Yes, all that youthful intent and plucky desire is great and all – until it isn’t.

History has taught us, and Saturday’s U.S. result served as a cruel reminder, that experience in the high pressure moments and high level tactical know how certainly count, too.

The Dutch had more of the critical stuff that carries the day at World Cup elimination stage.

A lot more as it turns out, advancing into the tournament quarterfinals with a comprehensive, fairly comfortable 3-1 win over Gregg Berhalter’s United States.

Clinical Dutch

The Dutch team was clinical in the attacking penalty area, generally untroubled in its defending and almost always numerically advantaged in midfield.

As such, Louis van Gaal’s composed bunch never looked seriously stretched against the less experienced Americans, who did have their chances, but who simply couldn’t muster the same degree of composure near goal.

The United States and all its youth can certainly be proud of the steps taken in Qatar. Ahead of its co-host role at the next World Cup, Berhalter’s team had already answered the most pressing question; Yes, it was “good enough,” sufficiently talented and spirited to advance out of group play, which was always the line that defined U.S. success in Qatar.

But once into elimination play, it takes more than “good enough.” And it absolutely means not making elementary mistakes: Allowing uncontested crosses, not tracking runners out of midfield, not marking faithfully near goal and not converting chances inside the opposition 18.

Early opportunities wasted for Pulisic, Weah

The first 10 minutes provided big U.S. hope. Christian Pulisic, playing through pain, would certainly love to have his early chance again, unable to convert one-on-one against Dutch goalkeeper Andries Noppert.

Timothy Weah had the next good U.S. chance (and there weren’t many against Virgil van Dijk and Nathan Ake, the top Dutch defenders Saturday) much later in the first half.

Here again we saw the lack of ruthless intent, that calm determination, that Netherlands attackers demonstrated so ably twice before halftime.

Memphis Depay’s 10^th minute goal left the United States team trailing for the first time in Qatar, the Barcelona attacker’s finish culminated a swell passing sequence through midfield.

Also for the first time in Qatar, we saw a bad moment from midfielder Tyler Adams, the eloquent U.S. captain and unquestionably the side’s top player through the tournament.

He was trailing the play, unable to recover from being caught out of position.

He was hardly the only U.S. player making costly mistakes. Twice, left back Antonee Robinson couldn’t prevent Denzel Dumfries crosses that turned into well-taken Dutch goals.

Ferreira and Zimmerman get starts

Sure we can nitpick at Berhalter’s starting choices. But would anything different really have mattered?

Jesus Ferreira’s selection was indeed a surprise. Unused to that point in the World Cup and six weeks past his last kick in a competitive match, he lacked a cutting edge.

Then again, Ferreira was hardly the only one; while he was guilty of being sloppy with the ball at times, so was Tim Ream. Same for Yunus Musah, Robinson and others.

Along the back line, Walker Zimmerman regained his spot ahead of Cameron Carter-Vickers. He was solid and probably the least of the U.S. issues in the back.

Robinson couldn’t prevent either cross from his side that led to the Dutch first half goals. At the other outside back spot, Sergino Dest fell asleep in the worst moment, allowing Daley Blind to ghost into a good shooting spot in front of goal, cruising in for the easy finish on the last kick of the first half.

That was among the moments that demonstrated all that individual naivete. So was Haji Wright’s second half miss, when a terrible Dutch pass put him in on goal – only to take a heavy touch and lose the moment.

He made up somewhat with the 76^th minute fortunate touch that turned into his team’s only goal.

Van Gaal wins the tactical battle

Beyond Pulisic’s early chance, the Dutch game plan was on point, arranged to neutralize the best part of the U.S. roster: its highly mobile midfield.

Van Gaal had his team defend with two in front and three along the back line. That put five men in midfield, as those two Dutch forwards funnelled the U.S. right into the heart of a man-for-man midfield blockade.

It reduced the U.S. midfield time on the ball and, therefore, its effectiveness. Center backs Ream and Zimmerman were forced to supply the entry balls.

Speaking of Ream: His scrambling effort from close range was cleared off the line in the second half, one of the only times in four matches in Qatar the United States has managed to be effective on set pieces.

That’s surely of the real disappointments of this entire run. (Pulisic is a great player. Of course, he is. But the United States simply must find someone better for set piece delivery.)

Wright’s goal gave the U.S. brief hope, which was extinguished mercilessly with one more awful U.S. moment. Robinson failed to check his shoulder, not even once in several seconds.

With no pressure on the cross (first mistake) and Dumphries completely unmarked on the back post (second mistake), that was that.

“Positives” will be taken and mistake lamented. But this Pulisic-led group is undeniably talented. Berhalter did well in building a solid esprit de corps.

But the best part of it all: experience gained when the pressure is heaviest in international soccer. We’ll see going forward if they put it to good use.

Photo credit: IMAGO / ANP

Perhaps this isn’t the way they’d preferred to manage the task, hanging on for dear life in the 100th minute against an Iranian team that wasn’t much in terms of attacking threat, but it doesn’t matter now. Not considering the youth of this team – among the youngest at the World Cup, average starting age of 24 on Tuesday – and not considering the United States didn’t even qualify four years ago.

Now a tough Round-of-16 date with the Netherlands awaits. And while the Americans will be underdogs in an elimination match against the three-time World Cup runner-up, it’s all house money now. Because when we cut it to the bone, manager Gregg Berhalter had two hard targets as he ignored the claims of nepotism and took over the men’s national team early in 2019: Get the United States to the 2022 World Cup and – more to the point today – guide the team out of group play from there.

The 1-0 win over Iran on Christian Pulisic’s goal, brave and massive, did just that. So the United States men’s program can check the box on “progress” after wiggling through in its most meaningful contest since meeting Belgium in the 2014 World Cup elimination stage in Brazil.

What went right: Pulisic comes through

We really can’t say the United States “found it’s attack” or even that it found it’s best version of itself. That would be taking the case a little too far; this was Iran after all, hardly some perennial World Cup giant. But we can say this: After managing just two shots on target through 180 minutes, the United States found enough offense. Again, just enough.

Pulisic had been good through two previous matches in Qatar, although perhaps not special. Or maybe it’s more fair to say “not special often enough.” But in desperate need of a win (a draw Monday would have meant US elimination) Pulisic did what he has long seemed destined to do: make the moment with everything on the line.

Weston McKennie’s pinpoint 38th minute ball out of midfield, launched diagonally over Iran’s back line, started the well-constructed team goal, one that was about speed as much as it was alert pattern play. Sergiño Dest raced to the spot at the back post, aware that heading McKennie’s entry pass back across goal was the prudent choice. And there was Pulisic, accelerating between two Iranian defenders, bravely launching himself into a twisting volley from close range, injuring himself in the process, but perhaps happy for the sacrifice.

When we talk about the most meaningful goals in US Men’s National Team history, this one might be on the list.

While Dest on the right and Antonee Robinson on the left were finding space on the wings, steadily supplying crosses, Iran produced almost nothing in the first 45 minutes. Once again that was often down to a mobile, dominant US midfield. McKennie provided his usual, large presence. Yunus Musah had perhaps his best two-way evening, certainly his most active. But once again Tyler Adams was an absolute firebrand.

A day after demonstrating he’s an eloquent statesman as well as a worthy captain, his performance in the defensive midfield role was another masterclass. If Adams has done anything wrong in this World Cup, you’ll have to dig deep in the video to find it.

Berhalter makes the right choices

In a match that will go far in deciding this U.S. group’s legacy and Berhalter’s personal fate, the 49-year-old manager seemed to make the right calls. (He may or may not retain his US post after this World Cup, but he almost certainly would have been replaced with anything less than a second-round appearance).

Berhalter made a bold choice in replacing center back Walker Zimmerman with Cameron Carter-Vickers. Carter-Vickers and Tim Ream had never played together as a central combo, but here they were, a spanking new tandem in what amounted to an elimination match.

Josh Sargent was the pick at striker, and his holdup play was helpful.

What went wrong: still looking for that striker

It certainly would have been more comfortable if the United States could have found a second goal, but the lack of it draws attention back to that scab we all keep picking at: the inability to identify a solid, first-choice striker. Sargent’s second half injury may further limit the U.S. choices.

This team still needs more goals. Then again, we’ve been saying that about Berhalter’s bunch since summer. That “helpful” holdup play may have been enough to get the Americans into second round play, but they’ll likely need more against a Dutch team that includes world-class center back Virgil van Dijk.

Speaking of center backs, Carter-Vickers held up well enough, doing his part to ensure that goalkeeper Matt Turner had another relatively quiet evening. Carter-Vickers looked a little vulnerable defending in space, and elevated US supporter heart rates with a late challenge that had Iranian players and staff screaming for video review.

But no review. No equalizer that would have sent the United States home.

Again, just enough.

Drawing the lens back on group play, we can now see Wales was poor and Iran was just a little better, not special but just talented enough to grab a result against Wales.

The United States has advanced through a relatively forgiving group. In this tournament, for this manager, for this young roster, that represents progress. And for now, that’s enough.

Photo credit: IMAGO / Xinhua

But whatever we’re calling it, this simply cannot be up for debate: a young team grew up in meaningful ways Friday, looking brave and unfazed, regaining some lost worldwide regard by matching England in a highly anticipated heart-thumper, one that didn’t disappoint, nevermind the 0-0 score line.

There will always be these matches that are so much more than their sum influence on the group standings. This Black Friday biggie, one of those occasions, played out like it. It was tactically calculated, necessarily so from a U.S. side that demonstrated almost no naivete – even if a small allocation of it would be understandable.

Friday’s result may have little impact on the group finish, but certainly provides a super-sized psychological boost to Gregg Berhalter’s squad.

From the English side, it might be an ongoing source of frustration that the Three Lions still have never beaten the United States in a World Cup (Still!). And while the young U.S. roster can take heart in trading punches fearlessly with a heavy favorite, it has to be said that the bottom line still favored the English.

Gareth Southgate’s team sits atop the foursome, in dandy shape to advance in this FIFA World Cup, whereas the United States must beat Iran on Tuesday, the third and final day of group play. Still, Berhalter’s team can take a lot out of this one.

What went right: midfield class and Berhalter’s plan

Personnel-wise, Berhalter made one change for the warm night at the Al Bayt Stadium. Haji Wright, a surprise to make the U.S. roster, took over at striker for Josh Sargent, who was quiet against Wales other than his critical part on a damn big goal. Beyond that, no change at center back, where Walker Zimmerman kept his spot alongside Tim Ream despite the bad challenge that helped Wales stride away with a draw.

Tactically, the U.S. manager made a surprising change. Berhalter has generally been a staunch 4-3-3 advocate, but acquiesced Friday to something a bit more practical: a 4-4-2 with McKennie deployed slightly further back on the right than Christian Pulisic on the left.

The idea seemed to be about making England’s center backs – the soft spot of Southgate’s team – make more of the penetrating passes. It worked, as the Americans were marginally better the first half and surely the aggressor after the break. The English frustration was most palpable around the 60th minute, when the U.S. attack created four corner kicks in quick succession.

As the second half wore one, it was Southgate searching for the influential changes; Berhalter, okay with the unfolding scene, seemed concerned only about managing minutes.

Like the opener against Wales, the U.S. strength was in midfield. That’s no surprise; it’s what we all saw in Berhalter’s selections. Tyler Adams, McKennie and Yunus Musah form a mobile, skillful and spirited central triangle, even if the depth might fall off from there.

Once again, Adams was masterful, probably the brightest figure on either team, timing the tackles well and clever in cleaning up any messes. McKennie was effective again, his personality and drive from midfield causing issues for England. While we can nitpick about his quality in efforts on goal, we can also point out importantly that he was effective for a longer window Friday, his fitness continuing to trend usefully upward.

