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World Cups aren't won on a whim, especially not by Germans. They require a plan, a long-term vision. Unlike club football, where your favorite Russian Oligarch can acquire an expensive squad of galacticos at the drop of an oil barrel, successful national teams rely – broadly speaking – on homegrown talent, consistently nurtured in a style of play that serves both clubs and country. While Joachim Low has been Germany’s Head Coach for the last eight years, Sunday’s victory against Argentina was in no small part due to the foundations laid by Jurgen Klinsmann.
The Germans have long been one of world soccer's behemoths, racking up three World Cups and three European Championships prior to Brazil. But in 2004 they found themselves in an alarming state: for two successive major championships - the 2002 World Cup and the 2004 Euros - they failed to escape the group stage. With a home World Cup just two years away, major change was required: enter Herr Klinsmann.
Despite being a managerial novice when appointed Head Coach in 2004, Klinsmann set in motion a series of changes that were, without exaggeration, revolutionary. Germany long had a reputation for staid and stodgy defensive football, boring the opposition into a mistake before grinding out wins via penalties or the odd goal. With buy-in from the German football association (DFB), Klinsmann produced a curriculum designed to elicit a change in ethos: quick, attacking football was the new ideal, bringing the ball out of defense at pace but, importantly, along the ground. In Klinsmann’s words, Germany would be “proactive.”
Such an about-face doesn’t happen overnight, nor can it be implemented solely by the national coach and his immediate staff. But despite being manager for only two years, Klinsmann established the blueprint for root-and-branch change throughout the German system, establishing a conveyor belt for talent that was better coordinated to the task of producing a successful national side in his new, attack-minded image.
From the very start of his tenure, Klinsmann pushed for a number of structural changes to be made within German football. For example, along with the DFB he pressed each Bundesliga team in the first and second divisions to establish academies of excellence that would equip future internationals with the requisite skillset for Germany’s brave new world. Similarly, recognizing the higher levels of aerobic capacity necessary for his high-tempo pressing game, Klinsmann introduced quarterly fitness tests to ensure Bundesliga clubs were training their players properly.
The finishing school for these young talents would be the German under-21 team, which Klinsmann instructed to exactly mirror the senior side in terms of set-up, structure, training and tactics. The U-21s would be the senior team’s feeder club, delivering players in which the new German way was fully ingrained.
How much of what we saw in Brazil can Klinsmann take credit for? After all, in the eight years since he departed, Joachim Low has clearly finessed and evolved the team he took over. But what Low executed so successfully was firmly based on the foundations laid by his predecessor. Take the Germany team that beat England 4-0 in the final of the 2009 Under-21 European Championships if proof be needed: six of the starting 11 played in Sunday’s final against Argentina.
Can Klinsmann replicate what he did for Germany with the USMNT? He’s starting from a lower, less mature base, of course, but in some ways that’s a bonus: there are fewer ingrained barriers to change. He’s also working with a smaller pool of talent, but the numbers could move in his favor. FIFA estimates that the US has 4.2 million registered players to Germany’s 6.3 million. As a percentage of total population, those numbers represent 1.3% versus 7.6%: so clearly the US has a lot of headroom if soccer’s popularity continues on its current upward trajectory. However, the greatest barrier might be in the dispersion of the USMNT's top talent. While the best American players tend to be spread across European leagues and different MLS teams, 6 of the German starters in the Cup Final play for Bayern Munich and a seventh came of the bench to score the winning goal. SImilarly, the prior champion from Spain was driven by a core of Barcelona teammates. This strong connection between club and national team creates invaluable time spent playing together that the national teams struggle to find otherwise.
Klinsmann himself acknowledges the challenge: “When you go out in the Round of 16, clearly it gives you the message you have a lot of work still ahead of you.” But he also has an answer:
We have to … start to implement that with our Under-17, Under-18, Under-20, Under-21, which will be the future Olympic team because that's the next Generation that's going to break in. The more we get that message to those kids, the more we will benefit a couple of years from now.
If US Soccer really has long-term ambitions of stamping its authority on the beautiful game, it would do well to continue heeding the Klinsmann method. After all, as Sunday demonstrated, it’s a proven winner.
