After a humbling 4-2 loss to Mexico in the 2011 Gold Cup final, U.S. national team manager Bob Bradley was fired and, after two previous efforts to hire him had failed, Jurgen Klinsmann finally was brought in. Klinsmann’s hiring was billed as a banner moment for U.S. soccer. The forward-thinking European legend was going to help the U.S. break free from the defend-and-counter style of Bradley and his predecessor, Bruce Arena, and enter a new age of proactive, possession-based play that would elevate the U.S. on the world level.

Fast-forward three years, though, and little has changed, even as Klinsmann has broadly reached outside the domestic U.S. pipeline to add talent.

Klinsmann’s mandate — especially after receiving an extension last year through 2018 that included the added title of technical director — has been two-fold: overhaul America’s questionable youth development system while also moving the national team forward on the field. A quote from Gulati when announcing the extension underscores these goals.

“One of the reasons we hired Jurgen as our head coach was to advance the program forward and we’ve seen the initial stages of that happening on the field and also off the field in various areas. In the past two years he has built a strong foundation from the senior team down to the youth teams and we want to continue to build upon that success.”

It remains far too early to judge Klinsmann on his effect on youth development; even though the current pipeline looks a bit dry, this process will be better measured over the course of decades, not years. But changing the senior team’s style of play? That one shouldn’t need three years, and it hasn’t happened. Though the loose formation has switched from a flat (or bucket) 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1 or even a quasi-diamond 4-4-2 under Klinsmann, the posture and style of the team has remained extremely similar to past U.S. sides.

In short, the U.S. still isn’t playing proactively against good teams, no matter how frequently Klinsmann has promised it (which he has since he took over). Back in January 2012, six months into his tenure, Klinsmann again outlined his plans in an interview with FIFA’s official site.

“We are moving away from a reactive style of play to a proactive style,” he explained. “We want to play with the big teams; we want to take on the bigger nations and play like they play.”

Two and a half years later, you would expect some semblance of improved attacking play and a markedly different style against high-class opposition from regimes past, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Victory at the 2013 Gold Cup could prove to be part of the ticket to the 2017 Confederations Cup, but the “B-team” event wasn’t evidence of a more ambitious approach from Klinsmann. (AP)

For the purpose of this analysis, we’ll ignore friendlies both good (Italy and Bosnia away, Germany home, etc.) and bad (France away, Ukraine in Cyprus). Friendlies aren’t completely useless as a reference point, but competitive fixtures are a much better barometer. We’ll also ignore the 2013 Gold Cup, as that was a “B-team” tournament (and the U.S. didn’t exactly dazzle with firepower in that, either).

We do have to consider the semifinal round in CONCACAF qualifying, where the U.S. conspired to lose at Jamaica for the first time ever, and for a handful of early minutes at home against Guatemala, when they were down 1-0, were in danger of missing the World Cup. The U.S. scored six goals in four matches in that round vs. the Jamaicans and Guatemalans, taking just one point from the two away matches.

Still, the fairest evaluation comes from the 10 Hexagonal matches and the three World Cup games played to date. The Hex represented the first real chance for Klinsmann to debut his proactive style in a competitive format, While the Hex was more defensive overall than prior years, the U.S. still largely failed to deliver goals.

Klinsmann’s team managed just to score just 15 times (with five of those coming in the final two matches, post-qualification), four fewer than Bradley’s 2009 Hex squad, which won a much more competitive round-robin. There wasn’t one explosive display in last year’s batch; the five home wins came by scores of 2-0, 2-0, 2-0, 1-0 and 1-0. Greece would be proud.

Against the three other CONCACAF World Cup teams, the gap between Klinsmann and Bradley’s goal scoring was even wider. The 2013 squad scored six in six matches against Honduras, Mexico, and Costa Rica, and notched only one point in the three away fixtures; the 2009 squad delivered 11 goals in six games against the same opponents, and won at Honduras in the match that qualified the U.S. for that World Cup.

Maynor Figueroa and Honduras rallied past the U.S., 2-1, in the first match of the final round of World Cup qualifying. (AP)

In Klinsmann’s defense, his 2013 team was more resolute than Bradley’s, conceding just eight Hex goals (six in eight matches pre-qualification) compared to 2009's 13 (11 in nine pre-qualified matches), but isn’t that just further evidence of Klinsmann’s pragmatism-over-attacking approach?