After 15 minutes where England had the better chances, the U.S. right side took hold. For 20-25 minutes, McKennie, Sergino Dest and Tim Weah combined to create trouble down their right side.

Ream in charge, U.S. defense was steadfast

Not sure what it says about Berhalter that Ream was, again, the best U.S. defender, calm and assured from back to front. Don’t forget, Ream seemed to be a late roster addition, selected only because of injury elsewhere. Zimmerman, meanwhile, did just enough, despite an increasing number of shaky moments.

Goalkeeper Matt Turner, who didn’t play soccer until high school, looked like a man who had been keeping goal in massive matches all his life.

England striker Harry Kane had one good look early (Zimmerman got the moment right on that one, arriving well for the block) and one late, a header wide. Otherwise, not much. Late introductions of Jordan Henderson and Jack Grealish livened up England’s attack, but not quite enough. The United States got its first clean sheet against European competition in the World Cup.

What went wrong: no goals

McKennie and Pulisic had the best U.S. chances. McKennie flashed one over the crossbar from close range from Weah’s cross, while Pulisic banged one off the crossbar. Pulisic, not necessarily ever-present in this one, still managed the look of an attacker who could change fortunes in an instant.

His set piece service was better, even if that part still looks like a work in progress from a team standpoint. However it might happen, they’ll need at least one goal next week against Iran, because a draw will not be enough.

Perhaps Gio Reyna can add some zip to the attack; the volume on that ongoing conversation may be lower, as he got into the match, albeit late. But the coming days will still be full of questions about his limited role to this point.  

Photo credit: IMAGO / Fotoarena

Being the spunky, aggressive side that starts bravely and takes a lead in a World Cup match is one thing. Finding the right combination of mettle and problem-solving composure in holding a lead is something completely different.

Strong start by US in first half

An impressive first half by the United States melted away into a tense exercise in hanging on, probably a fitting introduction to the crushing pressure of a World Cup. The premier difference makers – Christian Pulisic and Gareth Bale – made the difference with a goal or in the assist of one on either side of halftime.

The United States, under pressure to perform after missing out four years ago, could be forgiven for shuffling a bit nervously into the tournament. But there they were, Gregg Berhalter’s young men, looking the more poised team, managing matters courageously, calmly assured against the older Welsh side.

While the Americans could manufacture only a few early opportunities on goal before the break, they were always in control ahead of intermission. Pulisic’s 36th minute burst through midfield led to Timothy Weah’s classy finish, putting their side ahead.

Second half for United States-Wales was a different story

If only it had lasted more than a half.

Wales was in charge after the intermission, solving abundant midfield issues by going more direct, playing over and around that Tyler Adams-led U.S. midfield. Walker Zimmerman was clumsy into a late challenge against the wily Bale, who saw the tackle coming and beat the U.S. center back to the point of impact. From there, Bale was pinpoint perfect with his penalty kick, targeted with intent, no sign that the weight of a nation rested on one swing of his boot.

It all sets up a massive Black Friday clash with England, now with perhaps even more on the line today than yesterday. But before we get too far into what it all means for Qatar 2022, a closer look at Monday’s opener.

What went right

Berhalter did roll the dice on his starters, where a striker who was barely in the picture for most of 2022 started; Josh Sargent got the call ahead of Jesus Ferreira, who has manned the “No. 9” role for most of the year.

Berhalter answered the center back question – who would partner Zimmerman? – with the placement of Tim Ream, preferred presumably for his familiarity with Welsh players and his good run recently with Fulham.

Sargent’s touches were limited, but he did play a critical part in the goal. As for Ream, he might have been the best U.S. player but for the busy, ever-present Adams directly in front of him. The 23-year-old Leeds United midfielder was rangy, tough in the tackle and always in the right places to provide midfield cover.

Midfield gave US advantage over Wales

Mobility was always going to be a strong point for the young U.S. midfield. Indeed, Adams, Yunus Musah and Weston McKennie were in command in the middle third for the opening 45 minutes. They had help from Pulisic, dropping in from the left, and from Sergiño Dest, tilting into the midfield from his right back spot.

Pulisic had perhaps worried the Welsh defense with busy movement and fashioning of a few set pieces through the first half hour, but he wasn’t exactly terrorizing the back line. That changed with a 36th minute game-changing surge through midfield. Sharp holdup play from Sargent helped set the table for Pulisic, who spotted Weah’s well-angled run from the right and led his winger with a perfectly weighted ball. The 22-year-old Lille attacker may never score a more important goal.

Without the ball, the United States was equally capable. Bale was mostly a bystander, as Wales dropped its lines of confrontation, OK with conceding possession – pretty much as everyone expected. The United States pressed only moderately, as Wales struggled to play through the midfield traps.

What went wrong

This is an experienced Welsh squad that was bound to improve over its tepid opening half, a team that knows how to grab results in close matches. Which is exactly what happened.

Not everything had gone well in the first 45 for Berhalter’s boys. A few instances of being the impatient, young American eager beavers can more or less be forgiven. Still, early yellow cards to Dest and McKennie may prove costly should either player collect a second Friday against England – sidelining them with a one game suspension, subtracting availability in a group closer against Iran that could potentially mean everything.

Ream and Kellyn Acosta picked up yellow cards after intermission, but both were tactical in nature, and almost certainly the right decisions.

England will surely note that Wales playing direct after halftime seemed to bother the United States. Berhalter admitted as much late into the evening in his post-game comments. Zimmerman, Ream and their outside backs won their share of those direct launches. But so did 6-foot-5 forward Kieffer Moore, whose halftime introduction changed the game in Welsh favor as much as anything else. Also assisting the Wales cause: they were often quicker to the second balls.

In the end, U.S. goalkeeper Matt Turner didn’t need to be special very often, his 64th minute save off a diving header from Ben Davies was surely his best moment. But the Arsenal ‘keeper didn’t always look comfortable in traffic, which could also be an issue Friday. Harry Kane, so competent in the air, will be lurking.

Pulisic had his moments, but also spent a lot of time in his World Cup debut complaining about physical treatment. Going forward he’ll need to understand that he isn’t just one of the targets; he is certainly the target. Better to save the energy. Or better yet, turn it to vengeful action.

To be sure, he took a beating – so we’ll see how quickly he can recover. Musah also looked a bit bedraggled as he left in the 74th minute.

Finally, improving set piece service and end product (never very effective in qualifying) was a U.S. goal for this tournament. Let’s just say there’s still work to be done.

Closing thoughts

Brenden Aaronson got into the game. Looked up for it, too, ever eager to turn and run at the Welsh back line. So did forwards Haji Wright and Jordan Morris, as Berhalter summoned fresh attackers to dash about in a match that opening up late. But you know who, oddly enough, didn’t make the field? Gio Reyna, who may be the most talented U.S. player all things considered. Berhalter admitted post-match that he made a late decision not to play Reyna due to a tightness in the midfielder’s leg.

Early in his national team career, Acosta was partially responsible as the United States conceded a counterattack goal – one perhaps avoidable had Acosta been tougher in the tackle, even taking a yellow card to prevent the breakout. Lesson learned, for sure. Because late in Monday’s match, with the U.S. back line scrambling and Turner out of position, Bale was lining up for a long-range effort. And who would bet against the Welsh talisman in this moment? Acosta, however, was having none of it. He wrapped up Bale, took his yellow card with a quick wave and … again, he had learned the lesson.

Photo credit: IMAGO / Sports Press Photo

Discussions will certainly drag on over a few selections, particularly at goalkeeper and striker, and over Berhalter’s sudden infatuation with right backs, all reducing the U.S. national team boss to something of a slow moving target for critics should his young band of U.S. brothers fail to emerge from a fairly forgivable group in Qatar. On the other hand, most of the drama (and therefore the fan consternation) was the province of the tail end of his 26-men selection.

Surprises in USMNT squad selection

Ricardo Pepi’s omission is the big talker, as much for his ostensible replacement as much as for his absence. Rather than a place for the FC Dallas academy product, who never got going at Germany’s Augsburg but made big noise lately with prolific scoring on loan to Dutch soccer’s Groningen, there was room on the roster for Haji Wright. Yes, the same Haji Wright who barely seemed in the conversation lately. Consider that Wright wasn’t even among eight forwards named for those recent friendlies.

So that’s as close as we’ll come this go-round to Jürgen Klinsmann’s notorious Donovan drop, when the fickle U.S. boss threw us all in a tizzy by excusing one of the country’s top attackers from duty ahead of World Cup 2014.

Other than Pepi, the only choice Wednesday that merits more than garden variety incredulity, the stuff that’s typically reserved for fans who haven’t been paying much attention or can’t see the big picture, is the Zack Steffen omission.

That one did raise eyebrows from everyone who watched Steffen play so regularly under Berhalter over the last three years. It must also have been a disappointment for those certain that Berhalter “had his favorites” — whatever that means — and would doggedly stick with them. The U.S. manager clearly took note that Steffen’s performances on loan at Middlesbrough of England’s second-tier Championship have been a mixed bag.

So now we all hold our breath while hoping Arsenal shot-stopper Matt Turner can overcome a recent injury setback. 

USA’s search for a proven striker continues

Back to the Pepi omission, Wednesday’s serious head-scratcher. If the goals come pouring in against Wales, England and Iran, well, Berhalter will be off the hook on this one. That seems unlikely — especially as the team failed to find the net even once in recent tune-ups against Japan and Saudi Arabia. And considering how top American threats Christian Pulisic, Gio Reyna and Timothy Weah haven’t always been in the best places lately in terms of form, injury or general ability to talk their managers into playing time, choice of strikers was always going to be a touchy and important subject.

Jesus Ferreira has settled in as the manager’s go-to No. 9 recently. Although his MLS hit rate slowed considerably through late summer, the FC Dallas 18-goal scorer’s selection never seemed in doubt. Josh Sargent might be listed under “mild surprise,” although his fast start this season at Norwich City, coupled with his physical presence and ability on set pieces, surely had the Sargent backers feeling better about things lately.

But Berhalter’s choice for a third striker is more difficult to explain. He did his best in comments Wednesday evening, remarking simply on the cruel vagaries of timing and form. If the World Cup roster had been selected two months ago, he said, Jordan Pefok would likely be headed to Qatar.

The Haji Wright surprise

So rather than Pepi or Pefok or even Brandon Vazquez, whose skill set may be slightly limited but who would have been brilliant as a designated “banger” in late-game moments of desperation goal chasing, the spot went to Wright. Yes, the same Wright who seemed to be out of favor back in June, called out singularly by Berhalter for squandering a chance in a muddy 1-1 qualifier draw in El Salvador.

Wright’s 6-foot-3 frame might be imposing, but he’s not the absolute bulldog near goal that Vazquez was in his brilliant year for FC Cincinnati. Now, if Berhalter needs to reach deep enough into his choices of forwards, which seems quite possible given Reyna’s propensity for injury and Pulisic’s in-and-out form for club and country, he’ll be pinning a lot of his ongoing job security on Wright.

Elsewhere, Wednesday’s reveal was less dramatic. Unless that is your name is Paul Arriola, another frequent Berhalter ride-or-die who got left behind. Or Boavista’s Reggie Cannon, who lost his reserve right back spot to Nashville SC’s Shaq Moore. Or Rangers midfielder Malik Tillman, who still seemed to have an outside shot.

There will be those who cite Gaga Slonina’s absence as a mistake. And they’ll be wrong. Slonina’s ceiling looks remarkable, which is why the 18-year-old goalkeeper is currently on loan at Chelsea. But most World Cup bosses aren’t on board with the “take him for experience” strategy. If one ‘keeper gets hurt or has to serve a red card suspension, that would leave the U.S. precariously close to guarding goal with a guy who made his share of mistakes last season at Chicago.

