Is it time to clean house at the U.S. Men's National Team?

The relegation zone: The development of the 'American Messi'

What were you doing at age 17? The answer is likely not nearly as impressive as pulling on the Borussia Dortmund kit and taking the field in front of the famed Yellow Wall and 80,000-plus Germans at the Signal Idurna Park, which is exactly what the latest American wunderkind Christian Pulisic has done over the last 10 months.
A Hershey, Pa. native, Pulisic was spotted by Germany’s perpetual second superpower, Borussia Dortmund (BVB), while playing for the U.S. Under-17 residency program, essentially an incubator for young U.S. talent. He then made the hop to Dortmund at age 16, where he promptly made a name for himself by scoring an eye-popping 10 goals and adding eight assists in just 15 matches with the BVB youth teams.
Pulisic’s strong performances earned him a call up to Thomas Tuchel’s first team last January. Since then, his career trajectory is best described as meteoric. Tuchel wasted no time in throwing Pulisic right into the fire, making his first two starts against Bayer Leverkeusen and in the “Revierderby” against bitter rivals FC Schalke, two of Germany’s strongest sides. He later became the youngest non-German ever to score in the top flight of German football at just 17 years old.
This season at just 18, Pulisic has cemented himself as a regular face in the Dortmund squad, tallying two goals and five assists in 10 matches across all competitions. Among those included a dizzying display of skill against reigning European champions, Real Madrid, where he darted past Danilo on the wing before charging into the Madrid penalty area to cross for the André Schürrle equalizer, snatching a precious Champions League point for the Black and Yellows.
All of this has the transfer rumor mill spinning already. Dortmund reportedly rejected an £11 million (roughly $14 million) bid for Pulisicfrom Liverpool in August, and that was before his superb start to this year’s campaign. Likewise, Barcelona—arguably the best team on Earth—is reported to be closely following Pulisic.
As enticing as it is to dream about American Messi donning the Barca kit and striding onto the pitch alongside actual Messi, Dortmund is undoubtedly the best place right now for Pulisic’s development. Dortmund is currently laden with talented youngsters (Emre Mor, Ousmane Dembélé, Julian Weigl) and manager Tuchel has shown a willingness to entrust young players like Pulisic with significant minutes. If he continues to get first-team action alongside the wealth of talent at Dortmund in one of the strongest leagues in the world, the sky is the limit (pardon the platitude).
Naturally, U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) fans are absolutely giddy. Pulisic represents the purest attacking talent the USMNT has seen since at least Landon Donovan, demonstrating incredible pace cutting in from the wing mixed with tremendous dribbling ability and pure football sense.
While the ridiculous technical ability draws the attention, his mental attributes are what set him apart. Pulisic plays with infectious confidence and fearlessness, highlighted by both the Madrid match and his performance last week against FC Ingolstadt, where he almost single-handedly erased a 3-1 deficit, providing the assist to draw BVB within a goal, then scoring the equalizer in stoppage time.
While there have been other ultra-hyped U.S. prospects in the last decade (Freddy Adu, anyone?), none have risen to such heights so quickly. Pulisic made his USMNT debut little more than seven months ago and already has nine appearances and two goals in World Cup qualifiers, making him the youngest player to score for the USMNT. The Pulisic hype-train is alive and well in US soccer circles.
With a looming date against archrivals Mexico in Columbus next weekend to kick off play in the Hexagonal, the final round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying, Christian Pulisic has the stage to not just seize the mantle of the US’s next great hope, but to show that his time is now. Here’s to another famous “Dos a Cero” next Friday night.

The relegation zone: Remembering Chapocoense: the tragic loss of the Brazilian underdogs

Last Tuesday, the Brazilian club Chapecoense was on the way to Medellin, Colombia to cap off a remarkable season with the first leg of a two-leg tie against Colombian giants Atlético Nacional in the Copa Sudamericana final, the South American equivalent of the Europa League. The moment was supposed to be the culmination of a wild ride that saw the tiny provincial squad fighting their way up the from fourth division of Brazilian soccer in 2009 to battling—and beating—some of the continent’s best sides in this season’s Copa. Instead, the fairytale ended in tragedy when the plane carrying the team crashed into the mountains near Medellin.
Of the 77 passengers on the charter flight from Bolivia to Medellin, 71 were killed in the wreckage, including coaches, technical staff, journalists and 19 of the team’s players. It appears that the plane ran out of fuel over Colombia, with the pilot radioing in a “fuel emergency” moments before crashing, corroborated by the absence of an explosion post impact.
Newspapers and investigators have raised serious questions about the airline Lamia’s fueling protocol in the wake of the crash. The distance between their Bolivian origin and Medellin was slightly outside the plane’s range, and as such, the plane also lacked the 30 minutes of additional fuel aviation experts say is a necessary precaution. Further, the pilot reportedly waved off a refueling stop in Cobija. Lamia’s reputation as a cut-rate charter operator raises further questions about the procedures and is particularly disturbing because the Argentinian National Team flew on the same doomed plane just two weeks before.
Hailing from Chapecó, a small provincial city of 210,000 in the south of Brazil, the Chapecoense had only been a professional side since the mid-1970s. Even before the Copa success, Chape had earned comparisons to Leicester City, the Premier League club who rose from similar lower league obscurity to capture last season’s title.
The club rose through the ranks in Brazil on the back of investments in training facilities and infrastructure and sound management that is rare in Brazilian soccer. This season, Chape was on track to finish a club record ninth in the league before the tragedy. Like Leicester, they found success on the back of journeymen like top scorer Bruno Rangel and captain Cléber Santana, most famous for brief stints at Atlético Madrid and Mallorca in Spain. The story of lovable underdogs clad in green and white punching above their weight and slaying giants like Argentina’s San Lorenzo earned them the admiration of fans continent-wide.
On Monday, the South American Football Confederation, CONMEBOL, declared Chapecoense the winner of the Copa Sudamericana, after Atlético Nacional asked them to award Chape the title to honor the victims of the crash. Other outpourings of support have come from Brazil’s top clubs, who offered to loan players to the club for next season in order to help get them back on their feet.
As tragic and gutting as such an incident may be, the crash will not spell the end of Chapecoense. Albeit to a lesser scale, Manchester United lost eight players to the Munich air disaster in 1958 and eventually rose to even greater heights. Part of what precipitated Chape’s meteoric rise from fourth division obscurity to competing for a major continental championship was their grit and determination, along with sound management. If history is any indicator, the club and its future squad will pull on those same traits to ensure that it and the memory of those lost do not go gentle into that Brazilian night (to paraphrase a better writer than myself).
Arsenal’s Brazilian defender Gabriel Paulista played under Chapecoense manager Caio Júnior and was obviously stricken by the crash. On the verge of tears, he said, “If you think you want to do something, just get out there and do it, because we don’t know what tomorrow brings.” I don’t mean to end on too sentimental a note, but his words seem especially sage in the wake of tragedy. Go out and do something you’ve been putting off today.

