Recent criticisms of Jurgen Klinsmann's U.S. national team have led to growing questions about the direction the team is heading, which isn't uncharted territory for a Klinsmann...

Does the U.S. national team have an identity?

That suddenly became a popular question in recent days after multiple public criticisms aimed at the U.S. team, and directly or indirectly, Jurgen Klinsmann’s handling of the team.

New York Red Bulls head coach and former U.S. assistant Jesse Marsch became one of the first respected voices to publicly ask if the U.S. has an identity, making comments after the U.S. loss to Denmark. Monday, former U.S. youth national team coach and current Tampa Bay Rowdies boss Thomas Rongen questioned whether Klinsmann was the right man for the job during a guest appearance on the American soccer call-in show Soccer Morning.

The questions raised by Marsch and Rongen are the same many U.S. fans are wondering in the wake of a terrible 2-6-2 record since the World Cup, and more recently, after an underwhelming 3-2 loss to Denmark last week. That rut followed a promising World Cup that left many believing the U.S. could hit the ground running into a new World Cup cycle.

It has been more of a crawl than a run though, and the growing sense of fear about a U.S. team heading in the wrong direction is ignoring some very clear realities about Klinsmann and his team.

First, the 2014 U.S. World Cup team wasn’t really set up to continue heading upward with the personnel at hand. There was going to be a serious need for an infusion of fresh, young talent, and finding and developing that talent was never going to be a simple process. Second, Klinsmann has always been known as someone who isn’t afraid to experiment and shake things up, and he made no secret of the fact he felt the team needed a major shake-up if it was actually going to have a better result at the 2018 World Cup than the 2014 World Cup.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, it is easy to forget that Klinsmann has ironclad job security, which is part of the reason he can tinker with everything from formations to lineups to preferred positions to new faces and an increasing number of dual nationals. For Klinsmann, the year between the World Cup and Gold Cup is like the first messy year in a three-year reconstruction project, a year that was always going to be ugly before it started yielding results.

The big fear is Klinsmann has been handed this job security, and the keys to the car, but he doesn’t really know where he’s going.

U.S. fans aren’t the first to experience this as supporters of a Klinsmann-coached national team. It was actually one decade ago when the current U.S. manager was guiding the German national team through its own period of transition and transformation. After a lackluster showing at the 2005 Confederations Cup, Klinsmann’s Germany staggered through a 2-3-2 stretch that featured wins against South Africa and China, but also losses to Slovakia and Turkey.

A 4-0 loss to Italy sparked major criticism of Klinsmann and his project, and there were very real questions about whether he was the man to lead Germany with just a few months to go before the 2006 World Cup. Newspapers in Germany were calling for Klinsmann to be fired before a 4-1 friendly win against the U.S. in March of 2006 helped alleviate the mounting pressure.

Klinsmann never lost faith in his approach, and eventually went on to lead Germany to a respectable third-place finish at the 2006 World Cup. He was also credited with helping plant the seeds that would eventually yield a German national team renaissance that culminated last summer with a World Cup title.

Klinsmann must be feeling a sense of deja vu as he marches the U.S. toward the 2018 World Cup, and more immediately the 2015 Gold Cup. Here he is trying to rebuild a team he feels badly needs a makeover, but is fighting against growing discontent at a string of disappointing results.

As he prepares to embark on a very tough stretch of matches, including Tuesday’s friendly in Switzerland, April’s clash with Mexico, and June friendlies against Netherlands and Germany, Klinsmann has to know his team needs to start producing some results.

Will a win on Tuesday, or in any of the team’s upcoming friendlies suddenly give the U.S. team an identity? Not necessarily, but it will give observers some reason to believe that Klinsmann’s projected is heading in a positive direction. One which just might eventually help the U.S. develop that identity that many believe is lacking at the moment.

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