Questions remain in defense

We still don’t know who will partner Walker Zimmerman in central defense, but at least we know Berhalter’s final choices, underwhelming as they are. It’s most likely New York Red Bulls defender Aaron Long, although getting posterized by Vazquez (who, remember, didn’t make the U.S. squad) for a game-winner in recent MLS playoff action stands as a disconcerting moment.

Chris Richards (Crystal Palace) or Miles Robinson (Atlanta United) would have had the inside track on that starting assignment, but injuries took them out of the roster equation. So it’s dealer’s choice now in a concerning center back situation. And that’s a central defense now protecting a U.S. goalkeeping situation that hasn’t been this unsettled going into a World Cup in … well, in ever really. 

The tactical wonks will point out Ream’s imperfect fit if Berhalter chooses to play a high line in defense and press aggressively in front of them, which has always been the U.S. plan in this current regime, sometimes working and sometimes not so much. Ream was never blessed with blazing speed, and now he’s 35. But his splendid play lately at a surprisingly resilient Fulham was something of a lifeline for Berhalter, who would have been starved for better choices otherwise. (That lack of choice may help explain the coach’s selection of four (!) potential right backs.) And something else that doesn’t hurt: Ream’s experience against plenty of attackers the United States will see against Wales and England.

The balance in midfield

No surprises in midfield, with Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Yunus Musah looking quite likely to form the triangle when the United States lines up against Wales on Nov. 21. Only Cristian Roldan’s name may have rang a soft bell of surprise. He’s been a roster regular under Berhalter, although a rare starter. Maybe he gets on the field in Qatar, maybe not. But when rosters were expanded to 26 players (formerly 23) for 2022, taking a “locker room” guy became a luxury that was easier to justify.

Sounders teammate Jordan Morris, who can provide a tactical “something different” with his speed and his direct-to-goal style from wide starting points, was likely another beneficiary of the expanded roster.

The list isn’t final. That happens with official submission to FIFA no later than November 14. Even then, injured players may be replaced on the roster up to 24 hours before the U.S. opener against Wales.

GOALKEEPERS: Ethan Horvath, Sean Johnson, Matt Turner

DEFENDERS: Cameron Carter-Vickers, Sergiño Dest, Aaron Long, Shaq Moore, Tim Ream, Antonee Robinson, Joe Scally, DeAndre Yedlin, Walker Zimmerman

MIDFIELDERS: Brenden Aaronson, Kellyn Acosta, Tyler Adams, Luca de la Torre, Weston McKennie, Yunus Musah, Cristian Roldan

FORWARDS: Jesús Ferreira, Jordan Morris, Christian Pulisic, Gio Reyna, Josh Sargent, Tim Weah, Haji Wright

Photo credit: IMAGO / ZUMA Wire

Every MLS team is into preseason camp now, hustling and bustling inside of domes to avoid the snowfall outside, or passing and trapping away in happier, sunnier climes.

But it’s not so sunny for all the managers in charge; a bevy of bosses start the year in the weeds, under serious pressure as the league’s 21st season commences.

In a way this makes perfect sense; there are more teams in MLS these days, so more managers feeling the crush is no surprise. Don’t forget, MLS was much smaller potatoes just 10 short years ago, with only 12 clubs operating.

So more coaches standing in hot water as 20 clubs compete is, in some ways, just simple math.

The same math says plenty of coaches are also safe and secure moving into early preseason camps. But conflict is always more interesting to talk and write about; good on the coaches who enter 2016 all “snug as bugs in rugs” and all that, but they just aren’t as engaging of a topic.

So we look with greater interest at Toronto’s Greg Vanney, Seattle’s Sigi Schmid, Real Salt Lake’s Jeff Cassar, D.C. United’s Ben Olsen, Philadelphia’s Jim Curtin, NYCFC’s Patrick Vieira, Colorado’s Pablo Mastroeni, Houston’s Owen Coyle and perhaps Orlando City’s Adrian Heath.

SEE MORE: 2016’s 10 most intriguing names in Major League Soccer.

That’s almost half of the MLS managerial herd – quite a gaggle feeling the squeeze of an increasingly competitive league. Heck, even venerable old ranch hand Bruce Arena might find the air getting a little stuffy inside his Carson, Calif., office.

Obviously, pressure arrives in different degrees; not all of these Charlies in Charge will fall in the “job in imminent” danger category. Certainly not Arena; the pressure is a little different there. The Galaxy had three MLS Cup titles in four years before a rickety back line and outright awful goalkeeping corrupted the 2015 bid. So the pressure at the StubHub center feels different. But there’s pressure nonetheless to regain that former, exalted status.

But in the other places, job security really is on the wane. Or worse.

Toronto FC has truly made noise in the offseason with a prudent package of additions. In Drew Moor, Steven Beitashour, Clint Irwin and Will Johnson, TFC has secured precisely what was missing from an up-and-down 2016 season: solid, veteran contributors and leaders to augment that pricey Designated Player trio, Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley and Sebastian Giovinco. TFC had the prize fighters last year, but the undercard guys were mostly just tomato cans, especially in defense, and they were going nowhere fast without a fortified roster.

So now they have it. But that means Vanney has to produce. Before, it just wasn’t fair to assess the former U.S. international in his first professional managerial assignment. Now he’s got more proper fitting pieces. If he can’t get it right by mid-season, is it so hard to envision a change?

In Seattle, Schmid still has the most important pieces that made Seattle an MLS Cup favorite last year. Plus, he’s got Jordan Morris. Surely you’ve heard about the country’s next great soccer star, right? (Sigh, we just don’t learn about the dangers of over-hyping young, mostly untested talent, do we?).

Two years ago the club nearly turned the page with Schmid; ownership acknowledged a close call in keeping Schmid around after 2013. Since then he has more or less held serve, but not much more. A fourth-place finish and second round playoff elimination last year were enough to carry the league’s all-time winningest coach into 2016.

But there are branches aplenty to be ducked for Schmid. First, Jason Kreis is the dark shadow lurking behind so many MLS managers, and nobody can dismiss his close ties with Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey, not after what the pair built so smartly, previously, at Real Salt Lake. Kreis will be back in MLS sooner or later; book it.

There is Schmid’s health to be considered, too. Clearly, that trumps everything. And there is also this “end of era” feeling around teeming CenturyLink. Obafemi Martins, Clint Dempsey, Nelson Valdez, Chad Marshall, Brad Evans and Osvaldo Alonso are all north of 30 now. The stress of “now or never” will only grow with the first big injury to one of these backbone figures – and it is surely out there.

Cassar at Real Salt Lake and Mastroeni at Colorado are probably in most imminent danger. Neither made the playoffs last year, and it’s hard to say which failure hit hardest in the Rockies. RSL missed the post-season for the first time since 2007, a worthy streak for the small market operation. That won’t sit well with fans and team officials accustomed to better.

SEE MORE: Colorado is becoming the laughing stock of Major League Soccer.

Expectations don’t generally run as high in Commerce City outside of Denver, where Mastroeni has won just 17 of his first 68 matches as a pro coach (a 17-33-18 record in two seasons). Surely, the leash is chokingly short there, but then again who knows? So little seems to make sense when it comes to happenings around DSG Park, where the apparent lack of comprehensive plan remains perplexing.

(Oh, stop wondering if Kreis will “go home” to RSL. He won’t. Things have been different at Rio Tinto Stadium since owner Dell Loy Hansen took over, and the opinion that a real estate mogul who has no experience in sports management is “tearing his franchise to shreds” is increasingly popular. Kreis is too smart to jump back into that frying pan, especially as he is sure to have better options.)

Along the Eastern seaboard, three managers need to show their worth in 2016, although all three stressful situations have different frameworks.

Olsen is probably safe, but only because the cash-strapped operation cannot afford to replace him. Still, United has just one playoff series win since 2012. Olsen always sounds and looks like a guy who is feeling the pressure, so we’ll take his word for it.

Up the road in Philly, new whiz-kid technical director Earnie Stewart is in charge of personnel for the Union. Keeping Jim Curtin in place is the right thing to do; things around PPL Park have long been a complete mess, frankly, and that wasn’t Curtin’s fault. So for stability’s sake, having Curtin retain the coaching whistle makes sense. That said, a guy who went 10-17-7 last year and finished an unhappy ninth out of 10 teams won’t get much benefit of the doubt. He probably needs to produce in 2016. If things get off to a bad start, well, we mentioned Kreis being available, right? Stewart surely has already punched Kreis’ number into his smart phone.

Vieira has a pressure all his own, too. Kreis was saddled with a ridiculous distribution of midfield inertia (Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo) and that bandbox of a pitch at Yankee Stadium (bad for passing, but open season for goals off throw-ins!) and he still exceeded the number of wins for most expansion teams. Never mind that; NYCFC fired him.

Vieira is “next up,” and he totes the added burden of proving himself as a first-time pro manager.

South of there, Orlando City’s Heath did well in managing injuries and the usual mud puddle of a roster that expansion teams deal with. They very nearly made the playoffs. On the other hand, the franchise has high ambition, and a certain amount of front office instability and ongoing “new direction-itis” has to be unsettling for Heath.

Coyle gets a mulligan for his first season in MLS. The former Bolton manager didn’t make the playoffs with Houston in his initial American go-round – and don’t forget, it remains mathematically easier to make than to miss, as 12 of 20 teams slip past the post-season velvet ropes in MLS.

But he deserves a season with “his” players. Through December and January, Coyle had the chance to create the roster he deems best for Major League Soccer’s unique peculiarities. His changes included the bold move of parting ways with club favorite and do-all Brad Davis. So, add more heat to the heat and humidity around the club’s very orange downtown ground.

Jordan Morris, a.k.a. the newest chase rabbit in American soccer’s perpetual “next big thing” pursuit, has already established himself as a unique figure in the domestic game. He was a college kid who stamped a mark on the national team; Morris had another collegiate season at Stanford in him when he debuted (and scored!) at full international level against Mexico last spring in Texas.

Some of the booming voices in American soccer have pointed out Morris’ incredible position of leverage in the shark tank of current, professional negotiations. Here is what ESPN analyst Taylor Twellman just told Extra Time Radio:

“Jurgen Klinsmann is right in one sense on this: Jordan Morris, since the inception of Major League Soccer, is the only player to come out of college, to negotiate a contract and have the leverage of (being) a full national team player. Even Landon Donovan did not have that.”

So Morris already holds some unusual, if not unique positions, in domestic soccer. The young man is already busting up molds and models.

And in this flare-up of Jordan Morris frenzy, I see one more fascinating angle, one less discussed so far as he weighs his options, primarily between Germany’s Werder Bremen and the Seattle Sounders:

Klinsmann wants players to test themselves overseas, as we know. Of course, it’s not the “overseas” part, per se, that Klinsmann covets for America’s best and brightest; it’s the environment. Specifically, it’s the cultural immersion and day-to-day pressure that squeezes the very best from athletes. It’s Klinsmann’s beloved “bakery theory.”

It goes like this: When players in Germany or elsewhere in Europe lose on the weekend, they can barely go enjoy a cup of strong European coffee or stop at the local bakery for scones or brotchen or whatever because everyone in town is pissed off at them. Fold in the extraordinary layers of competition for playing time and that creates a zippy environment, one that ultimately pounds out the best soccer players, or so the theory goes.

SEE MORE: Morris saga highlights split between MLS and what’s best for USMNT.

But what if the pressure is actually greater elsewhere? What if the bigger, badder burden of expectation lies in – Egad! Say it ain’t so! – Major League Soccer?

We may have reached that previously unreached point with Morris. We may have ventured into this very odd place where, in this particular case, Morris will have feel more pressure in MLS as opposed to performing overseas. Klinsmann may be loath to admit as much, but you can make a decent case that the balance tips that way here. Not across the board, of course, but in this case.

