US national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann has urged players, staff and fans to turn the page on last week's painful CONCACAF Cup loss to Mexico and keep the “bigger picture” in focus: Reaching the 2018 World Cup and improving on last summer's Round-of-16 exit.
Addressing the road ahead in a series of video clips distributed by US Soccer on Friday, Klinsmann called the 3-2 extra-time heartbreak at the Rose Bowl a “bitter” but “enormously exciting” occasion for all to remember, and promised that his team will learn from their high-profile setback.
“As a team, everyone is growing far more when things go the wrong direction than when things go well,” said the fourth-year head coach, later acknowledging that he is “get[ting] it all over the place right now” in terms of criticism amid the USMNT's 1-5-1 record in their last six matches, all of them on home soil. “When you have a couple of tough results, you have a couple of defeats that are bitter to swallow, that's when a team is really becoming a team.
“That's when players start to stick together, that's when players and coaches start to solve problems and have discussions internally how to move things in the positive direction again.”
Klinsmann also targeted victory in next month's 2018 World Cup qualifying opener vs. St. Vincent & the Grenadines in St. Louis, the first step in a road that will dominate his duties for the next three years, even if El Tri, not the USMNT, will make the trip east for the Confederations Cup in 2017.
“It's always difficult in a negative moment to talk about the bigger picture. But it's important to keep the bigger picture in mind. The bigger picture is Russia 2018,” he said. “So every competition and every game, [whether] it's a friendly game, a World Cup qualifying game, and the upcoming events like a Copa America or a Gold Cup 2017, are there in order to build towards Russia 2018.
“So this is the bigger picture, to be highly competitive in 2018, to get further in 2018 than we did in 2014 in Brazil. And we will go through ups in that period, and we will go downward sometimes, like right now, through a negative moment. But we all go through that as a team.”
Klinsmann hinted at a generational shift and a changing of the guard as the core of his current team grows long in the tooth after matching, then breaking the program's mark for best record in a calendar year during the 2014 cycle.
“So that means to break in younger players, to help them to grow and get through some growing pains. It means to build new chemistry, to build new leadership within a group,” he said. “And to fine-tune a lot, lot of things over a couple of years, because you only have a limited amount of time with your national-team players when they join you from their club teams.
“We had 2012, equalizing the record in history of US Soccer; 2013, we set a new record for the history of US Soccer; 2014, we surprised the world coming out of the Group of Death, leaving Ghana and Portugal behind us,” he added. “And now we're going through some tough times. But our slogan is “One Nation, One Team,” and we do that together.”