What’s particularly interesting about Klinsmann’s consistently pragmatic tactics is that he has relied heavily on European-developed players to implement them. Even with the influx of a slew of talented dual-nationals—Fabian Johnson, Jermaine Jones, Aron Johannsson and Mix Diskerud, among others—Klinsmann still has this team playing a very traditionally American way. Given the heightened quality on the ball of these dual-nationals, it’s somewhat concerning to still see Klinsmann failing to get his team playing proactive soccer. In a sense, it seems that Klinsmann has cast aside homegrown Americans in favor of ostensibly superior talent from around the world, yet he’s used that foreign talent to play in the exact same way that U.S.-developed players always have.

After a brief dalliance with a more agressive approach in the first two Send-Off Series games—which saw three of four goals come from dual-nationals—Klinsmann returned to form in the final one, against Nigeria. The pragmatic, three-central midfielder system that Klinsmann used in Jacksonville set the tone for what we would see in Group G—and almost certainly will beyond.

Even accounting for Jozy Altidore’s early injury, the Yanks managed just 39 percent possession and five shots on target against Ghana. The U.S. was generally superb against a depleted Portugal, but even then had only 46 percent possession and 11 shots, compared to Portugal’s 16. Klinsmann then again maintained his desire to attack ahead of the Group G finale against Germany.

“We want to go at Germany [and] win the game,” he said.

The words were nice, but unsurprisingly, the Yanks did nothing to suggest they were anywhere close to being able to “go at” Germany. Manaus Legs or not, in what was nearly a must-draw game, the U.S. saw just 37 percent of the ball and did not manage a single shot on target.

This is not at all to say that Klinsmann is a poor or unqualified manager. Emerging from this group is an outstanding achievement. It’s just that progression was achieved via the same defend-and-counter approach that America has always utilized at this level. That approach is by no means broken—only Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Mexico have made more knockout stages in the last four World Cups. But it also isn’t exactly a harbinger of imminent World Cup glory, regardless of how much we would all like to see the U.S. run through Belgium, Argentina, the Netherlands, and Brazil/Colombia/Germany to lift the trophy at the Maracana. Despite consistent bravado, Klinsmann has done little to progress the U.S.’s style.

A counterattacking bent doesn’t have to equate with an inability to be a major threat to win big tournaments. Real Madrid showed as much in the Champions League, and the Netherlands look like one of the favorites to win this World Cup. But what separates those teams from the U.S. is their frequency of world-class counterattacking moves. Despite Klinsmann’s persistence with the defend-and-counter approach, the U.S. has only managed two genuinely high-quality counterattacking goals in his competitive-match tenure. The first came in the 2-0 win over Panama in Seattle, when Michael Bradley played a nifty ball to Fabian Johnson, who played an inch-perfect cross for Jozy Altidore to tap in.

The next came in the aforementioned “B-team” Gold Cup against Costa Rica, when Landon Donovan set up Brek Shea with a sublime first-time ball.

Goals like that are commonplace for the Madrids or Hollands of the world, but they’re still far too infrequent for the U.S. With that in mind, it would be even more sensible for Klinsmann to abandon the counterattacking style and adopt a more possession-based game. Yet he continues to play like the U.S. always has, even with debatably less-accomplished counterattacking personnel than his predecessors.

This all begs the question of where the U.S. goes from here. Julian Green will come of age over the next cycle, and it looks like the U.S. may nab all-world 17-year-old Gedion Zelalem, as well. But what will Klinsmann do with all of his recruited new talent? It’s brilliant to have such quality players at his disposal, but it means little if the U.S.’s style remains the same. Klinsmann talks like a man who can implement attacking soccer and lead his team on serious runs in the 2016 Copa America Centenario and potentially 2017 Confederations Cup—as well as the 2018 World Cup, of course. However, is there really any evidence that he can do so?

The hope is that starting tomorrow against Belgium—and continuing throughout the rest of Klinsmann’s tenure—the U.S. finds a way to scrap out result after result on its way to some historic silverware. But as things stand now, it’s unreasonable to expect any more success than Bradley or Arena delivered, as the only thing at this point that really separates Klinsmann from his predecessors is his accent.

@BlakeCThomsen is a contributing editor at American Soccer Now.