Had he gone to Werder Bremen (which looks increasingly unlikely, according to the latest reports), he would toil away rather anonymously while chasing playing time with a bunch of other young hopefuls. In Germany, he is just another big, strong kid making his case for a mid-level team.

But a slightly heavier burden falls if he signs with the Sounders, where Morris’s deal with Seattle will easily eclipse all previous MLS contracts for homegrown players, according to Seattle manager Sigi Schmid and general manager Garth Lagerwey. The pressure starts and builds from there.

Generally speaking, we would probably agree that pressure to win in MLS is jayvee-level compared to expectations in Germany. See Klinsmann’s “bakery theory,” above. Or just think about the build-up of decades upon decades of pressure in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.

On the other hand, there are a couple of MLS outposts where hope and expectancy weigh heavy. Seattle, of course, with its billowing and boisterous fan base, is one of them. The Sounders organization has achieved so, so much since joining MLS in 2009. (It’s a history rich club that achieved amply prior to MLS days, too, of course.) But the granddaddy of MLS spoils, the MLS Cup, has yet to find its way into CenturyLink Field. The club has yet to appear as a finalist even, and the squeeze to get there approaches crush depth.

As if the two-ton pressure wasn’t clunky enough already, now bitter rival Portland has an MLS Cup crown. Talk about super-sizing the tension!

So, clearly, Morris would tote his share of the load where club hope and promise mount for Sounders FC.

SEE MORE: Morris’s decision won’t hurt the USMNT.

Then comes the competition aspect. At CenturyLink, Morris will presumably compete for front-line spots with Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins and Nelson Valdez. If you say, “Schmid will be under pressure to play the big, homegrown signing,” well, you might be correct. But every manager dwells under constant pressure to play the high earning DPs as well; Dempsey, Martins and Valdez are all DPs. So there’s that.

There is plenty of competition for minutes. Being no expert on Werder Bremen’s roster and current player form, I cannot establish a clear “more” or “less” level here compared to Seattle. But we can all reasonably agree that minutes for Morris in MLS aren’t going to be handed to him; he’ll earn his time through effort, tactical comprehensive and ultimate production … or he’ll sit.

Finally, throw in the burden of being a “first.” In some ways, Morris is carrying the pride of the college game. If he fails, he adds more weight to the argument against the college game as a developmental mechanism for Major League Soccer. Plus, MLS managers and technical directors might add a layer of reluctance when the next opportunity arises to offer a big-boy level contract to a lesser tested homegrown kid.

If there’s more pressure at Werder Bremen, it’ll be measured in ounces more than pounds. The kid’s got a lot going for him, but there’s already a lot expected of him, regardless of where he lands.

When it comes to assessing and dissecting the U.S. national team’s January camp rosters, here is this most important thing to remember: You really should conquer any urge to overreact.

Generally speaking, what happens in the January camp has only marginal bearing on what happens through the rest of the year, also known as the time “things get real,” or something like that.

January camp has always been about experimentation and exploration, so getting too upset about things happening on the StubHub Center training fields and at those two winter friendlies is just wasted energy. Remember how much breath we all wasted last year in deliberation of the three-man back line? Well, that thing was like the latest failed app out of Silicon Valley; it lasted 45 minutes and was never seen again.

So this is where it’s better to give Jurgen Klinsmann a pass on any mixed messages, spin and instances of wandering philosophy that have marked his time in charge. Yes, anyone could find a few things not to like about the January camp roster, but it was ever thus.

SEE MORE: January roster presents sharp contrast between old and young.

Would it be better to see a few more guys in the mid-career range (thinking mostly about Dax McCarty, Matt Hedges, Andrew Ferrell and Robbie Rogers here) invited into camp? Probably. After all, if this is a camp of opportunity ahead of World Cup qualifiers, as Klinsmann says, they seem closer to being battle hardened and ready to contribute than others.

Would it be better if Jermaine Jones, now 34 years old and likely to become an increasing drag on the program in various ways, were not any part of it? You could make that case.

Would it perhaps have been better to have two separate groups, one complete under-23 version ahead of the critical, last-hope Rio Olympics qualifier, alongside a more typical January senior team bunch? Perhaps.

But again, these are all meandering and somewhat pointless suggestions. The January camp has always been a bit of an odd duck, a camp whose purpose wanders and shifts with the times. It’s not something most national teams have, so its very structure and purpose is perennially “under construction.”

That’s not a criticism; it’s just a product of shifting priorities, shifting coaching staffs and shifting player pools. Remember, this is always an MLS-heavy camp, designed in large part for those MLS types. So the winter camp’s targets and intent evolve, based in part on how many national team candidates are in Europe. (Actually, even then it changes based on current dispersion patterns of the Yanks abroad. Players employed in Scandinavian leagues can participate in the camp, while most in England, Germany, Spain or elsewhere cannot, since their clubs remain in mid-season.)

So the camp’s purpose varies. Sometimes it’s a head start on fitness. Sometimes it’s about hard and fast prep for a meaningful World Cup qualifier. Sometimes it’s about examining a bigger crop newbies ahead of a fresh World Cup cycle. Either way, there’s always plenty of trial and error that lead to proportionally predictable results: a good “hit” here or there but a lot of “misses,” players who demonstrate through performance that they are overmatched at international level.

Even the size of the camp varies measurably; last year Klinsmann summoned 28 players, five more than this time around.

“The January camp has always been the camp of opportunities for players that badly, badly want to knock at the door of the senior national team and want to become a player of international status,” Klinsmann said in the federation’s press release. “Here we are giving that opportunity now to kind of already mature players like a Tony Tchani, like Ethan Finlay, or Luis Robles. You want these players really to come in and make a point and take that opportunity to try to come back into that group by the end of March and maybe play World Cup Qualifying.”

There’s a lot to like here as the camp plays out over a month in currently marshy Southern California, culminating in friendlies against Canada and Iceland. The camp starts Jan. 11 and finishes Feb. 5 with the second of two matches at the StubHub Center just outside of Los Angeles.

So, a better and longer look at Darlington Nagbe? Yes, give us a heaping helping of that, pretty please. Same for Jordan Morris. This is the chance for them to more solidly establish themselves as longtime roster staples.

It’s a good chance for Michael Bradley to put his so-so 2015 year behind him and find an early, appropriate pace to ease into a better 2016. Don’t underestimate the importance of getting the best from the longtime “brains” of this operation.

San Jose’s Fatai Alashe, Chicago Fire’s Matt Polster, Columbus’ Will Trapp and Tony Tchani all have an opportunity to establish themselves as the program’s No. 6, the heir to Kyle Beckerman’s role. You could perhaps add Dallas’ Kellyn Acosta to that list since he plays as a dual-defensive screener for Oscar Pareja, although he’s listed on the U.S. roster as defender, which is where he played in last year’s Under-20 World Cup.

High mountains have been conquered in luring biggie-big names into Major League Soccer. David Beckham was foremost, of course, but Andrea Pirlo, Didier Drogba, Kaka and quite a few others aren’t exactly $1.50 hamburger, either.

But we live in a day when players aren’t the only superstars of the global game; a few managers have arrived into this exalted place, this lighted stage of tactical enlightenment and leadership savvy.

It’s a relatively short list, depending on where you draw your line. Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Rafa Benitez, Jose Mourinho are the latest “daily specials,” so to speak. From there, depending on the week’s deliveries, you might include Roberto Mancini, Fabio Capello, Louis van Gaal, Arsene Wenger and perhaps a couple of others. Diego Simeone seems like he’s in the queue, for sure, and Sir Alex Ferguson was certainly there before he retired to write books and establish a permanent, lurking shadow over Old Trafford.

We could, perhaps, throw a few more names out there, those who have clawed their way into higher managerial recognition through national team acclaim: Marcelo Bielsa, Joachim Löw and, well, name the Mexican national team manager of the month. Either way, you get the idea.

SEE MORE: US’s January camp squad is a sharp contrast between young and old.

So we nerds of the domestic game, those who spend their time watching professional clubs in North America and debating implications of each national team roster, now pose this question:

When will one of these managerial superstars find their way into Major League Soccer?

These guys are liberally swapped among the big boys of Bundesliga, EPL, Serie A, La Liga and PSG. One day, surely, one will break ranks and flee West to MLS. But which one? And when?

And once he gets here … will it be his Waterloo? That is, will he even succeed? Carlos Alberto Parreira was still pretty fresh off a World Cup win, but he flopped badly for the MetroStars back in 1997. He is probably the biggest coaching ship to land on MLS shores.

There is an obvious impediment to a Klopp, a Pep or – Oh, please make it so one day! – a Mourinho hitching his horse to an MLS wagon: the salary, of course. Being merely “pretty good” in the manager’s seat earns you about $3 million a year in the Premier League. That’s what Mauricio Pochettino gets now for his work at White Hart Lane, and he’ll probably deserve a raise if Tottenham retains its place in the EPL table.

Slaven Bilic is earning around $4.4 million this year for his good work at West Ham. And you can see that we still haven’t gotten past the guard gate to the seriously tony neighborhood of Premier League estates. Klopp, the man who worked wonders at Dortmund before a quick re-set and then a ballyhooed arrival into Anfield, will make $10 million this year, according to British media reports. That apparently puts him fourth in earnings. Yes, fourth.

Wenger, van Gaal and, of course, Mourinho, are all on salaries north of there. (Mourinho, of course, must now have his salary figures from West London reported in past tense, as he just once again had his Stamford Bridge key card deactivated.)

What does that kind of money buy you in MLS? Well, let’s toss the LA Galaxy and Toronto FC out of this conversation, for the big spenders at the StubHub Center and BMO Field tend to skew this picture. But consider that Seattle, not quite in the TFC or Galaxy galaxy, still spend considerably on player salaries. Their total payroll was fifth among Major League Soccer’s 20 clubs, but “all in” it still didn’t quite reach $12 million in 2015.

And there you have it: a moderately big spending club in MLS currently pays $12 million in player salaries; they aren’t likely to pay $10 to Guardiola or his fellow fraternity members.

And yet … this is going to happen one day.

SEE MORE: 10 predictions for the 2016 MLS season.

Bruce Arena, 64 years old, won’t go on forever in Carson. He still seems energized, but he’s an East Coast guy at heart. Or perhaps he’ll want to spend more time with his grandchildren. Or maybe he’ll just get tired of rising habitually at 5:30 a.m. (you know, to get into the office by 7 a.m.). Either way, the Galaxy will need a new boss sooner or later. And since the AEG model is unlikely to change, stars will prowl the lot. They’ll need a firm hand, someone with enough bona fides to tell heavy hitters what’s what. Giovani dos Santos, Steven Gerrard and Robbie Keane won’t be around forever, but their younger contemporaries are lining up.

Down the road from Carson, LAFC is growing from its spindly roots. They’ve already got a swell website! And they were barely a rumor when thoughts took flight of Cristiano Ronaldo bouncing regally around the ground. No disrespect to Ben Olsen or Jay Heaps or anyone else in the MLS coaching circle, but the $22 million man (Ronaldo, that is) might have a hard time taking orders from a guy who couldn’t afford his shoe collection, not even at a discounted price.

New York City FC is other obvious candidate to spend lavishly one day on a global hotshot manager. They already have hit the EPL pace on burning through coaches; Jason Kreis went above the average in wins for an MLS expansion team and still got kicked to the curb. If Patrick Vieira, now the man with the whistle at Yankee Stadium, can’t wave a magic wand fast enough, they’ll probably fire him, too. Then what?

I’ll tell you what: they might just reach out to a Mourinho or a Klopp or a Pep. After all, these guys are already filthy rich and might be willing to take 50 cents on the dollar to manage in the Big Apple, to prove themselves worthy of the MLS challenge.

