STANFORD, Calif. --
Soccer is a young man's game. But when it comes to a World Cup, experience is prized above all. So when Jurgen Klinsmann announced his final roster for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil next month here on Thursday, it raised concern that just five players on his team had been to South Africa in 2010, or indeed any other edition of the big dance.
Had Klinsmann not dismissed Landon Donovan, Maurice Edu and Clarence Goodson in his last round of cuts, there might have been eight. Yet these worries are nevertheless unfounded. Consider that while the 2006 team had a dozen players who had played in 2002, it flamed out in the group stage, whereas the 2010 team, which had eight holdovers, reached extra-time of the round of 16.
The merits of having been to a prior World Cup seem to have been overblown. "In 2010, [at my first World Cup] in South Africa, it wasn't like I was running around the field thinking to myself, 'I've never played in a World Cup, this is all new to me,'" said midfielder Michael Bradley.
Besides, this year's American World Cup team doesn't lag its predecessor much by way of overall experience. The 2014 team is a tad older, in fact, there is an average age of 27.26 to the 2010 teamâs 26.86. And whereas the 2010 team came into the World Cup with 813 cumulative caps for the USA, the 2014 team already has 770 - even without Donovan's gargantuan would-be contribution of 156 games - with three officially sanctioned friendlies left to play. Those guarantee 33 more caps, and if Klinsmann substitutes aggressively this team could even exceed the 2010 team in total appearances.
"It's a roster, if you really go through it, thatâs an experienced roster," Klinsmann rightly pointed out. "It's not a young roster. I think we have a great mixture of guys."
That mix is the crux of it. The mix is what has many of the veteran players and the young ones alike excited. Because what this team does have, even if the difference in averages from 2010 is negligible, is a handful of very young players who are new to all of this. Defenders John Brooks and DeAndre Yedlin and winger Julian Green have just six caps between the three of them and are 21, 20 and 18 years of age respectively. Forward Aron Johannsson is 23 and has played for USA all of seven times.
It makes some of the veterans feel their age. "I am old," Tim Howard, the 35-year-old goalkeeper, said through a smile. "Most of them are closer to my son's age than mine."
But the old-timers, to name them indelicately, all agree that this is a good thing. "With youth comes naiveté," said Howard. "They're not scared of big moments. They don't know what's around the corner. They don't know what's under the bed. They're raring to go and they don't have that apprehension. And I think that's a positive. We have enough experience that the older guys can carry the group so having that youth is nice. It's refreshing."
"To have some younger guys," added Bradley, "who aren't even able to really understand what it's all about yet, and are able to use their enthusiasm and excitement and push the group on in that way, it helps."
"They don't know what to fear," chimed in captain Clint Dempsey.
The 2002 team, which rampaged to the brink of the semi-finals on the shoulders of a band of zippy young attackers, set the modern high-water mark for US Soccer with just such a youthful exuberance.
The key is to give that youth the tools to thrive. "It is our strong feeling that these guys are ready for a World Cup, for coming in any time and doing well," said Klinsmann, denying that some of his selections were made with an eye on the 2018 World Cup, through which he is signed. "This is how they develop, a very fast pace. We see them growing every day in training, getting stronger and stronger. So we feel strongly about those players."
"Some have a learning curve ahead of them, there's no doubt about it," the German head coach added. "But they are ready for that learning curve and they might surprise some people out there. I think there's always a first time. You just need to go into a World Cup with a lot of confidence, very well prepared. You need to be sure that you did your homework and you're going to play your first games in there, it's nothing different than any other game. If we do our work over the next few weeks they will have that confidence and don't require any previous experience."
Klinsmann, for one, knows what it takes to succeed in your debut on the World stage. "We won the first World Cup I played in [with West-Germany in 1990]," he said, neglecting to add that he was named to the tournament's All-Star team. "We screwed up the next two, so I don't think it's a factor."
These American upstarts are perhaps long shots to accomplish the same at this World Cup as Klinsmann did in his first. But if they don't, it won't be because they've never been there before.
