Jurgen Klinsmann is the stereotype of an American soccer coach

“You gotta win that ball!”

“The game is always won by those who want it more” “Kick the ball harder!”



If you’re an American born in the 70s or 80s who grew up playing soccer, you had a coach somewhere along the line who shouted those things. If you didn’t, then I guarantee you there was a parent on the sidelines screaming his head off with some version “harder, faster, longer” as if soccer was merely a version of the NFL’s Punt Pass and Kick youth competition.

That’s Jurgen Klinsmann.







Klinsmann exhorts without any instruction just like many American youth soccer coaches

A few weeks ago, before Copa America, Klinsmann gave a strange interview to the Wall Street Journal where he sounded quite similar to my high school’s clueless soccer coach:

How many times can we tell them? Matt Miazga—intimidate! Make sure you get every header! I always use the example of John Terrry with set pieces. What are set pieces? Set pieces are determination and a willingness that I can do better. If that ball is anywhere close to me, I am going to have it. Ask John Terry. Is John Terry the tallest guy? He got every second ball. So how is that possible, that every second corner from Chelsea [finds] John Terry? Because he is determined. He reads the ball ahead of time, he starts his run ahead of time and he is so aggressive to get those balls, so how can you teach that? Matt Miazga, take that, because you are taller than John Terry. Build that into your game and build another weapon.

Klinsmann’s answer was A) exhort (”Intimidate!”), B) impossible standard (”Make sure you get every header!”), and C) compare to an amazing player.



This sounds quite like things I heard on the sidelines during youth games once upon a game. Parents who grew up with American football would shout things like, "Want it more! You’ve got to get the the ball first! Look at John Harkes, he always knows when to try to get to the ball and win it.“

The problem is that none of those 3 things actually help a soccer player improve. Being told to learn to “read the ball ahead of time” does not actually help you learn to read the ball ahead of time. That’s where a good coach can help, by laying out a tactical scheme for the team as well as analyzing what the individual can do better within the team’s gameplan.



Just telling someone to imitate a great player has some serious limits as a coaching strategy. Every player is unique, so John Terry has gifts that Matt Miazga doesn’t have. Moreover, John Terry plays with a different group of players implementing a coach’s plans – and often those plans task Terry with winning second balls.



There is not a single actionable piece of advice in what Klinsmann said. It was all just Harder!! Faster! Longer!





Klinsmann is tactically clueless.

From same WSJ interview:

WSJ: Younger players say you give little in the way of instruction, that you say things like “let your personality show,” or “make a statement.” Why do you speak in such generalities?

Klinsmann: When you go very specific, where do you start? Do you start with five bullet points? Or with 20? For every position, every system you want to play, every style you’re going to play? We do that here and there specifically before the games, but at the end of the day, they need to drive their own bullet points.

First point: USMNT players are telling journalists off the record that Klinsmann does not give tactical instruction. That is a flashing neon warning sign.

Worse, Klinsmann’s response is to talk about "bullet points” rather than discuss any sort of actual tactical scheme. Sadly, Klinsmann does not have a tactical scheme and this has been made clear over his managerial career. [See below for more]



For comparison, check out Pep Guardiola’s tactical scheme:





On this field, Pep trains his players how and where to move in relation to the ball. If the ball is on the left flank and Ribery has the ball, there are various movements that can be trained to support Ribery while maintaining great positional structure and stability. For example, Ribery can begin dribbling inside, and Alaba the left back will move from the interior line to occupy the left flank that Ribery is exiting, with a possibility for an overlapping run. Meanwhile, the near side supporting central midfielder like Schweinsteiger would move deeper and toward the left outermost vertical line of the 4 central vertical lines. This means that Ribery is dribbling inside towards goal, Alaba is giving him an overlapping run option, and Schweinsteiger is moving deeper and in between the two – forming the tip of the triangle while the other two attack. At the same time, the rest of the team is reacting to these movements in order to have the most efficient positional structure and stability in play. During the training of these movements the general rules of never having more than 3 players on a horizontal line at the same times and never more than 2 on the same vertical line at the same time is being obeyed and thought about constantly by the players. So even the far side players are chain-reacting to these movements and forming the optimal far side structure to be able to attack if the ball is switched across to the center or the opposite flank. This is just one example of a specific movement that could be trained using this field. Guardiola can add defenders and train specific situations and eventually the players can play on any field without a need for guidelines to help orient themselves. The players over time learn all the variations and principles that come with training on this field and use it flexibly and interchangeably. Eventually the players move extremely fluidly and all have the same mindset and sense of orientation on the field.