It might be New York. It might be one of the teams in L.A. as that arms race escalates. It might be in Miami, where the David Beckham-led band of VIP brothers will surely want someone befitting the luminary brand. Guys like Carl Robinson and Oscar Pareja are terrific young names with serious upside, of course. And yet, I’m just not sure they have enough sizzle for a group with such a peacocky name as Miami Beckham United.

At some point, some bunch of Richie Riches will simply not be able to contain themselves. Frustration boiling over that their man with the whistle keeps getting beat by a Robinson, a Pareja, a Jesse Marsch, etc., some club will turn to a special one. Or a “Normal one.” Or they’ll remind Guardiola of that nice year he spent in New York.

And what a glorious day it will be, a PR bonanza for the league, a payday for writers and broadcasters covering MLS and a delight for fans who love to hate the big managerial cheese. (Well, unless it’s Klopp, because who doesn’t love that guy?)

Our country’s soccer fans and pundits have been arguing about so-called passport players since before we knew what a pundit was. It’s been a talker since the days of Thomas Dooley and Earnie Stewart, the top US performers among the foreign-born set at a highly meaningful World Cup 1994.

But old argument doesn’t mean bad or unnecessary argument. In fact, this quarrel needs a fresh going-over every now and then, especially given the ongoing evolution, the steady bulking up of the US game. Abby Wambach may have been an unlikely figure to spin this wheel, but spin she did last week.

SEE MORE: On her final day, Abby Wambach was at full volume.

A good starting point for the discussion is this dandy little pearl of wisdom (if this one isn’t in your personal, lifetime tool kit, it really should be): “Show me a simple answer to a complex question and I’ll show you the wrong answer.”

If you see Wambach today, remind her of that, after wishing her the happiest of holidays, of course! Wambach was wrong … but no reason to be uncivil about it. Besides, while her remarks on the subject were ineloquent and half-baked, perhaps she’s driving toward a certain point. Landon Donovan got a little closer to the point, mercifully folding more nuance into the conversation. From there, some thoughtful, countering remarks by Mix Diskerud supplied useful balance and context.

Here is the basic outline of last week’s point-counter point:

On the occasion of here retirement, Wambach offered a couple of HSTs (Hot Soccer Takes) on Jurgen Klinsmann’s national team. We all have our thoughts on Klinsmann and a wildly underwhelming 2015, so why shouldn’t Wambach take her swings at the piñata?

She says to fire the guy; Wambach is hardly the only one banging that drum, so nothing too controversial there. But one of her objections to the Klinsmann regime was that he “brought in these foreign guys …” That’s the one that lit the Christmas tree on fire.

Wambach insinuated that this was something new, which it isn’t. Klinsmann has certainly made more liberal use of talented players of American parents who grew up abroad, but he no more invented the practice than he invented eggnog. Around the world, it goes back well before the days of Dooley, Stewart, et al.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. These are US citizens, period. More than that, if you talk to someone like Diskerud, who grew up in Norway but often “summered” in the United States in his youth, he sounds quintessentially American. He knows his Yankees from his Red Sox. He understands that Colonel Sanders isn’t really in the armed services and probably knows that Homer Simpson loves him some beer and doughnuts.

So Diskerud was right (and the right figure) to offer his thoughtful retort, defending himself and Klinsmann’s class of foreign-born providers of soccer skill and know-how.

Now, is Diskerud 100 percent right? Well, yes and no. This is where the complexity comes in – an evolving complexity at that.

It’s not Klinsmann’s “use” per se of foreign born talent. Rather it’s the frequency of usage that sometimes riles the masses. It’s Klinsmann’s apparent preference to “discover” another man of US lineage rather than provide further opportunity to a player developed through America’s youth systems. Yeah, the systems are flawed. But if you’re wondering “maybe we should work harder to fix the flaws rather than bandage over them with the next Timothy Chandler gambit,” well, you aren’t the only one.

See, for every successful! German-born Fabian Johnson, there is a Chandler, still another German-born son of a US serviceman. Most soccer supports in our home of the brave know Johnson as a quality, versatile left-sider who almost always delivers the goods, sometimes with a flourish. He’s not just a solid Bundesliga man anymore, he’s a budding star. Chandler’s performance has been a mixed bag at very best; in some assessments, the guy’s got a big bag of nothing. Plus, his commitment to the US cause can rightly be questioned, going back to Bob Bradley’s time in charge.

When a guy doesn’t seem 100 percent on board, and when he rates a “just OK” overall, that’s where a bunch of us crane our heads, wondering “what gives?” And yet, he’s got more skin in the national team game than Terrence Boyd, Danny Williams, John Brooks, Julian Green and other members of US Soccer’s passing and trapping foreign legion.

There are more of them, and probably more to come, still. That’s where Donovan’s points resonate. Donovan wondered aloud if, to a man, everyone’s heart was in it 100 percent?

Donovan said he told Klinsmann there are “a few players on your World Cup roster .. that don’t care in the same way I do.” He told Klinsmann that a poor World Cup showing might sting some of the foreign-born players, but it would “devastate” him.

We can’t know what’s truly in a man’s heart, but if I’m guessing, I’d say Donovan was right. Not about every player, for sure, and that’s not what he was saying. But one or two of them? Well, he was in the locker room with these guys, and Donovan is a pretty sharp guy.

Even if he wasn’t right about specific World Cup cause and effect, Donovan was getting at another point, one that speaks to the larger, more general men’s national team program’s purpose and ambition. Obviously, as professionals, everyone wants to win, whether they were born in California, Colombia, Croatia or Cologne. Most paid-to-play athletes are where they are, in part, because competitive drive is hard-wired. They want to prevail in every pickup game. They narrow the eyes and tighten the laces for every silly little practice field game of “cross bar.”

But in the critical match-day moment, when they need a little more “want to,” a little more fight and desire, when it’s time to block out pain and faithfully ignore exhaustion – keep running until you physically cannot run any more, the way Frankie Hejduk once spoke of the necessary effort – is everybody on board for the love of country? Are they all toiling for the same cause? Do they all share the same cultural “can do” faith? (Because not every country does.) Do they fight for each other and love each other the way soldiers say? There are lots of quality soccer nations out there; that last little 1-2 percent of effort and belief, surely the hardest to tap, could be the difference.

That’s where Donovan’s point was presumably heading, and he’s not wrong in asking that question. The United States team has been at its best (from a results standpoint, that is) when fighting as scrappy underdogs, when making good use of that pesky chip on their collective shoulder.

Perhaps he wasn’t questioning some players’ effort so much as the ability to develop esprit de corps, the intangible of creating team identity so that there’s more on at stake than wins and losses. Perhaps it’s true that to perform at their best, US players must want to show that America works – that American soccer works.

Bruce Arena was nibbling around the edges of the same point a few years ago, essentially asking, “If we’re not ultimately concerned with developing our own players, then what’s it all about?”

So there’s the rub for many of us. Johnson can soar up and down the wing, and that’s great! If Diskerud runs the midfield like a man possessed, every American Outlaw from chapters far and wide will sing the man’s praises, wholly unconcerned if he was born in Norway. And on it goes; most of us recognize their individual, rightful citizenship and feel damn proud when they tell the world they “always felt American.” You betcha they did!
But bigger picture, beyond those individuals, what do we want the program to be?

If the prevailing goal is to construct one team, purpose built for pushing deep into World Cup 2018, well, maybe a couple more runs through the German and other European dual citizenship data are worth it. Maybe. Even then, forging team identity and chemistry is surely part of the exercise. And if the goals is building something bigger, something more lasting is the ultimate ambition, then perhaps, if all things are roughly equal, choosing the player developed through our own systems is the better choice. It’s really just about balance. It always has been. But the balance is surely shifting.

We needed Dooley and Stewart back then, and guys like Roy Wegerle and Fernado Clavijo, too. Do we need them now? Do we need as many? What are the implications to the bigger picture? What is the downside in developing team identity? These are the relevant questions, and the answers are shifting.

If someone says the answers are simple, well, wish them a Merry Christmas or appropriate holiday greeting. Then remind them how wrong they are.

Is there anyone in the US soccer establishment more ready for 2015 to be over than federation president Sunil Gulati? Well, check that … in this glorious year of FIFA comeuppance, perhaps we should say it this way: “Is there anyone associated with US soccer not headed to jail who is more ready for 2015 to over and done with already?” The point is, it’s been a pretty rough year for one of US Soccer’s most influential figures, punctuated by this latest bungle, this PR tire fire in Hawaii, a mess completely of US Soccer’s creation.

Yep. It’s been one black eye after another American soccer’s governing body.

On the latest imbroglio, US Soccer has officially copped to this one, to erring on the thoughtless scheduling and lack of oversight that led to cancellation of a women’s national team match against Trinidad and Tobago at Aloha Stadium. When a decision for mea culpa is one of your organization’s better choices of the year, well, that’s a bad year. (Seriously, admit the error, apologize and move on. It remains absolutely head spinning how so many important folks and big organizations, swimming in their own arrogance, simply refuse to recognize this as the fastest way to rescue a story from the news cycle.)

Gulati has had a bad year, and a lot of it is his fault. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The bottom line is this: A bad year for U.S. Soccer means a bad year for one of US Soccer’s foremost leaders, and Gulati needs to up his game for 2016.

The roiling FIFA scandal may never actually land at Gulati’s feet (let’s hope not), but Gulati did himself no favors by mostly hiding from it all, staying as far away as possible in a safe, defensive crouch. In his capacity as leader of US Soccer – especially as the man in charge of soccer in the country that has made all this happen – the “safe position” is hardly the right position. He needs to be out front in all of this.

SEE MORE: We, soccer’s fans, are to blame for FIFA’s corruption.

Gulati declined to testify before a US Senate subcommittee in July, instead dispatching US Soccer CEO Dan Flynn for several hours of questioning about US Soccer’s knowledge of corruption at CONCACAF and FIFA.

Similarly, Gulati has mostly balked at questions about his relationship with Chuck Blazer, the disgraced US Soccer and CONCACAF official who helped topple the FIFA house, cooperating with FBI and IRS agents to help expose the rampant corruption. Blazer was “Co-conspirator #1” in the federal indictment last May, so Gulati’s relationship with him seems like fair game for journalists.

All of that was happening around the time the United States women’s soccer team was plowing successfully through the Women’s World Cup in Canada. Which was all well and good … except that it didn’t come without a piping hot side of controversy. No, not the artificial turf fields; that completely avoidable entanglement was still ahead for US Soccer. Rather, it was about Hope Solo. Of course it was; drama follows Solo the way microphones follow Donald Trump.

That put US Soccer in a bad spot, and criticism fell hard when Solo was allowed to represent the United States despite concerns over episodes of domestic violence. And you thought it was the NFL’s job to be tone deaf on this matter.

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan chided “Do-nothing US Soccer” and its permissive stance. “The renowned US women’s national soccer team, which has historically stood for what is best in sports, and the best of us, is now protecting – even promoting – an alleged domestic abuser.”

It wasn’t just media in this dog pile. US Senator Richard Blumenthal wasted no harsh words in a letter to Gulati, admonishing US Soccer for leniency in allowing Solo to wear the US colors in the Women’s World Cup.

SEE MORE: Sunil Gulati is to blame for the US men’s decline.

The women ultimately prevailed in the Women’s World Cup. While that certainly didn’t excuse the fed’s handling of Solo, it did serve as useful distraction, providing everyone something else to write and talk about. By contrast, performance was precisely the concern for the men’s team. Dissatisfaction with the Jurgen Klinsmann rose to such a level that blame began falling at Gulati’s feet.