The relegation zone

Is it time to clean house at the U.S. Men's National Team?

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Eric Zelina

Columnist

November 18, 2016

Dating back to World Cup qualifying matches in 2001, Columbus—Columbus, Ohio, of all places—has been the U.S. Men’s National Team’s (USMNT) fortress against archrivals Mexico, with four straight 2-0 wins against El Tri at Columbus Crew Stadium (now MAPFRE Stadium). So, when the USMNT learned that it would be playing Mexico in the first match of the Hexagonal, the final round of qualifying for World Cup 2018, it was only natural that it woul be in the state of Ohio.

Before the match last Friday, the banner unfurled by the American Outlaws, the team’s rowdy supporters group, paid homage to old and new, with the likeness of 18-year old wunderkind Christian Pulisic, stylized as the demon haunting Mexican fortunes, holding up two fingers on one hand and a big zero on the other—that famous Dos a Cero scoreline—over the tagline “Nightmares are Real.”

All good things come to an end though, as the US capitulated to the visiting Mexican side early, then again in the match’s dying minutes, after clawing back to make it one-all. The traveling Mexican support sang out “Dos a Uno, Dos a Uno” as the match ended, casting off 15 years of nightmares and history in Columbus. The 2-1 loss represented not just the end of Fortress Columbus, but also the team’s first World Cup qualifying loss to Mexico on US soil in over 40 years.

If a crushing 2-1 loss to the team’s most bitter rival wasn’t enough agony for one week, the USMNT then traveled to Costa Rica for the second match in the Hex on Tuesday night and were run off the pitch by a rampant Costa Rican side. Johan Venegas’ headed goal a minute from halftime broke the Yanks’ spirits and opened the floodgates for three more goals in the second half and a 4-0 thrashing.

Opening the Hex with two straight losses has left the USMNT adrift at the bottom of the qualifying group and desperately searching for answers. While losses to two of the region’s strongest sides is nothing to be ashamed of on paper, more alarming is how the squad looked without direction for long periods of those matches. The team has seemed generally rudderless for sometime now. Against this backdrop, it’s time for the Jurgen Klinsmann experiment to end as USMNT manager.

Klinsmann has no doubt brought the USMNT great success. His recruiting and scouting efforts have helped to restock the squad’s cabinet with talented youngsters like John Brooks, Lynden Gooch and the aforementioned Pulisic, and the team’s great escape from the “Group of Death” at the 2014 World Cup remains stuff of legend, overexaggerated as that squad’s performance may be. Despite that, Klinsmann has clearly lost the script with the team and it’s doubtful if he will find it again.

One of the selling points of Klinsmann has always been his ability as a motivator and man-manager. It’s those efforts of giving youth a chance and teasing out the best in players that inspires willingness in some players to charge through a brick wall for Klinsmann. The team’s matches in the last year or so have demonstrated that he no longer inspires that confidence in his players though, and if a motivator can no longer motivate, what good is he leading the USMNT?

This rift was on full display in Columbus last Friday, as Klinsmann made the puzzling decision to start the match in a 3-5-2 formation, playing an unfamiliar formation with three at the back against an incisive Mexican attack, leading to Mexican domination and an early goal. As a result, US captain Michael Bradley and ageless warrior Jermaine Jones, the two most vocal leaders in the field at the time, argued openly with Klinsmann about tactics during a stoppage. While the team reverted back into a familiar 4-4-2 formation after the confrontation, the damage was done and the rift between manager and players evident.

Perhaps more damning was the way that the US capitulated against Costa Rica after the half, going into the break just down a goal. The Yanks came out of the break looking listless and without desire in a vital match, showing just how little confidence Klinsmann inspires in his men.

Even the world’s best managers have a shelf life and it looks like Jurgen has reached his with the USMNT. His constant refusal to accept responsibility for puzzling tactical decisions and lackluster on field performance date well beyond the most recent losses (the Gold Cup debacle against Jamaica and CONCACAF Cup loss to Mexico, both last year, come to mind). The USMNT doesn’t have another qualifier for nearly 4 months, a match against Honduras that is now a must-win. If he has truly lost the locker room, as it seems, the time is now to make a change and part ways with Jurgen Klinsmann.

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