One could go on and on with examples of Klinsmann’s tactical cluelessness, beyond the fact that he doesn’t teach tactics. One of my favorites was the game where he played Ale Bedoya as a destroyer and Bradley as an attacking 10, despite the fact that the each of them essentially play the opposite.







Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos played under Klinsmann at Bayern and Germany and had this to say about Klinsmann’s lack of tactics:



Zeit: What are the three most important qualities that a trainer must have?

Kroos: First of all, he must have a clear idea of football, a game idea. Secondly he must be able - especially if he trained a large team, the different characters so to attract that they implement his idea and at the same time there is a good climate. And thirdly: he must succeed.

Zeit: “What’s with Jurgen Klinsmann?” Kroos: “In his time at Bayern I couldn’t see anything: Game model, inadequate communication - or success.” … Zeit: “Jurgen Klinsmann had a big impact in the development which led us to the World Cup with Joachim Löw.” Kroos: “Not true.”





If you go read the whole interview, in context it sounds even worse. Kroos was basically saying that as a manager Klinsmann does nothing to help his teams succeed.





But if you don’t trust Toni Kroos, perhaps you’ll listen to World Cup winning captain Philipp Lahm on Klinsmann:



His verdict on the short reign of Jurgen Klinsmann at Bayern (July 2008 to April 2009) was less than flattering. “We practiced little more than fitness. Tactical things were neglected. The players had to get together before [the games] to discuss how we wanted to play. After six or eight weeks, all players knew it wouldn’t work with Klinsmann. The rest of the season was damage limitation.”

While Kroos and Lahm both slammed Klinsmann for his tactical ignorance and fitness obsession, they both have effusively praised Pep Guardiola.





Jurgen stresses fitness, just like every American youth soccer coach.

Jurgen is a fitness-first coach. When things go wrong, he blames his players’ fitness (or lack of desire).

After a loss to Chile, Klinsmann blamed the players for not being in peak fitness… in a January camp that was for MLS players. However, as Besler explains:

“My goal is to be in my peak fitness on March 1,” Besler said. “That’s when my season starts. It goes from March to December. So on Jan. 15, we devised an offseason plan for me to hit my peak fitness on March 1, and I think that’s what most of the guys did. Besler declined to address Klinsmann’s comments directly, saying “He can say whatever he wants.” But his Sporting KC manager Vermes was much more outspoken. “To expect those guys to be in top form at a January camp – and I mean this – I think it’s utterly ridiculous,” Vermes said

You can’t expect an athlete to be at peak fitness during the offseason. An athlete who tries to be at peak fitness during the offseason will be putting himself at serious risk of injury.

And then there was the time when Klinsmann threw Fabian Johnson under the bus to distract from how Mexico beat us:



“I had a very severe word with Fabian Johnson, and I sent him home today,” said Klinsmann ahead of Tuesday’s less-than-tantalizing friendly against Costa Rica at Red Bull Arena. “He said he couldn’t go anymore and I reacted to it and obviously made the substitution. But he just feared to get possibly an injury, but he was not injured in that moment. He got all stiffened up. It’s a muscle issue. That’s normal. In a situation like that, little things often make a difference.” “You have to move on,” Klinsmann continued later. “So [Johnson] is going home after we had a talk. And he can rethink his approach toward his team.“ There’s a lot to unpack here. For starters, Johnson wasn’t around to defend himself, nor was the U.S. team doctor made available to give his opinion on whether Johnson should have come off or not. What we do know is this: Johnson missed five weeks of club action with a torn right calf muscle before returning on Sept. 23 and playing in four games for Gladbach. (He came off before the 70th minute in two of them.) He then played 111 minutes for the U.S. on Saturday.



Oddly, though the USMNT has always been known as one of the most fit in the game, Klinsmann has continued his fitness-first style of training:



Klinsmann has emphasized conditioning for the entirety of his almost 3 years in charge – not that the program ever slacked in the fitness department before. Since taking over in July 2011, the German head coach has stressed that players consider themselves professionals at every hour of every day. He has introduced elaborate fitness tests, blood sampling and devices to monitor his players’ sleep patterns and quality.

Fitness over tactics, yelling instead of instructing. When it comes to Jurgen, you have a coach who thinks that tactics are useless, because what use could tactics be when compared to more fitness and yelling Harder! Faster! Longer!

Despite being German, Jurgen Klinsmann is the stereotypical American soccer coach.