Mendelssohn. The first time I saw this, I heard Mendelssohn. Uneven cobbles, steeply rising banks of Tuscan Romanesque architecture and the soft, slightly serrated edges of Mendelssohn’s Allegro molto appassionato tiptoeing off their domed rooftops. You savor this as you do wine.

It’s not as though the American game doesn’t produce this, but it doesn’t produce it enough. Spend enough time on developmental training fields and the kernels of this kind of movement are hardly the norm. The evolution of the U15 BNT under Hugo Perez’s recent care only illustrates that point more acutely.

Late last year, I watched Perez’s U15 BNT side face the Red Bulls’ U16 team and lose 4-1. It was simultaneously the most and least American game I’ve ever watched. I say that for a few reasons. For one, Perez’s U15s have become famous since he’d started for its play out of the back. As American soccer experiences go, watching the U15s was distinctly “other than.” Mentally, I inventoried this quote Perez gave me after that game for later use. It’s curious fodder for thought.

“I think now this group has taken an important step up in the way we want to play, in the way we want to as a group play this type of football, the style of football that I think U.S. Soccer wants to implement a lot in the national team,” Perez said. “I’m happy. Obviously the three games were hard, but I think our main concern when we came to this was to prepare, so it’s good.”

Was this a 4-1 loss we were talking about? Were we discussing the same game?

The game against the Red Bulls polished an up-and-down three-game appearance at the Development Academy Showcase, but in reality the ‘down’ was all in the scoresheet. The U15s hadn’t won a game, and in fact their 4-1 loss to end the tournament seemed from a traditional standpoint to be a harsh blow to what should be the highest developmental tree for that age group in the U.S.

Right? In reality, no. It was hardly that apocalyptic.

Conventionally, maybe. But Perez’s sides had been playing up in age group all weekend, with 99s at times against a majority of 97s, and in stages they’d completely played their opponents off the field. The scoresheet told one story, but the tenor of play told another. They gave up a few goals by making mistakes that get ironed out at older age groups, but Perez never once pulled back the reins on the formation, never once told the team to start booting over the top. The team kept dutifully playing from keeper to defender back to keeper to defender to midfielder to forward. Few shortcuts here.

In reality, Perez wasn’t playing for wins. He was playing to develop. He was tinkering tactically within a broader scope, like when he moved prized center back Kyle Gruno to right back at a recent tour event in northeast Italy. Tactically, the results were mixed, and Gruno was occasionally caught out in a way center backs tend to Wile-e-Coyote themselves off a cliff in wider positions. But Perez had to know, to see, and he was unafraid to abandon a young player in the cleft of the rock to the wolves while he found his footing. And if the wolves overpowered him, the arrows were already nocked.

Bottom line, Perez isn’t afraid to play out of the back and risk losing to drive home a style that, in a couple years, will have these same players driving laps around the same opponents that beat them at an earlier age. This is not only making these players better, but it’s reinforcing a way of playing that’s fundamentally game-changing. That’s called a long view. All good coaches have it to some extent. And it can make extended analysis frustrating to the point of obsession, but it takes this typically held view of “winning” and thrusts the sword back into its own chest.

This all brings us around to that passage up there and one Jurgen Klinsmann. The man of the hour. Perez is Jurgen Klinsmann’s closest link on the American soccer DNA coaching strand. Both have an infectiously upbeat attitude. Both are charismatic. Both prefer to adhere to an aesthetically pleasing style born out of philosophy they’re not afraid to discuss at length. And both seem to have an inability to follow American convention. Playing for development and playing to win are at eternal odds, and in this circumstance playing to develop is allowed to win the war.

Klinsmann’s developmental task is infinitely tougher than Perez’s, because in the same way your ability to learn language deadens as you age, so too does your ability to alter your playing style. Klinsmann has to win more than he has to develop, or so the thinking goes. The capacity to learn a new language has to fight its way beyond the carcasses of all those youth coaches who reinforced that blind clearance over that threaded pass to the dropping fullback that might lead to something more catastrophic. It might, but by opening up that possibility, you open the book for more down the line. It’s only by trying, ahem, “stuff,” that you become elite. Whether you do that for the first time on the senior team level or not.

In the same way the Romans erected arches to signify triumphant campaigns, this sequence is an ornate monument to what Klinsmann’s tried to build in the last three years. I don’t think it’s perfect. I’ve quibbled over his lineup selections and tactical deployments. I do think Landon Donovan has a place on this side, and I think Klinsmann often overthinks himself into ditches. But I also think this team is playing better soccer than any U.S. national team before it – you either do soccer or you play it, and this team is finally playing some of it – and for all his philosophical meandering and broad-scope developmental shots, he’s got this team lacking in outright technicians playing some fairly technical soccer. At times, it’s even more than that.

As far as this 14-pass sequence is concerned, it’s hard to pick it apart without feeling like some contemporary of Tesla’s opening up his AC supply system and wondering how the hell he got so far with the parts on hand. Let’s take an in-depth look at what happens and why it explains what Klinsmann’s been up to lo these many years.

You see Howard first roll it out to Besler, who one-touches back to Howard who then one-touches out to Cameron. We’ve already begun subtly shifting the defense, and notice the wide spreads of the center backs here. Immediately you begin pulling apart the central midfield as though you’re peeling back the breastplate. This is seeding the field for the harvest.

On this play, Beckerman and Jones stay tethered to their moorings – Beckerman as Cameron’s conduit and Jones for Besler. This creates this four-man stack with the fullbacks split out as wide backboards for possession, and Bradley sitting abreast its movement like you’d imagine the roof atop the framework of a house. As the ball is worked back over to Jones, he flays out left before cutting back in to Dempsey, who’s dropped back to stoke play as he loves to do. Dempsey then finds Bradley, who plays backward (Yessir) to Beckerman, who’s folded inside Cameron and Besler in a role Bradley will be familiar with – Daniele De Rossi is among the world’s best in this exact role with Roma, and Bradley played over him during his tenure there. Bradley knows this setup like he knows his family.

Here’s the spacing between Besler and Beckerman.

And Beckerman and Cameron, with Bradley facilitating above.

This is not only Klinsmann, but it’s Perez to a T, and it’s the bedrock from which everything else happens. The second shot here is Beckerman playing over to Cameron, who now can gallop forward to take acres of space to play up to Jones, who’s cut diagonally across Bradley’s face to receive the pass and then shuttle along to Bedoya on the flank after just two touches. This is only as open as it is because Cameron had the space and time to see it, and because Jones was freed to run by the clock that Bradley’s metronomic reliability and Cameron’s decisiveness slowed to a crawl.

Jones finds Bedoya, who takes three brilliantly concise touches, leads in Fabian Johnson’s overlapping run and then Johnson finds Altidore for the tap-in. It looked so easy on the back end because they’d done so much gruntwork in lifting that whole sequence off the ground to begin with. The lengths to which you must go to create without a No. 10 can be extravagant, but this is precisely how it’s done.

At its core, soccer is a game of spacial manipulation. Creating that space is the hardest thing to do as a team in the sport. Playing a fluid style out of the back isn’t for everyone, and it certainly isn’t the only way to create that space. But it is unequivocally the most consistent way, and it’s unquestionably the most aesthetically pleasing. Klinsmann isn’t the perfect coach (such a thing!), and this isn’t the perfect team. There are holes here, and there is still an uphill climb to escape this group alive.

But passages like those? That’s how you create space. In a lot of ways, that’s how you win followers. Pass, move, think, and do it all over again. If the U.S. can follow this example in Brazil, we may well have more than three games to watch.