US men's national team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann has never been afraid to speak his mind, and in video statements released on Sunday by US Soccer (watch here), Klinsmann brushed off criticism of the USA's youth squads.
Klinsmann, who also serves as US Soccer's technical director, spoke about the progress of American youth national teams, where US performances at the CONCACAF U-23 Championship and FIFA U-17 World Cup have come under fire.
"I think we can be proud of ourselves in what we've done so far, the last couple of years – in all age groups,” Klinsmann said. “I think this is what a lot of people unfortunately forget quickly. Because suddenly we came out of the Group of Death in Brazil, I don't know, people now expect maybe miracles, expect you to get easily into the final four of a World Cup or final eight, or have our Under-20s win the World Cup in New Zealand or our Under-17s win the World Cup in Chile. And that's not going to happen. Because this is only a process that over many, many years will hopefully one day end in big, big successes.”
In October, the U-23s failed to secure one of the region’s two automatic berths to the 2016 Rio Olympics, falling to Honduras in the CONCACAF U-23 Championship semifinals. A third-place finish set up a difficult two-leg playoff against Colombia in March for a spot at the games.
The U-17s similarly disappointed at last month’s World Cup, finishing fourth in their group – which did include eventual champions Nigeria – with an 0-2-1 record.
The US did make a successful run at the U-20 World Cup in May, reaching the quarterfinals and only being dispatched in a penalty-kick shootout by eventual champions Serbia.
All three age groups improved in the 2015 cycle based on their results from the previous one. The U-23s failed to get out of their qualifying group in 2012 Olympic qualification, the U-20s failed to get out of their group at the 2013 U-20 World Cup and the U-17s didn't even qualify to the 2013 tournament.
“All of our programs made big strides, made big steps forward, and this is something where our coaches like a Tab Ramos and Andi Herzog with the 23s right now or even a Richie Williams [with the Under-17s] that was eliminated in the first round in Chile – which was the most, by far the most, difficult group he was in – and now we're going through a tremendous learning experience and brought our players to another level in their individual stages. So this is pretty cool to see. I think the Under-20s with Tab [had an] outstanding World Cup in New Zealand [but] lost it on a penalty shootout against the world champions in the quarterfinals.
“So when you hear a lot of people talking some things are going wrong because you lost maybe two or three games recently, then that's a bit immature. That's simply wrong. There's a lot of work ahead of us in all our areas but there's also a lot of excitement because our players are hungry for improvement. And hopefully, with that game [a two-legged playoff against Colombia] the under-23s have in Brazil, the second one will do maybe even a result that's better than the first one. But even if not, they're making strides.”
The U-23s dropped that Sunday friendly against Brazil, 5-1, just a few days after losing 2-1 to a 10-man Brazil side in the first of a two-match friendly series.
