STANFORD, Calif. – Jurgen Klinsmann was forced to play the role of both decisive soccer coach and disappointed father after he named his 23-man roster for the World Cup on Thursday.
Shortly after the roster was released – noticeably without USMNT icon Landon Donovan – Klinsmann’s teenage son Jonathan Klinsmann tweeted out a controversial celebration of the LA Galaxy star’s exclusion before removing the tweet and deleting his Twitter account entirely.
“HHAHAHAHA DONAVAN HAHAHAHAA,” Jonathan Klinsmann wrote. “I DIDNT EVEN NOTICE UNTIL PHONE NOTIFIED ME HAHA”
Jurgen Klinsmann addressed his son’s tweet on Friday and said he was “hugely disappointed” by the display, and said he called him immediately after the tweet was released.
“He came out of school and was kind of fooling around with classmates, and they just went off on Twitter, not being aware that’s actually followed on Twitter,” Klinsmann said.
Klinsmann said his son has a “huge admiration” for Donovan, that he’s been a “big fan of him for many, many years,” and that he has Donovan’s jersey in his room.
Klinsmann also insisted that his son was “devastated” after he realized the implications of his actions.
“Obviously as a father you put him in line,” Klinsmann said. “And he owes Landon a huge, huge apology. That was highly disrespectful, and I think he got the biggest social lesson he could imagine. It was very disappointing.”
A promising goalkeeper in the US youth ranks, Jonathan Klinsmann was recently called into camp for the US Under-18 team and will attend Cal next fall.
He apologized for his comments on twitter before deleting the account on Thursday evening.
“Yes, I deleted the tweet,” he wrote. “Yes, I realize it was VERY classless. But again, My sincerest apologies to everyone who was offended.”
