On Jan. 6, 2014, 26 U.S. Men’s National Team players descended on Carson, California for what ultimately amounted to a dress rehearsal for a World Cup trip to Brazil. With the World Cup now months away and the U.S. beginning its final stages of prep work, Jurgen Klinsmann had a rare opportunity in front of him. A camp almost entirely made up of MLS players, dipped into the forge of the fire itself.

Klinsmann has often derided the MLS schedule, poking at its imbalance with European leagues and its insistence on playing through international dates. Some of his protestations have merit. Some are uniquely myopic. But that January, Klinsmann was at least outwardly complimentary of the MLS schedule because it allowed him an opportunity to take a camp group to Brazil as a sort of dress rehearsal-in-miniature.

The U.S. had missed the 2013 Confederations Cup (an honor Mexico, yet again, swept out from under the Americans), and so Klinsmann and U.S. Soccer adroitly scheduled 12 days in Sao Paulo the January before the tournament. They’d stay at the five-star Tivoli Sao Paulo Mofarrej Hotel, train at Sao Paulo FC’s palatial Barra Funda training ground fewer than four miles away, taste the food, find a comfortable sleep cycle, get to know the neighborhood. Do all those same things and stay in the same places they’d be that summer.

Here’s Matt Besler that January.

“It’s about familiarizing ourselves with the country and hotel we’ll be staying at,” said Sporting Kansas City defender Matt Besler. “Everything we do is about preparing us to get out of the group. I’m excited to get down there. I’ve been to Brazil once before, and some of the guys have been. We’re looking forward to checking out where we’re going to be staying and training.”

Make no mistake, this camp was never intended to replicate the World Cup for the World Cup team itself. The only non-MLS player in the camp was Mix Diskerud. Those players ensconced in Europe were busy. Clint Dempsey was on loan at Fulham. Michael Bradley was at that very moment in the process of sorting his transfer to Toronto FC. Michael Harrington made the cut.

But for at least a handful of these players, the World Cup loomed, and Klinsmann did not intend to waste a trip to Brazil on at least a handful of players who did not plan on experiencing it when the big show arrived five months later. Besler, Rimando, Yedlin, Beckerman, Davis, Diskerud, Zusi and Wondolowski would be on the plane later in the year. They were all in the camp.

And yet that camp remains one of the great black holes of understanding in the annals of Klinsmann’s USMNT history. Despite soaring form and a rapidly aging cadre of defensive midfielders around him, Dax McCarty has not been in a single camp since. Landon Donovan found himself on the outs with Klinsmann the second he stepped into the pre-World Cup camp later that April, and why else if seeds weren’t sewn earlier for his ultimately shocking and frankly inexplicable exclusion from the final 23? Their first (and only) trip to Brazil together was important.

It was also the infamous last stand of Benny Feilhaber, who has been called by smart people the best American midfielder to be continually overlooked by this national team manager. Considering Klinsmann has not called in a single true No. 10 in the year and a half since he last oversaw a practice with Feilhaber, this is something of an oddity, if we’re being mild.

Klinsmann’s original plan was to fly 26 players to Carson, cut the three outliers and travel to Brazil with a 23-man MLS facsimile of a World Cup roster. That team would go through the World Cup motions: sleeping at the hotel, traveling to training, eating the food, doing whatever it is World Cup players do between the field and the bed and the training table.

But somewhere during the team’s stay in California from Jan. 6-13, before it disembarked for Brazil, Klinsmann changed his mind. He was taking all 26.

“We have been extremely pleased with the performance of the group in the first week,” Klinsmann said in a statement. “The players came in very fit and have done really well in training. Therefore, we believe they have all earned a chance to go to Brazil for these next 12 days.”

When the team returned from Brazil, the camp’s third phase kicked into gear. Klinsmann sent Chris Klute, Tally Hall, Shane O’Neill, Chance Myers and Seth Sinovic home and added Michael Parkhurst for a camp-finishing friendly against South Korea on Feb. 1.

Feilhaber didn’t start that game. Diskerud did, and Benny came on for the final 28 minutes in what would become his final national team appearance to date. McCarty, meanwhile, was the only outfield player to not play a single minute in the game. His teammate Eric Alexander even got eight minutes in relief of Graham Zusi. It was his second ever cap.

So what exactly did happen during that camp? And can it help us explain why Feilhaber and McCarty, two players with endless utility at positions of need in this cycle, are left shuddering in the cold while older or less in-form players are clamoring over their shoulders for national team minutes? Why Diskerud is still, inexplicably, being called into national camps despite never displaying any predilection for a single position? And never being anything above average at any of them?

I spoke with several sources who offered compelling theories, but none without holes. The most simple, obvious and likely is that Feilhaber and Klinsmann simply didn’t get along. It’s the surest idea, especially considering Bob Bradley reportedly had his issues with Feilhaber as well. After spending three weeks with the Sporting KC man, Klinsmann – ever the rah-rah motivator – decided Feilhaber’s energy was too outside his comfort zone, and he opted to cull the wilder stallion from the herd. That idea isn’t misaligned with the Klinsmann we know.

But the bigger question is why the two didn’t get along, and whether something during Feilhaber’s final camp triggered his ouster. At this point, that seems almost assured.

Here’s a possibility that might not seem as far-fetched as it’ll sound at first: Feilhaber was one of the three originally slated to be cut from camp. Perhaps Feilhaber persuades Klinsmann to bring him along to prove his mettle in Brazil. Klinsmann agrees (probably reluctantly) and covers by bringing all 26 and citing exceptional performance due to fitness levels. Somewhere along the way, Feilhaber and Klinsmann have a falling out, and the South Korea game is his final hurrah, at least for the foreseeable future.

There are implausibilities about this theory, namely why Klinsmann wouldn’t just send him home anyway, or, if they did truly have a massive disagreement in Brazil, why he got minutes in the South Korea game. If Feilhaber’s blowup was with a teammate, as several sources suggest, then this all begins to make a bit more sense.

Why is it curious that Klinsmann used the fitness excuse to bring along the full 26? Not four months later, Klinsmann would begin a targeted carpet-bombing campaign above the fitness levels of American and MLS-based national team players. He started in May 2014 with a relatively benign nod to how MLS players are at a disadvantage at World Cups compared to European players who are just getting off 10-month seasons. But his more interesting comments came almost exactly a year after this camp, when he slammed MLS players for not using the offseason to gather fitness well enough in time for January camps. Just like this one.

So Klinsmann citing fitness as a specific reason for including three more players on a trip to Brazil in a camp that featured Michael Harrington (emphasis, again, mine) hits more than a few alarms.

McCarty’s exclusion is harder to understand, especially when you consider that a flat, out-out-form Jermaine Jones (who ended his 2015 MLS season with a red card in the playoffs) and a serviceable but past-his-prime Kyle Beckerman were both included in Klinsmann’s first camp for the 2018 World Cup cycle. The combined age of those two is 67, and they’ll be 38 and 37 by the time 2018 rolls around. When you have a prime 28-year-old defensive midfielder like McCarty laying waste to MLS, what’s the point of Jones and Beckerman in this cycle? Maybe one or the other. But both? A player like McCarty needs caps now, not later.

Whatever the ultimate reason for Feilhaber and McCarty’s exclusion from the national team, we’re approaching two years since the only true veteran No. 10 and the best No. 6 in the pool in that desolate age bracket between 24 and 29 have been in camp. Whatever happened that month, it wasn’t good for U.S. soccer.