There were days in 2015 when Gulati would have preferred to deal with l’affaire FIFA rather than field questions about his hand-picked US national team manager. Klinsmann’s time in charge has hardly been the complete fiasco that some have painted, but we’re not talking Steve Jobs-level success, either. Connecting the dots between Klinsmann and Gulati became blood sport as one disappointing result after another filled a summer of mounting national team discontent.

Along the way, there were little brush fires, as well. Anyone remember the pitiful field conditions in San Antonio for an otherwise enjoyable US-Mexico friendly? (Seriously, guys … it’s 2015. Get this right. Get out of the temporary field business or create more reliable processes for usage.) Later came the US under-23 efforts, which fell short of qualifying for next year’s Rio Olympics. There bid isn’t dead, but with a playoff ahead against Colombia, it seems mostly dead. And that (apparently impending) failure is largely a failure of Klinsmann. He picked the coach, Andi Herzog. Once we finish drawing the circles, they point back to the top, where the “buck stops” and all that. That, of course, is US Soccer’s president.

SEE MORE: US Soccer’s problems go beyond Gulati, Klinsmann.

In reality, Flynn, as US Soccer CEO, makes a lot of decisions around the US Soccer office in Chicago. But Gulati is the face, and his was surely a long one for most of 2015. This episode in Hawaii has poor management – inattentive at best, just plain shoddy at worst – written all over it.

Everyone agrees that the field at Aloha Stadium is a scourge. Given the ongoing, difficult conversations on the women’s national team and artificial turf, you would think US Soccer would have been particularly cautious and sensitive on this matter. Instead, US Soccer flubbed this one about as badly as possible. Unfortunately, this one seems to be a “defining the culture” moment, and that falls on the big bosses.

There were surely a lot of fingerprints on the Hawaii hiccup including, at some point, Flynn’s. But Gulati is the organizational face, the first stop on the accountability express; it comes with the job.

It’s been a bad year. It needs to be better in 2016. Gulati has to lead the way in getting there.

Maybe for you, Major League Soccer rests in a good place at 20 teams, the same size as the Premier League and some of the other heralded associations with which American soccer remains endlessly smitten. Or maybe you wanted MLS to fill more dots in this great big land of ours, stretching from sea to shining sea with 24 or 28 or even 32 teams. Or, why stop there? What about a bigger footprint still? Picture Oprah sitting at conference of mayors: “You get a team! And you get a team!” After all, the country’s king daddy of sporting behemoths, the NFL, is a high functioning 32-team operation.

But what we probably all agree on, the MLS supporters who prefer “small” and those who covet more grand designs, is that further league expansion had a certainly inevitability, didn’t it? Expansion in MLS has generated its own, hard-to-contain momentum lately.

So when MLS commissioner Don Garber announced last week that league owners want to pursue expansion to 28 teams, the surprise factor rated “very low.” Somewhere near “Donald Trump says something outrageous!”

When it comes to MLS expansion, it’s not exactly a full-fledged feeding frenzy to add member clubs as quickly as possible, but it’s sure not to far from one either. Manifest destiny is built into the American DNA, after all.

MLS had 12 teams just 10 years ago. It was a 16-team league just five years ago; the 2010 season came and went with two conferences of eight clubs, which looks a little cute and quaint now.

Pretty soon that became an 18-team operation, which bloomed quickly into the 20-team league that just completed another MLS season. Actually, even as Columbus and Portland were playing in a helter-skelter championship match Sunday, it wasn’t really even a 20-team league anymore; with Atlanta, Minnesota and LAFC all sorted out and set to join no later than 2018, a 23-team league is already a hardened reality.

(In fact, this all becomes a 24-team set the moment David Beckham pulls enough political and financial levers in South Florida to get that slow-starting engine off the starting line. He says it’s done, but we’ve heard that before, and we should never, ever forget the golden rule of MLS stadium development: “Artist renderings and ‘done deal announcements’ are nice and all, but only a fool believes any of it until someone actually puts a shovel into the ground.”)

SEE MORE: Access to public transportation makes Beckham’s Miami site a winner.

With expansion fees hovering near $100 million and suitors practically lining up like Black Sunday shoppers, who can blame MLS for going a little expansion bonkers? Besides, is it really a bad thing? That seems highly doubtful. Honestly, what is the downside to a 28-team MLS?

Dilution of talent and alarmist notions of diminishing quality is the primary argument against MLS getting the way most of us do around the holidays – a bit overstuffed. With all due respect to a few smart guys in the game who have voiced concerns, former New England manager Steve Nicol among them, those worries are misplaced.

I’ve heard these same concerns since MLS was a 12-team operation. Again, that wasn’t so very far back. But if you watched MLS in 2005 and then again in 2015, you saw two very, very different products on the field. If MLS in 2005 was “standard definition TV,” MLS has improved to HD 1080p. Quality improves through a variety of areas, but mostly via two elements: the number of competently skillful players and the number of difference makers. Both quantities have improved dramatically in MLS.

If you look back at the players who competed for MLS Cup in 2005 (L.A. Galaxy defeated New England), there were some really good performers on the field that sunny day outside Dallas, augmented by a few men of international level talent (Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan, Cobi Jones, Herculez Gomez and Michael Parkhurst most notably). Those were two pretty well-stocked rosters, which is why those clubs were large and in charge on an MLS Cup final Sunday. Well, today most MLS teams have a roster that looks like that. As in, all 20 of them.

There is literally a world of soccer players, and the spending money that MLS clubs have to attract them keeps ticking up incrementally. Meanwhile, the academies that are producing across MLS – and producing prolifically in places like Dallas, Vancouver and elsewhere – weren’t much more than a rumor back in 2005.

So, no, expansion will not be a drag on quality, not so long as salary caps that allow for clubs to spend on good, mid-level European and South American talent keeps gradually rising. (When thinking of “good, mid-level talent” that doesn’t break the bank; think of players like Justin Meram, Tony Tchani, Will Trapp, Diego Chara, Rodney Wallace and Jorge Villafana, none of whom made more than $170,000 as a base in 2015 as they held vital roles in helping usher Columbus or Portland into the MLS Cup final.)

Why else would anyone fear a larger MLS? The ghosts of the old North American Soccer League have been long vanquished. Yes, the old NASL expanded too quickly, relying too heavily on wobbly ownership that eventually went leaky and sank the ship. Well, this ain’t the 1970s, and the landscape looks remarkable different for soccer. Besides, MLS commissioner Don Garber and his crew have been careful in vetting financial heft of would-be owners. If merely being rich and passionate were sufficient as a requirement of MLS ownership – as opposed to being ridiculously rich – AC St. Louis would already be part of MLS.

On the other hand, there are lots of reasons to champion further expansion. Most of them start with establishing a larger US footprint, a goal long pursued by MLS, but one where plenty of ground remains untaken.

Awareness of MLS within the league’s 19 markets ranges from “OK” to “outstanding,” which puts the league in a pretty good place in 2015. Not an outstanding place, though; merely “pretty good.” See, it’s a big country. And if you drive an hour in any direction from most of those markets, “MLS” is just a bunch of letters. They wouldn’t know Benny Feilhaber from Benny and the Jets. Most people would guess that Red Bull Arena was for rodeos rather than restarts.

According to this list, 13 of the country’s top 30 TV markets will remain unserved by MLS even when the league hits 24 teams. (Yes, there is professional soccer in many of these untapped markets, and blessedly so. But none of the other leagues have national TV contracts.) As we might declare about a slow-footed holding midfielder, “He isn’t covering enough ground!”

A more substantial footprint adds more awareness, which adds to TV contracts, which adds money to buy players, which adds interests across all markets, where they can sell more seats and gin up the sponsorship contracts, etc. All of that adds awareness, which further drives TV contracts, player salaries, gate receipts … and so it goes in a circular pattern.

SEE MORE: MLS Cup draws 874K viewers across platforms.

The early TV ratings are out for an MLS Cup final that was short of beautiful soccer but high on entertainment. Those ratings in a word: disappointing. Yes, two smaller market clubs helped create ratings on the skinny side. But so did this: the ongoing lack of a larger national footprint mentioned above.

MLS is 20 years old is doing fine, making slow and steady progress. The best chance to keep the party going, to ensure the train of progress moves down the track? It’s still about growth – for now at least.

I remember exactly where I was for the very first kick of Major League Soccer: at an oddly configured but otherwise terrific Irish pub with a bunch of soccer nerds just like myself, excited for the match but absolutely giddy with anxious delight about what was unfolding more broadly.

I doubt that anybody associated with Major League Soccer back then – I was “associated,” I suppose, as a beat writer at a newspaper, pretty stoked to have a weighty soccer league to cover – could stop themselves from dreaming a little bit. We all had some inkling that MLS could possibly … maybe … hopefully … turn into something substantial. Something with some resonance and relevance, some cultural heft at home and enough on-field quality to make the world take notice.

But nobody could say exactly what that would look like. Some dreams soared high; some just floated gently aloft. But safe to say, nobody quite knew what the league might evolve into 5, 10 … 20 years down the road. Frankly, everyone wondered in their quiet moments if the league wouldn’t be another marker in the graveyard of failed soccer leagues.

Now, we know this:

Major League Soccer, as the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada, is in a great place. Could it be bigger? Yes. Could it do some things better? Of course. Would we chest bump a little more if TV ratings improved at a faster clip or if underperforming markets would catch up? You bet.

But make no mistake, league progress has been remarkable, a success story that leans toward “stunning.” And as this country’s most visible soccer property (along with the United States men’s national team), success of MLS is essential to the perception of soccer’s ongoing progress and success.

On the occasion of the league’s landmark 20th MLS Cup final this Sunday, it’s a good time to take stock in it, an ideal time to look back and look around.

The growth curve certainly isn’t what we thought as Eric Wynalda curled in that initial MLS goal back in 1996. (A few beers in, I still remember the moment well.) We might have anticipated an initial burst, a big early curve of success and then a leveling off. But things hardly went that way. Growth was frustratingly slow in the early years. In fact, things went backward as contraction happened in 2001, dropping MLS from 12 to 10 teams (and coming perilously close to shutting doors altogether). By then, three owners were carrying the league. More than carrying, in fact, they had to double down on the investment. Phil Anschutz, Lamar Hunt and the Kraft family all had to pony up about $70 million to fund the league and the bigger leap of faith: investment in SUM, the marketing arm that subsequently secured some vital international TV rights.

After the first 100 matches or so in Major League Soccer, crowds fell into a fairly predictable pattern for more than 10 years, generally around 14,500. So, that growth curve wasn’t really much of one until 2007 or so, when Toronto FC helped usher in the “2.0” years.

If you have followed the league, you know most of that. Plenty has been written about how David Beckham and the targeting shift in marketing to urban 20- and 30-somethings changed the game. Now, the youth academies are changing the way clubs manage personnel. Again, that’s all out there for you to find.

Getting back to 20 years ago, how we all hoped it would turn into something grand, something that would merge steadily into mainstream, setting up shop as the fourth or fifth major US team sport. But there were a few things none of us probably foresaw.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from the second legs of MLS’s conference finals.

Start with Stadiums: MLS opened as bunch of renters, generally in grounds poorly suited in substantial ways. The fields were too small, the seats too many and the surface too artificial turfy in too many places.

Everyone recognized the financial need for stadiums, but perhaps none among us could fully grasp the overarching importance. Controlling dates (impossible while playing inside college or pro football facilities) means so much, vastly altering the dynamics of TV contract negotiations.

Of course, the economic boon was the king daddy of game changers. The “known” revenue streams were opened thanks to Crew Stadium in Columbus first, then the Home Depot Center outside LA, and on and on. (Now, 15 MLS grounds were built exclusively for, or renovated for MLS.) But it all went beyond just added parking and concession revenues: naming rights, concerts, other events, an increasing number of suites and clubs in the modern facilities, enhanced sponsorship packages, more merchandising opportunities – these all unfolded for clubs, and thankfully so.

