If the moment is lost to the crackled, yellowing pages of lore, it would be no great surprise. There is little national fanfare about a single blow in a rout, a raindrop in a sea as the flood fell.

There were already three goals on the board by the time the movement pushed deep into Trinidad & Tobago territory, and the Soca Warriors were broken by the American onslaught after half. A flurry of rabbit punches to the solar plexus. So in the 71st minute, by the time the stretched T&T defense pulled back into its own third, its nose was already trickling blood.

The whole thing started simply enough, Sacha Kljestan finding Jozy Altidore flayed to the left with a free patch of grass just outside the box. But the needlework was intricate, Altidore one-touching a pass in for the implacable Christian Pulisic, whose shot caromed off the keeper, whose rebound fell to Paul Arriola, whose clean-up job found the back of the net.

On its surface there was nothing particularly noteworthy about all this. The Hexagonal had not yet arrived, and the U.S. was already through the first qualifying round for all practical purposes. The game itself was certainly over. But I could not help but wonder at the underlying parts of the goal’s assembly line as a collection of ingenues, castoffs and a heavily scrutinized striker combined to create a goal that arced into the sky as a clarion call for a different age.

Whether it’s here or not, we’ll find out soon enough.

Think on where each of these four parts of the whole were a year ago. Altidore was attempting to fit the pieces back in at Toronto FC after an injury-plagued summer cost him the Gold Cup knockout stage (which might’ve been just as well). Kljestan was a frank afterthought, a vagabond from the Bob Bradley era who hadn’t been called up in two years and even then was on the periphery of the periphery. Arriola had been at the U20 World Cup, and even then he started the tournament on the bench, needing a positive string of results to work his way into a starting spot by the end of it. And then there was Pulisic, an automatic starter in the No. 10 hole gearing up this time last year for the U17 World Cup. It was, in most every respect, a forgettable affair for most every American involved. Pulisic was not immune.

Under this dingy, broken light you can understand how 2015 had the ragged look of a train’s cars splitting off in 100 different directions on 100 different rutted tracks. By the time the Gold Cup’s depressing end dumped the program into the fall, there was no identity, no discernible playing style, no youth movement to speak of and no cavalry cresting the horizon line. There were rumors. That was more or less the extent of it.

If this is the corner, then there is light – finally, real light – pouring in from everywhere.

The disconnect between the German Klinsmann and the USMNT Klinsmann has always been in his willingness to go young. The German national team had grown old and creaky by the time Klinsmann and Löw took over the program in 2004, and a concerted effort to update and then mine Germany’s young stable of talent was the beginning of the revolution that found its ultimate conclusion in 2014. It’s almost hard to reconcile from an American perspective considering his overt reliance on camp bodies like Chris Wondolowski and his aging crutch players like Kyle Beckerman and Michael Orozco. But this was one a revolutionary.

The breath of air before 2018 was never going to come from the core of the 2015 Gold Cup roster, or even the 2016 Copa America squad. Those teams were carried by 33-year-old legs and the weary, almost laggardly play of Michael Bradley. Complacency is always pushed by the exuberant legs of young innovation. In the same way the young Tesla pushed his former teacher Thomas Edison, so Pulisic will light motivating watchfires all along the camp.

This is what the U.S. has been missing (apologies for the self-quoting and the potato quality, but you get the gist). A real, life-sized creative impetus screaming in from the midfield.

Klinsmann’s refusal to play the likes of Pulisic and Arriola and Jordan Morris and Rubio Rubin and whoever else has always been tethered to measuring expectations. It has been an understandable if somewhat bizarre tack considering he was always sacrificing something he could scarce afford to lose. The U.S. needed sparks, and those are not emanating from Alejandro Bedoya and Graham Zusi and Gyasi Zardes and Jermaine Jones. Klinsmann has clung to those men like half-deflated life rafts, knowing they were less likely to overturn and yet almost certain to simply float in place in lieu of taking him anywhere.

This is why Kljestan’s success, regardless of his age, in this two-match qualification run (the Red Bull man was undoubtedly its biggest winner, considering Pulisic’s star was already rising) was so important. And why Altidore flashing the padded, soft feet of a wood elf gave light to the very real notion that he is having the best calendar year of his career. And why the prompt arrival of Pulisic is no longer A Thing To Be Measured and is now spilling out into the fact that a 17-year-old might actually be the most effective USMNT attacking player on the field. And why Arriola proved there is reason – good reason – to take the shackles off these many youth players and throw them into the fire.

As if on cue, Oscar Pareja from two days ago.

“I would like Americans to believe in their talent,” Pareja said. “I would like the American people to understand that they’re very good and they will be very good in international competition around the world. But that needs to be spread out around the country, that is large. And someday we will see a national team competing in World Cups in a high, high, high level.”

If you judged Klinsmann by the men he started and the benches he cultivated – not his words, which have always been similarly positioned – there was very little wider belief in these young players, at least in view of the elderly he ran to with such abandon. And if that is changing – alterations forced perhaps by introspection and perhaps by simple form too hot to ignore – then Klinsmann is a learning machine indeed.

It’s easy to pour champagne for T&T wins. Matches against Mexico are harder things, and that moment is coming. For its reward, the USMNT drew Mexico in the first round of the Hex, a match assuredly in Columbus on Nov. 11. Klinsmann might have found it easier to insert Arriola and start Pulisic and give Morris a run-out against T&T in a decided game. How he handles a bigger match will give us more of an indication of how much of this exciting young core he plans to hang onto.

The time between the World Cup and the last few months has marked a difficult period of soul-searching for the U.S. Even if the results have occasionally been good, the road map to 2018 and beyond has been an obscure thing. If this is a true turning point, then perhaps the dawn of something new is finally here.