Bruce Arena and Jurgen Klinsmann might be polar opposites when it comes to their backgrounds, personalities and perspectives.

But what the two longtime Southern California residents will share forever is the fact that they were at the helm of the first U.S. men’s national team to miss the World Cup in 32 years.

They also have at least one other thing in common: both coaches recently opened up to Yahoo Sports about the failure.

Klinsmann, the former World Cup-winning striker who guided his native Germany to third place in 2006, steered the Americans through a group of death before losing in the Round of 16 four years ago in Brazil. He was on the sideline through the first phase of qualifying for the 2018 tournament, too, before being replaced by the Brooklyn-born Arena in November 2016 after the U.S. dropped the first two games of CONCACAF’s final, 10-match “Hexagonal” round.

He raised eyebrows last month by telling Germany’s Kicker that his U.S. squad was still well-positioned to reach Russia despite those high-profile losses to Mexico and at Costa Rica. Does he really believe that?

“One thousand percent,” Klinsmann said in an interview this week.

“A team in that phase is still in transition. Between two cycles you build a new squad for the next World Cup. The one that played the first two games would not have been the team at the end. During that transition you always have negative results.

“In 2013 we lost in Honduras in the first game,” Klinsmann continued. “That is absolutely normal, because you look at the total of the Hexagonal. You know if you lose a game unexpectedly you’re going to win a game away. I’m not looking back on it being mad at anybody – [the coaching change] was the decision of U.S. Soccer. But when people ask me today what was your feeling, I always say the feeling was that it was a transition and we would’ve qualified, no doubt about it.”

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We’ll never know, of course. What’s certain is that Arena took over a team in disarray. Divisions between Klinsmann’s staff and their colleagues in the federation, combined with the German’s penchant for keeping players in a perpetual state of discomfort, had sapped morale within the group. There was precious little time to replenish it. Arena — who took the U.S. to within a hair of a World Cup semifinal in 2002, the country’s best finish since the inaugural tournament in 1930 — wouldn’t even get a chance to work with most of the program’s European and Mexican-based players until days before the next set of qualifiers, in March of 2017.

“I knew exactly what I was getting into,” Arena told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview. “I knew our strengths and weaknesses. Part of the reason the team was in the situation they were in was we lacked a little quality and consistency. Our whole goal was to get through the year, and then we had to go into a mode where we’re scrambling to try to make this team better in the first six months of 2018.”

By last September, it appeared that Arena had completely turned things around. Two home wins and two road ties – including a hard-fought draw at arch rival Mexico – helped the U.S. climb the Hex. In July they won the Gold Cup. In all, the Americans had nine wins, five draws and zero losses in Arena’s first 14 games back in charge.

A loss to Costa Rica in Harrison, N.J. put the pressure back on. Only a late Bobby Wood equalizer in Honduras in the next match kept the Americans’ fate at their own feet. But when the U.S. routed Panama 4-0 in early October, it became obvious that a tie at already eliminated Trinidad and Tobago would be enough to get the U.S. to an eighth consecutive World Cup.

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