Beyond all that, few in 1996 could truly understand the value boost to perception once teams gained their own grounds, the brick-and-mortar metaphors for community permanence. I always go back to what Dwayne De Rosario said so perfectly a few years ago: “Nobody takes you seriously until you get your own stadium.”

You were nothing short of clairvoyant if, back in 1996, you saw 15 dedicated stadiums operating for MLS. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the progress here. Even if you don’t realize it, these stadiums change every MLS conversation, and the progress in getting to this place (again, 15 and counting) is the single most essential element in an MLS that looks pretty good at 20.

Standard of play: Measuring the quality of soccer happening inside the grounds is painfully subjective. Easier to quantify is the quality of athlete doing all this vertical passing and skilled trapping. The real progress here isn’t really at the tip-top end of the global player echelon; rather, it’s in the number of “very goods.” Even 5-10 years ago, it would be difficult to see so many US national team regulars migrating back from Europe. Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore etc., plus the non-US likes of Robbie Keane, David Villa, Kaka, Sebastian Giovinco and so on. Would anybody have really predicted salaries north of $5 million becoming fairly common?

The MLS workadays are better, too, thanks to an evolving salary structure that allows for the Villas, Keanes and Dempseys, while also allowing the median MLS salary to hit just north of $90,000 annually. That may not be ideal, but for 28-man rosters, that’s not terrible, either.

SEE MORE: Old rules about foreign coaches may not apply to our new MLS.

Expansion: Here’s where all this starts coming together, as the league has doubled over 20 years. (Mostly, it has doubled prudently – Chivas USA as the black eye, the glaring exception.) Stadiums and gradually improved marketing strategies drove revenue, which boosted perception, which helped drive TV contract value (locally and nationally). All of that helps put more money into player contracts and encourage more stadium projects and, well, you start to see the sustaining circles, how everything builds on everything else.

And then more people want in the game. Put another way, more cities want in the game … because they see all of this happening.

The initial 1996 “buy in” for Major League Soccer was $5 million per team. Today, that gets you a section of a stadium. Maybe. (Heck, a roof on one side costs about $8 million on these things.) Because the latest Forbes valuation of MLS franchises lands at an average of $147 million. It ain’t NFL money, but it’s not $5 million, either.

The league will soon be 24 teams once Atlanta, Minnesota and L.A.’s second club get off the ground. (Well, also Miami … or the city that shuffles excitedly into Miami’s seat if MLS finally “punts” on Beckham’s floundering efforts in South Florida.)

Back in 1996, as 10 teams crawled out of the starting blocks, you might squint really hard and see a 16-team league. Past that, it was all too hazy, like seeing past the nearest building on a foggy London day. You knew more, maybe much, much more was out there. Somewhere. In some undefined shape and scale.

Did you see a 24-team league, with some absolutely stunning stadiums, with grounds teeming of passion in Seattle and Portland and Kansas City and elsewhere? Did you see US national team players who stayed home for the truly big money? Did you see a time when soccer was the cool sport for the hipsters, when Stephen Colbert’s Late Show had soccer (not baseball or basketball or American football) as a regular feature in its nightly intro?

Doubtful on all accounts.

If you’re a Major League Soccer backer, it’s OK to want bigger and better. Just don’t sell short how far this thing has come in 20 years.

More Major League Soccer:

• Difference between MLS, NASL models creates worrying arms race in second division.
• FC Dallas and the birth of MLS 3.0
• Vieira appointment shows City Football Group has yet to learn from the Lampard fiasco

Determining the surest path to Major League Soccer success is tricky business; A league in ongoing evolution makes it so.

It’s like raising children. What works in creating the most precious little kindergartener won’t work as that kid turns 11 or 12. What compels best behavior for pre-teens probably won’t do the job when they start driving.

So it is with MLS. The growth curve will eventually level out, and it has probably already begun doing so. And yet, it’s still tricky business for now, because what worked in 2005 isn’t what works in 2015. When we cut down to the bone of Ws and Ls here, we’re mostly talking about three areas of evolution: what kind of player cuts it in MLS, how rosters are constructed and what kind of manager tends to be most effective.

Tuesday, the Chicago Fire hired Veljko Paunovic, the man who worked wonders with the Serbian under-20s, which recently lofted FIFA’s Under-20 World Cup trophy at the expense of more celebrated sides. Well done, sir!

Paunovic does have experience in MLS, although only the proverbial cup of coffee. He made 17 appearances for the Philadelphia Union in 2011. The Union’s was the last of 11 uniforms Paunovic wore over 18 professional years.

The Yugoslavian-born former midfielder, now 38, certainly isn’t the highest profile of recent managerial hires. That goes to Patrick Vieira, the towering figure who presided regally over Arsenal’s midfield for some fantastic teams around old Highbury.

Vieira finished at Manchester City, where club leaders recognized his abilities and wisely folded the Frenchman into their youth development efforts. Earlier this month, the City Football Group named Vieira to replace Jason Kreis at New York City FC.

SEE MORE: Vieira appointment shows City has yet to learn from the Lampard fiasco.

The initial reaction on these recent hires – and, admittedly, my reaction – was that some lessons need re-learning. Again and again, it seems. In this case, that the best chance at MLS managerial achievement means handing the whistle and chalkboard to someone whose teeth were cut in the league, or those who have invested significant time here, at least.

It’s that elemental familiarity that matters, finding someone who won’t be undone by the cold water plunge of the league’s unique quirks and peculiarities, not to mention a salary structure and set of player acquisition mechanisms that is completely, well, foreign to most foreigners.

The foursome of clubs still alive in this year’s MLS playoffs are directed by American born-and-bred Jesse Marsch, Gregg Berhalter and Caleb Porter, and by Colombian Oscar Pareja. Pareja joined MLS in 1998 and hasn’t lived beyond the States since. Ironically, he appears to be the most passionate believer in the upside for American soccer talent; his story of building the FC Dallas youth system is getting plenty of sunshine, and deservedly so.

More to the point, Pareja is the first non-American manager since Englishman Gary Smith in 2010 to make Major League Soccer’s “final four.” (We’re counting Sigfried Schmid as “American;” born in Germany, “Sigi” Schmid came to this country as a small child.)

SEE MORE: FC Dallas and the birth of MLS 3.0.

So while Juan Carlos Osorio, Wilmer Cabrera, Marco Schällibaum, Hans Backe, Aron Winter and other “sexier” foreign hires have come and gone to varying degrees of stalemate or outright collapse, a few good old Yankee Doodle Dandies are getting the business done. (Obviously, quite a few Americans have come and gone, too.)

Ruud Gullit was the most notorious of the foreign sexy man hire. Gullit is the fabulously talented Dutchman who failed so fabulously in his managerial walk-about with Los Angeles. The course correction was hiring the most successful American-born manager ever to walk our Earth, Bruce Arena.

So, buy American, right?

Well, maybe. That’s where this MLS-in-evolution thing comes in. That’s why, after some reconsideration, taking a chance on a Paunovic or a Vieira has some merit, too.

Nelson Rodriguez is making the critical calls around Toyota Park outside Chicago now. Rodriguez spent 14 years in MLS, mostly in various jobs at HQ in New York. He’s a sharp guy, and he should know as well as anyone what works and what doesn’t.

Paunovic does represent the bold choice. That doesn’t make him the best choice; only time will tell about that. But Rodriguez didn’t fall back on someone safer, someone with previous MLS managerial experience. That’s what Chicago (Frank Yallop) and Montreal (Frank Klopas) did before, never mind that both coaches had tumbled ingloriously from their previous posts.

The downside to hiring Paunovic is that someone like Kerry Zavagnin, who has now interviewed twice for the Fire position, doesn’t get his chance. Zavagnin has served faithfully under Peter Vermes at Kansas City, and will hopefully get his opportunity at one of the new MLS addresses. Or maybe at Chicago, if Paunovic doesn’t, er, pan out.

Zavagnin would have been a safer choice, although not necessarily the better one. Will Paunovic work as Major League Soccer rounds itself into MLS 3.0? It’s not a strong position to take as an analyst, but the most honest answer is, “We’ll see.” We barely know what MLS will look like in 2016, much less what it will look like as a 24-team league by 2018 or thereabouts.

I mean, the Galaxy or the Sounders might find a couple more star-men that they really, really want over the next couple of years – which means the league is likely to invent new rules to see that it happens. Seriously, the league’s salary structure and acquisition devices remain a work in progress. So do the primary club targets. If US Open Cup and CONCANCAF Champions League become more attractive objects of desire, it may alter the way clubs divvy up the roster dough. Either way, club approach will vary.

Teams like Dallas and Vancouver are demonstrating that building inexpensively around youth is a viable alternative. New York and Columbus, the Eastern Conference teams still alive, are built on the cheap, too, although the MOs around Mapfre Stadium and Red Bull Arena look a little different, a more assorted mix of young and old.

Marsch and Berhalter certainly look like great coaching fits. But maybe they wouldn’t be the best choices for Yankee Stadium, where managing big ego and big politics from City Football Group make that job a different jar of pickles altogether. Just ask Kreis.

Maybe Berhalter or Marsch would be miscast at clubs where youngsters will need patient, almost fatherly tutelage. Perhaps Pareja wouldn’t work at Toronto, another address where high-dollar figures will continue to be a heavy weapon. We don’t know.

Some clubs are going to demand bottom line success. That makes a guy like Dominic Kinnear, an old school 4-4-2 guy whose teams achieve through locker room accountability and blue collar ethos, a solid choice. Ben Olsen, who looks safe at D.C. United despite an apparent plateau, has a team of grinders that look a lot like 11 Ben Olsens from back in the day.

But the owner or club decider who demands a more stylistic approach – think Portland Timbers or Sporting Kansas City – may need a coach of different stripes.

Perhaps the point is this: Increasingly in MLS there is room for diversity of approach. That goes for playing style, for personnel acquisition and development and for managerial design. It looks that way in 20-team MLS, so it stands to reason that a 24-team MLS will accommodate similar diversity, if not even more.

The key that fits the lock here: finding the right man for the specific job. Is he a builder? An organizer and taskmaster? A disciplinarian? A motivator? A tactician who can take what someone else has built and get them over the hump?

And there’s one more critical element: the man has to want the job.

SEE MORE: Difference between MLS and NASL models creates a worrying arms race in the second division.

This is where it probably does pay to buy American. People raised through MLS want to be here. For lots of American coaches, a place like Chicago would be their dream job. That may or may not be the case with Paunovic; we’ll see.

Is it really the case with Vieira? Again, we’ll see … although it’s hard to imagine that someone revered in his playing days in France, England and Italy doesn’t have bigger ambition than whuppin’ the New England Revolution or Orlando City SC, etc.

If you’ve been around MLS a while, you probably remember the Gullit fiasco. Bottom line, his heart wasn’t in it. This was a weigh station, a stop en route to something “bigger and better,” apparently. There’s room for diversity in MLS, but not room for that kind of mess. Bold choices may reap pure gold – but there’s always someone willing to pawn off some fool’s gold, too.

Let’s not be foolish enough to pretend that we learned much from Friday’s national team pushover four nights ago in St. Louis – the easiest entryway possible for Jurgen Klinsmann’s bunch into the World Cup qualifying process.

It was certainly a big victory for soccer in “The Lou,” where a packed house helped cement a baby blanket-level of US comfort. It certainly provided that much-needed “something to feel good about” for Klinsmann’s team in transition, not to mention three valuable points. Still, the victory over St. Vincent and the Grenadines amounted to little more than a highly organized, public practice session, the high school varsity team warming up for the big game by pushing the JV squad around.

We can, the other hand, pick out a couple of small signs of hope for a qualifying process that’s about to much tougher.

