I'm going back on my word to not post again before the World Cup starts. I'll just eke this one under the wire. And all at the risk of appearing a bigger and bigger Jurgen Klinsmann apologist. Or his lawyer.
Still, I'm about to start tearing my hair out. And this is good therapy.
The newest hubbub surrounding Klinsmann concerns his comments, made in a New York Times Magazine article and repeated yesterday at a press conference in Brazil, that it is not realistic to talk now about winning the 2014 World Cup.
The media and the social media sphere went into a frenzy. "That's un-American!" was the general theme. Since Alexi Lalas has blathered on for months about how we ought to go into this World Cup planning to win or we shouldn't bother showing up, I'm sure he made plenty of comments along those lines last night on ESPN's two-hour extravaganza previewing the tournament.
I'm not sure that he did because the show was so painfully bad that I couldn't watch for more than a minute at a time. ESPN paraded out panels and panels of so-called experts, most of whom speak English with one unintelligible accent or another. Including a woman from the UK who will be some sort of studio host and immediately flubbed her second line on the show. Why does ESPN insist on having foreigners talk to us about soccer? I'm sure Julie Foudy could do her job more intelligently and intelligibly than she. Michael Ballack was particularly ill at ease, which would have made continued watching a little like gawking at a wreck. I was tempted, but kept driving at normal speed and ended up in South Park, Colorado instead.
But I digress. While I can only assume Lalas's indignation, there are plenty of examples in print. The devastating observations of Gregg Doyel, (a columnist for cbssports.com whose bona fides are that he "covered the ACC for the Charlotte Observer, the Marlins for the Miami Herald, and Brooksville (Fla.) Hernando for the Tampa Tribune. He was 4-0 (3 KO's!) as an amateur boxer, and volunteers for the ALS Association" Alrighty then, he's got the credentials!) are one example.
Doyel goes on, and on, and on shaking his pompoms and rattling his saber, using the tired trick of repeating Klinsmann's statement in italics while railing about how it's obvious from the statement that Klinsmann ain't "from around here" and that he has a lot to learn about American guts and ingenuity, blah blah blah. Another noted soccer journalist, Mike Wilbon of ESPN, apparently took umbrage with Klinsmann's questioning of Kobe Bryant's salary in the article and told Klinsmann to "[g]et the Hell out" of the country.
The only problem with Doyel and his ilk is that they are taking Klinsmann's statement completely out of context. Klinsmann did not say and has not said that the U.S. cannot win this World Cup. He has simply said that now is not the time to talk about it.
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| Clearly uninterested in winning (photo from nytimes.com) |
"I think for us now talking about winning a World Cup is just not realistic,” he said. “If you do it like Greece in 2004, I think that nobody from Greece would have said, ‘We’re going to win the European Championship,’ but they did. At the end of the day, soccer, the beautiful thing is it’s unpredictable. You don’t know what happens.
“First we’ve got to make it through the group," he says, "so let’s stay with our feet on the ground and say, ‘Let’s get that group first done,’ and then the sky is the limit. But before and half-a-year before and even now (a day) before the World Cup starts, to say that we should win the World Cup is just not realistic.”
Makes sense, right? Brazil has won five World Cups. Italy has four. Germany has three. The U.S. has been to one semi-final, in 1930 when no one was paying attention. Klinsmann is merely saying "let's not get ahead of ourselves here. There are countries that can realistically say before the World Cup 'we want to win.' Or even 'we expect to win.' But the U.S., with its pedigree, is not yet one of them. Let's get through the group and then see what happens."
Over and over everyone reports, or even defends, the comment as "Klinsmann: Unrealistic for U.S. to expect title." But the quote was "for us now talking about winning a World Cup is just not realistic." Now, as in right now or "half-a-year before." I am not parsing words, just taking them at face value. And what Klinsmann clearly said was absolutely correct, absolutely defensible, and absolutely coach speak. Let's take one game at a time. Let's put one foot in front of the other. Let's talk about our chances of winning a World Cup sometime after we make it out of the Group of Death.
I don't know what works the rabble rousers into their collective froth about Klinsmann. Is it the temerity that he showed to come from another country to coach "us"? Is it axing Donovan? Or is it just the usual soccer haters who seize the opportunity to throw cold water on the American psyche when once every four years (or two if the women do well) millions more Americans pay attention to soccer than the rest of the time?
Any way you choose, perhaps they could begin to show at least a shred of journalistic integrity by accurately quoting the man before excoriating him for something he did not say. Or just simply keep ignoring the game as they do the rest of the three years and eleven months of every four years.
Go back to covering high school football. We've got soccer to watch.
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