimentally so.

While Löw was scheming to pull Khedira onto his 2014 World Cup roster despite his injury layoff, Klinsmann was dealing with issues of his own. In January 2014, he organized a 12-day camp in Brazil with a USMNT roster made up mostly of MLS players as a sort of dress rehearsal in miniature. Most didn’t make the final 23, but some did. Eight players, to be exact: Matt Besler, Nick Rimando, DeAndre Yedlin, Kyle Beckerman, Brad Davis, Mix Diskerud, Graham Zusi and, yes, Chris Wondolowski.

Two, though, did not. Since that camp, neither Dax McCarty nor Benny Feilhaber have ever featured in a USMNT match again. We still aren’t exactly sure why, although it isn’t a difficult thing to surmise.

There is no obvious practical on-field reason for Klinsmann to shy away from either of these players. There’s a compelling argument to be made that no defensive midfielder in MLS – Michael Bradley and Jermaine Jones both lustily included – has been as consistently good as McCarty over the past two seasons. As for Feilhaber, nobody else in Klinsmann’s camps since even plays his same position, let alone as well.

And yet it all makes sense viewed through the harmonic prism Klinsmann seems to view everything else. For whatever reason, McCarty and Feilhaber were necessary sacrifices on the altar of the almighty locker room. They would simply not totter along gently in the placid, positive-ion-infused waters Klinsmann has worked so hard to keep stable.

Wondo may not play an important role in the XI, but he is a man for all seasons otherwise — a hard worker, whip-smart, possesses a never-ending motor, a tremendous head-down locker room presence, good to have as a training ground resource, and he’s been there. Whether or not those things are important to you, they certainly mean a great deal to Klinsmann.

This has always been reflected back in Löw, the more tactically thoughtful Klinsmann protege who managed to mash Klinsmann’s positivism into a more educational package. It is why the Lahms will play better for Löw and the Bedoyas will play better for Klinsmann.

As long as he’s still producing on the club level, Klinsmann will never stop calling in Wondolowski – and those like him – for as long as he is the coach of this team. There may be no faction war between players in the U.S. locker room, but Klinsmann’s entire ethos is built around taking steps to remove that from even being a possibility. He values their presence as part of the whole too much, and he devalues their replacements even more. If Wondo can be called into the Copa America squad over Jordan Morris (who scored three goals for the Sounders while the tournament was happening), then he can be called up over anyone, at any time, and for any tournament.

Locker room harmony is important. Klinsmann knows this as well as anyone. And if the German renaissance in which he played no small part was any indication, valuing harmony over form at times will be his way until he is done with the game.