What Did We Learn?

One week ago, the United States Men's National Team kicked off its new World Cup cycle with a narrow win over the Czech Republic in Prague. There were many positives, along with some glaring negatives. Overall, I thought the United States played exceptionally well in the first half, they seemed lively and confident on the ball. The team had an edge about them, and were willing to take the game to the Czech Republic. The second half was a bit of a different story. The substitutions ruined the flow of the match and resulted in Czech domination.

I am not going to get into the details of the match, since it happened so long ago, but I wanted to talk about Klinsmann implementing his new system.

If one match is any indication, we are now entering a transition period. The common discourse amongst the United States Soccer leaders (namely Sunil Gulati and Jürgen Klinsmann) has been that their common goal is to take United States Soccer to the next level. It is well documented that many fans and pundits (I'm talking to you Alexi Lalas) feel like no progress has been made since Klinsmann took over. These people say that we have seen for so many years: we sit back and wait for the opportune time to counter-attack. This is true, to an extent. I remember watching World Cup Tonight on ESPN after our (tragic) loss to Belgium, and Lalas was saying that we need to win the possession battle. Here's the thing: we did win the possession battle.

It's true that Belgium's possession probably meant more, and it is also true that Germany and Ghana destroyed us in possession (although Ghana's dominance was probably because of our early goal), but we got a lot better. We took the game to Portugal, and in the second half of extra-time, we did the same to Belgium. The next step is doing that for 90+ minutes. I genuinely believe that we will see that in the next cycle. Jürgen was not given a full cycle to implement his style, so it is understandable that he reverted to old tactics. As more and more of the US youth teams get familiarized with Klinsmann's ideal system, he will be able to use it at the senior national team level with ease.  Against the Czech Republic, Klinsmann implemented the 4-3-3 system we were promised. It's going to take time for some of our senior players to get used to it, but the United States has plenty of time (and tournaments), which will allow the current senior players to get used to the system while also allowing Klinsmann to integrate the younger generation.

As I always say, the future is bright for the United States. We saw many youngsters make their debut in this match (Joe Gyau, Emerson Hyndman, Greg Garza, etc.), and there are many more players, like Gyasi Zardes, whose debuts are imminent. If everything goes right, I think the U.S. can make a deep run in the 2016 Copa América Centenario and the 2018 World Cup.