Jurgen Klinsmann feels the pressure, there’s no question of that.
Don’t believe us? Get a load of this quote.
“I take responsibility and it is no problem. It is a learning experience for us.”
Yes, United States men’s national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann isn’t brushing this defeat onto someone else’s shoulders. He knows he screwed up and has no problem saying it out loud.
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The Americans fell 4-0 in Costa Rica on Tuesday, a miserable display that included a substandard lineup choice that did nothing to help their coach.
“A very very bitter moment for us,” Klinsmann told the media after the loss. “There’s no doubt about it. We didn’t imagine we’d go into the Hexagonal with two defeats. You wanna have some points. This is definitely a moment to reflect about what happened the last 10 days, and probably open a lot of discussions with the players.”
Probably.
This was a bad loss, and doesn’t exist in a vacuum (though it must be noted that the Yanks have played two of their three hardest World Cup qualifiers, and still should be expected to emerge from CONCACAF and into Russia 2018).
“They gave us a psychological knock with that goal just before halftime. We came out and said let’s turn this around but were not capable of doing that. Too flat. There was not enough alertness, not enough tempo, determination in a 1v1 battles.”
Again, though, he put his name on this one. That must mean something, right? Right?
"After the second goal they didn't have the fight to get back into the game...I take full responsibility." -Klinsmann #usmnt
— Doug McIntyre (@ByDougMcIntyre) November 16, 2016
