Netherlands victory offers timely boost for USMNT development process
AMSTERDAM --
United States coach Jurgen Klinsmann sat in the recesses of AmsterdamArena and tried to place this crazy night in perspective. He watched his team muster three goals without reply to secure a first triumph over the Netherlands. He wondered exactly how this night and this 4-3 victory fit into the work completed over the past year.
Klinsmann preached the need for transition in the wake of the World Cup. He said he wanted to expand the player pool ahead of the next cycle, improve the depth within his ranks and test out new, younger players to see where they might slide into his plans.
The decision produced a more fitful period than many expected. The penchant for conceding late goals persisted. The heavy defeat in Ireland closed last year with a thud. Some players embraced the challenges straight away, while others took their time to meet the desired standards. They were promising flickers here and there along the way, but the coherency and the consistency necessary to procure results did not always follow.
The underlying principles -- the desire to push the tempo on the break, the need to summon the persistence always endemic to American teams in the past, the willingness to push all the way to the end in good and bad times -- remained the same, though. Those efforts placed this group in position to reap some of the benefits of their toil at AmsterdamArena. This is a win worth cherishing, but the tenets behind it serve as the critical component moving forward.
“It’s a huge learning curve when we play teams like Holland and, also, the team we will play next Wednesday, Germany,” Klinsmann said. “You can only benefit from them. It doesn’t matter what the result is at the end of the day. What we need to learn is that we need to learn to turn games around. We need to learn to take games like knockout games. We have to go all the way to the end to develop that mindset that we can turn things around.”
Make no mistake: It remains an ongoing process with ascendant players wading through what Klinsmann dubbed “a little bit of a roller coaster” as they grapple with the demands at the international level.
The desired template does not include conceding three goals or moving to the brink of disaster in the second half. But it does involve muddling through those difficult times, producing incisive sequences to reply to those setbacks (John Brooks’ second goal and Michael Bradley’s relentless run on the fourth goal, in particular) and revealing the mental strength to believe that no cause is ever lost.
“I think [Klinsmann] doesn’t want us to give up, even if the team is like the Netherlands, a top team,” U.S. defender Fabian Johnson said. “He always wants us to go 100 percent and do whatever we can.”
Those efforts receive a boost when Klinsmann can look down his bench and point to players he trusts. The past year allowed him to assess his potential options. He still lacks emerging top-end performers to complement and eventually supplant the established stalwarts, but he now possesses developing figures capable of creating competition in the side and supplementing a squad in need of more depth. Their presence made a tangible difference on a night when Alejandro Bedoya (knee) joined the crowd in Amsterdam and Jozy Altidore (hamstring), Clint Dempsey (awaiting the birth of a child) and Jermaine Jones (groin) likely surveyed the proceedings from across the pond.
The absence of so many key figures is not ideal, but it does present an opportunity for others to fill the void. It provides the latitude for Alfredo Morales and Gyasi Zardes to feature from the start again and sets the stage for Jordan Morris and DeAndre Yedlin to make their marks off the bench. It also ushers this inexperienced side -- only Bradley, Kyle Beckerman and Fabian Johnson started consistently at the World Cup last summer -- into a spot where it needed to adjust to the situations presented and respond accordingly.
“That’s the idea,” Bradley said. “These games are so important, even just for that. You have these friendlies along the way -- big friendlies, in some cases. Certainly, tonight, playing Holland in this stadium, it’s a big occasion. You hope the young guys -- when they get the opportunity to step on the field in games like this -- they make the most of it. Not just in terms of the performance, but also in terms of soaking it all in with the experience so that a few years down the line, when we find ourselves on the field in a World Cup, in a Confederations Cup, in big games that really count, we have a bunch of guys who have a feeling like they’ve been here before.”
It is exactly why Klinsmann and U.S. Soccer embarked on trips to Chile, Denmark and Switzerland earlier this year and scheduled this pair of friendlies in the Netherlands and Germany right before the CONCACAF Gold Cup. This group needed the exposure to high-profile games and world-class players, even if the open, wild fare hardly resembles the more plodding tasks ahead against entrenched sides at the Gold Cup next month.
“For all of these youngsters, this is just what they need to smell, it’s what they need to see. That’s where they start to compete, start to go at that tempo and that speed for as long as they can,” Klinsmann said. “It’s huge for these guys.”
These experiences form the base for further growth down the line. There is still plenty of work ahead to inspire more ruthlessness within the ranks, sort out the penchant to concede too many opportunities to strong opponents and strengthen the overall shape of the team in more compact matches. These issues may or may not impact the pursuit of the Gold Cup, but they do warrant attention when the stakes increase over the next few years.
For now, the focus remains firmly on this coming of age. This team isn’t a completed or finished product yet, but it is an evolving one reinforced by the emergence of the fresh faces and the patience displayed since the World Cup. The goal is to ensure those efforts eventually lead to more nights like this one as this side marches forward over the next few years.
