As somebody somewhere on Twitter said just the electronic orgasm following Jürgen Klinsmann’s announcement as the new US Men’s National Team coach, the umlaut era of American Soccer has begun. The question is now, how do we gauge the success of our German head coach?

Premature yes but I think looking at the parameters of how you gauge success often help frame the debate about how or why somebody was hired. There are the obvious silverware, or progression to the late stage of a World Cup or similar standards but I think these tend to be simplistic. For example Sunil Gulati referred to the US World Cup campaign in 2012 as disappointing, perhaps because the US Men’s National Team bowed out to Ghana however I thought it was broadly successful given the talent available and the lack of depth on the bench for the Men’s team, did we really expect, or even more so demand that Bradley take a fairly average group of players to the pinnacle of the mountain or even to the Quarter Finals?

I am not sure that makes sense, no more so than dismissing a Ghanian team bristling with talent youth and now representing Lyon, Inter, Milan, Chelsea, Sunderland rather than the LA Galaxy, Fulham and Second division German and Turkish football.

You can make argument and counter argument which is why rather than looking at the nations involved it is often easier to look at the coaches and the talent available and in that light I look at Klinsmann’s record and can shrug. When presented with a wealth of riches and abundant talent he has failed to accomplish what was required and he has yet to be tested when that talent pool is best described as anemic and yet he is credited with the entire recreation German football in the wake of the 2006 World Cup in which he took a highly talented, highly experienced yet aging squad to the Semi Finals of a tournament hosted in Germany and then … lost and wound up finishing third.

Not bad?

1934 – Third Place
1954 – Champions
1958 – Fourth Place
1962 – Quarter Finals
1966 – Runners Up
1970 – Third Place
1974 – Champions
1978 – Died in the groups
1982 – Runners Up
1986 – Runners Up
1990 – Champions
1994 – Quarter Finals
1998 – Quarter Finals
2002 – Runners Up
2006 – Third Place
2010 – Third Place

That is Germany’s World Cup record. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but Germany have always been a world power, they remain a world power and Klinsmann did not elevate them above the the average finishing position of 3rd to 4th that they have historically had. People still persist in pushing the idea that this was a triumph, sorry but Denmark turning up for the European Championships unfit because they did not qualify but were handed a spot when Yugoslavia were kicked out and going on to win the thing was a triumph of tactical management. Germany losing in a semi final on their own turf? Not so much.

I mean take any of the 1996 versions of Michael Ballack, Miroslav Klose, Jenns Lehmann, not to mention World Player of the Year nominee, and FIFA and UEFA Left Back of the year winning Phllip Lahm and see they are not automatic first team choices in basically any team in the world right now. There are few exceptions where it is close. The USA has never had that kind of talent, genuine world class players that could literally play anywhere. The current superstars of US football and deservedly so are Landon Donovan who with the exception of a successful mini-loan at Everton and a poor stint in Germany has plied his craft as a big fish in the small pond that is MLS and Clint Dempsey who as a forward has scored 33 goals in the Premier League in 150ish games since 2006. He is good player but right on a par with his team mate Bobby Zamora and neither of them are going to set the World on fire outside of fleeting moments.

Who is next on the pecking order? Will Charlie Davis make it back? Will Agudelo, Bunbury or Shea come good on a national level? After Clint and Landon the drop off is fairly dramatic with the exception of Tim Howard and Holden. The FIFA ranking of the US Mens team is 30th, and yet the USA won their World Cup Group in 2010 – at the expense of England, reached the final of the 2009 Confederations Cup final defeating a Spanish team that was so stocked in talent that it went on to win the 2010 World Cup and was ranked number one in the World by FIFA at the time. I don’t know about you but I think that since 2007 the USA have often punched well above their weight.

Klinsmann in the world of the sane would simply have to maintain this to be deemed successful however in the magnified and scrutinized role as the USMNT Manager Klinsmann will have no such luxury and in order to be heralded he will need to improve upon Bradley’s record which seems hard to accomplish given that in four years his two biggest assets in Donovan and Dempsey will be deep into their 30s and the obvious replacements have yet to show themselves.

Where does that leave us? Can the US win their group in 2014 in the World Cup? Even Qualify for the Confederations Cup in 2013? Can we compete with a Mexican side where the likes of Carlos Vela are better players than any starting forwards we currently have and Chicharito is being groomed to be a World Star? I don’t know … if we truly have been punching above out weight then the real burden for Klinsmann going forward will be the excessive expectation from a nation of soccer fans who seem to think they are better than they are, better than Ghana and their stacked roster and youth and who demand that the US Mens National team improve irrespective of the status of the talent pool.

Herein lies the rub, Jurgen Klinsmann has never improved anything. He got fired at Bayern Munich with a loaded table and a big budget and yet the advocates are looking to him as a messianic figure who will recreate US football at all levels and stimulate the kind of national production pipeline that has produced Ozil and co in Germany. Forgive me but Germany have always produced World Class players… with or without Mr Klinsmann and they all start out young. I fail to see how that translates to a US based system that is far less progressive and infinitely less developed, it is not a case of tweaking but creation that is needed here if the bright lights of tomorrow are to be a step above Teal Bunbury.

The production of genuine talent in Germany starts so much younger than it does in the states, and even if we can get the youth soccer portion right at some stage this ‘talent’ is still going to be handed off to stables of MLS coaches who have a mandate to win rather than foster the the talent for the future. The fractured, uncoordinated and combative world of US Soccer needs more than one man to help it rise to the level it could be, and it will require more time to accomplish than Klinsmann will be allowed by a nation who are less willing to fail than most. As it is if Klinsmann can pull off two moments as memorable, captivating, and important as the win against Spain in the Confederations Cup Semi Final and the win against Algeria in the World Cup then I’ll be marginally surprised, but if he manages to rebuild the entire soccer landscape then I’ll stop rubbing my eyes when I see flying pigs and find the end of the rainbow.

That that job needs undertaking is without a doubt, but entrusting it to a man with 14 matches of competitive International experience and 43 games in charge of Bayern Munich before they fired him seems like a stretch. That people have bought into this seems even more of a leap forward, so now we not only have the overblown idea of where the US stands in the ranks of US football to contend with but now also the idea that Klinsmann will somehow improve this situation. I don’t see it.

If only you could translate player success and fancy European accents into managerial success, as it is we all have is the talk and no evidence that he can walk the walk.