Not everyone agrees. Bruce Arena, who coaches the Los Angeles Galaxy, told me recently that instead of trying to get American soccer to mimic European culture, U.S. Soccer officials should simply look inward. Italy’s team is coached by an Italian and has a core of players who play in Italy, Arena pointed out. Spain has a Spanish coach and players primarily based in Spain. Germany is led by a German coach and mostly features players on German teams.

“I believe an American should be coaching the national team,” says Arena, who led the national team for eight years. “I think the majority of the national team should come out of Major League Soccer. The people that run our governing body think we need to copy what everyone else does, when in reality, our solutions will ultimately come from our culture.

“Come on,” he says. “We can’t copy what Brazil does or Germany does or England does. When we get it right, it’s going to be because the solutions are right here. We have the best sports facilities in the world. Why can’t we trust in that?”

The directors’ box at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, England, is not especially impressive. It is cramped, crowded and a bit musty, and it features a single bar wedged into one corner beneath a tiny TV. For a half-hour or so after Sunderland’s victory over Manchester City in a game late last year, Klinsmann waited beside a wall near the staircase, sipping a beer and talking with Herzog and Javier Perez, a scout and coach of the United States under-18 national team. The main topic of conversation, as it had been for much of the day, was Jozy Altidore.

Altidore was the reason Klinsmann came to Sunderland. Whenever he is in Europe, Klinsmann likes to check in on his players, in part to assess their current form, but also just to let them know he is thinking of them. Given how little Klinsmann gets to train his players, these sorts of psychological gymnastics are at the heart of what he does.

Altidore is an attacker, as Klinsmann was, a pure forward. Altidore was dominant for two seasons in the Dutch league, where he scored 39 goals, before moving to Sunderland and the prestige of the English Premier League. Klinsmann approved of the move — after all, it was to a top league in Europe — but on this day he was worried about Altidore’s confidence. Scoring proved more difficult for Altidore in England (he would finish the season with two goals in 40 appearances), and unlike the coaches of world soccer powers, Klinsmann does not have an array of options. Altidore, for better or worse, will play a role in Brazil.

Klinsmann and Herzog were frustrated when they learned that Altidore was not starting when they arrived at the game. Altidore entered the game as a substitute with about 15 minutes left, but he did not make a significant impact. “With us, if he gets three chances in a game, he scores one of them,” Klinsmann said at one point. “Here” — he paused, gesturing toward the field but trying to be diplomatic — “it is different.”