Tuesday’s away match at Trinidad and Tobago will be unrecognizable from anything that happened in St. Louis. This is the T&T team that put four goals, then three goals past Mexico in a pair of high-scoring summer dandies. Much of the T&T roster comes from Europe’s middleweight leagues or from Major League Soccer, a far cry from the mostly part-time bunch from St. Vincent. The Soca Warriors started their own qualifying bid last week with a rock-solid result, a 2-1 win at Guatemala. In Port of Spain, the United States is a modest 2-1-1 over the last 15 years.

So what might we extract from Friday? What were these signs of something better ahead – something unseen in a calendar year of justified fan and media discontent?

Start with Klinsmann putting something on the field Friday that looked a little more sensible. His alignment was a straight 4-4-2 where most players were manning their best spots. The one exception was Gyasi Zardes deployed once again as an outside midfielder; matches over 2015 have shown that Zardes is adequate in the role against the lessers, but apt to tactical exposure against the betters.

Otherwise, Geoff Cameron and Matt Besler looks like the best central defensive combo at the moment. “Playing your best pair” might sound ridiculously obvious, but Klinsmann can sometimes out-smart himself; his choices at center back have been a major culprit.

SEE MORE: Willing veterans the key to Klinsmann balancing old and new.

Tim Ream was stationed at left back Friday. It’s probably not his best position, but it represented a pragmatic choice, someone who spent ample time there at Bolton, before moving to Fulham.

In the bigger picture, perhaps it represented an evolution in Klinsmann’s thinking. Four years ago, as semifinal round qualifying began in similar circumstances (at home in Tampa against a heavy underdog, Antigua and Barbuda), Klinsmann assigned the left back task to Jose Torres, a creative midfielder.

The manager’s thinking made some sense; against a team sure to “park the bus,” as we like to say these days, Torres would suffice defensively while helping to apply maximum attacking umph. But ongoing cohesion and growth of defensive unit suffers when you continually piece together a rear guard, something we saw again and again during the experimental phase of the last 16 months. Better perhaps to build the best defense possible, never mind one match that could be controlled with pretty much anybody in the player pool stationed at left back.

Klinsmann, looking just a little more on edge last week in St. Louis, not quite as loosey-goosey as usual, sounds like a manager leaning closer to pragmatism. “I don’t think that we’ll see big changes, because you only have a small window of 10 days to handle these two World Cup Qualifiers,” he said in a U.S. Soccer Q&A over the weekend. “You’re not really throwing a lot of things over board from the first game to the second game. I think we have a very good group together; a group that’s ready for the fight and has already done a good job against St. Vincent and now continues at least a little bit of this consistency into the second game.”

Another sign of being more sensible: Fabian Johnson was brought immediately back into the team after that, well, whatever it was from a month ago. Johnson asked to come out late against Mexico, something athletes are generally taught, to inform the manager if they are hurt or simply out of gas. It’s up to the manager from there to make the call. Only Klinsmann took the opportunity to call out his player, publicly admonishing Johnson while adding that he had a “stern word” with the versatile defender-midfielder.

In the past, we’ve seen signs that perhaps Klinsmann holds a grudge, most notably with Landon Donovan, although in fairness that was always a tricky relationship. Either way, Johnson came right back into the team.

Klinsmann also capped Matt Miazga, which was important. Polish interests were lurking around the Red Bulls’ highly regarded rookie center back, and it was no small threat. He grew up in the United States, but still has a touch of a Polish accent, the byproduct of rearing in a home where both parents emigrated from the old world.

A day before, Klinsmann had played coy about capping Miazga, denying that it was important. It seemed like an odd response, especially considering how other talented carriers of dual citizenship, Serbian international Neven Subotic and Italian international Giuseppe Rossi most notably, have gotten away from the U.S program.

Coy or not, at the stroke of 60 minutes on Friday, there was Miazga prepping to enter, along with Darlington Nagbe.

Nagbe is the other reason for hope of improvement going forward. There’s hardly evidence at this point that Nagbe can be a game-changer at international level. But the Timbers skillful attacker does, at least, represent something in painfully short supply in Klinsmann’s current player pool: midfielders supremely comfortable on the ball, blessed with a skill set that tilts toward the dynamic.

SEE MORE: It’s time to worry about Clint Dempsey’s US national team future.

As Clint Dempsey’s role diminishes, Klinsmann will have the opportunity to introduce a more creative presence into the midfield. That was difficult with Dempsey, whose “ ‘tweener status” and freelancing ways often meant, more or less, building the attack around him.

If Nagbe can perform as central, attacking conduit, he immediately provides the United States with better overall possession through the higher two-thirds, not only due to his own craftiness and ability to protect the ball but because Michael Bradley can become more of a connector, the role he typically performs best.

There are still indications that Klinsmann will talk occasional nonsense, if we’re speaking frankly. As in, when he stands before a room full of reporters and says progress is being made on cultivating the higher pressing, more dynamic style he wants the program to pursue.

Anybody noticed any of that?

But if Klinsmann can adjust some of his own quirky ways – experimenting with more of a structure and purpose, not just willy-nilly gambits to see what sticks, for instance – then he can talk all the nonsense he wants. It might get frustrating or head-spinning, but at least we won’t worry about the whole darn thing unraveling. There are signs that such an unraveling thing might be less likely to happen now; we’ll know a bit more after Tuesday’s match in Port of Spain.

ST. LOUIS — No question the United States men’s national team needs freshening up. All national teams do, every four years as the World Cup cycle turns. Don’t forget what Bruce Arena famously told us back in 2002: World Cup soccer is a young mans’ game.

So the here and now of early qualifying looks like the ideal starting point for springier legs, a requirement for a long road to Russia, not to mention the big show itself in 2018. Old standbys like Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard, Jermaine Jones, Chris Wondolowski, Alan Gordon, DaMarcus Beasley, Kyle Beckerman and others aren’t going to be around and kicking forever, after all.

So the question becomes this: What is the right balance as Jurgen Klinsmann cooks up a balanced stew of young and old, hoping to fold the optimum ingredients into a dish more tasty than he was serving up over an interminable summer?

SEE MORE: What is Clint Dempsey’s future with the US men’s national team?

The Road to Russia — spoiler alert: you’ll get tired of that one before you know it — starts Friday as the United States gets into fourth round CONCACAF qualifying.
Eleven men on the current roster of 23 were in Brazil for last year’s World Cup, but 10 others have zero experience in World Cup qualifying.

“We started the process right after the World Cup, to introduce new players, younger players, and see how fast some of them could make an impact on this team going forward,” Klinsmann said Thursday from Busch Stadium. “Because down the road we want to be very competitive in the World Cup. So we cannot start that process six months, maybe nine months from the (next) World Cup.”

He noted the younger players are here in St. Louis because they “are good players, because they deserve a chance” to make an impact at this level. But that’s the trick, isn’t it? Some of them haven’t exactly distinguished themselves internationally. And while the level of competition in CONCACAF isn’t always hard core, the format of World Cup qualifying leaves scant room for error. It’s on Klinsmann to nail the proper balance.

Obviously, the nuanced dynamic of a few older hands to shepherd the fresh young faces will be less important in Friday’s cupcake opener. If it isn’t, well, we’ve all got much more pressing things to talk about.

A match against St. Vincent and the Grenadines is to this qualifying cycle what a ‘soft opening’ is to a restaurant: a window to get things right with the luxury of limited, potential damage to the brand. But lands beyond in this two-year process — 16 matches, assuming the United States doesn’t need that last-ditch series against Asia’s fifth-place finisher come late 2017 — will need the best blend.

SEE MORE: Questions don’t meet answers with Klinsmann’s latest US squad.

Beckerman talked about his role Thursday from Busch Stadium, sounding quite comfortable and well aware that his presence in St. Louis is about more than what happens over 90 minutes.

The program needs wins, he said in blunt assessment of what must happen to shake the 2015 funk. To that end, getting the newbies comfortable, playing to their tiptop ability, makes the Unites States a better team, he said.

“Some of these young guys will be around with the team for a long time,” the Real Salt Lake midfielder said when asked about the timing. “Anytime you can bring them in and get their feet wet, it’s a good time.”

But so many of them? Taken individually, there’s plenty to like about some of these guys. Everyone is excited to see what Portland’s Darlington Nagbe can do at the next level; perhaps a new set of coaching eyes can shake loose a few more thoughts and ideas, still. Red Bulls’ center back Matt Miazga appears to have a bright future, and that position has hardly been locked down over the last 16 months. That door is at least partial propped open.

On it goes – there’s just so many of them. That makes guys like Howard, Jones and Beckerman even more critical for their “fatherly” roles. Beckerman laughed about it.

“When there are more of them, you have to do more,” he said.

“They all want to be part of this. They want to gel with the team as quickly as they can. And we’re eager to get them involved and feeling comfortable. So it’s an easy transition.”

SEE MORE: Defensive midfield is Klinsmann’s biggest problem.

Beckerman also sounds like a guy comfortable with his own transition to a different career place. The October match against Mexico had a feeling of finality for a few figures, the 30-something’s like Beckerman. He smiled confidently at the questions about his age and about whether he was surprised to get the latest call.

“I’m always ready for the call when it comes,” he said. “That’s all you can do, and when it happens you had better be ready.”

Something curious is occurring this year as Major League Soccer teams gradually tumble from the championship chase, waking up from MLS Cup dreamland: The moment they are eliminated, these teams suddenly become more interesting.

Obviously, success is always compelling. We faithfully observe and applaud as clubs earn playoff berths and subsequently move forward toward the Dec. 6 MLS Cup date, dissecting and deconstructing the ingredients that went into their particular stews of success. In other words, those story lines are always worth watching. But this year, monitoring and analyzing success around MLS seems second fiddle – somehow less compelling than watching what happens as the “also rans” map courses toward more fruitful days and victory parades.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from leg one of MLS’s conference semifinals.

Watching the successful move forward is like nibbling on a plentiful cheese plate; it’s certainly nice enough. But watching the fixer-uppers will be the real pizza party!

It’s always this way to some extent, but we are getting an XXL helping this go-round. For instance, what will happen at the StubHub Center, where anything less than MLS glory means heads roll. Bruce Arena has already sounded some ominous warnings about ongoing viability of the current roster?

There are important questions to answer at Chicago, Toronto FC, New England and elsewhere. Here’s a quick look around the league at where things get so absorbing within the ranks of the eliminated:

New York City FC was among those eliminated before the regular season’s Round 34 conclusion, and this is the best starting point for two reasons. First, there are clearly problems in the Bronx, where the club needs a more comprehensive plan (and definition of what it wants to be), a more cogent personnel plan and a stadium plan. Some of that is big picture stuff that certainly will not be solved quickly.

But watching this bunch try to untangle the shorter-term concerns will be the more intriguing element. It’s so plain to see that a midfield with Andrea Pirlo and Frank Lampard (combined age: 73) cannot function. But we’ll watch, because who would be surprised if the club presses on and tries?

As City FC is now in the market for a new manager, there is also the issue of who might be tasked with the impossible: making that ill-constructed midfield function in the face of all evidence that it will not. Perhaps the larger question around Yankee Stadium is this: Will someone with some common sense be empowered to make the important decisions, or will critical choices continue to be the province of the nebulous City Football Group?

Here’s the other reason NYCFC is the starting point for further movement around MLS: Firing Jason Kreis – a choice that was undercooked at best, just plain kooky at worst – doesn’t just open the door for an intriguing coaching hire. It creates a huge ripple that could portend managerial change elsewhere. Because the line forms to the left of teams that would love to have Kreis, the youngest man to win an MLS Cup, in charge. (More on that in a minute.)

— A day after LA Galaxy got bounced ingloriously – a bungling back line and a goalkeeper they never should have trusted as the primary culprits – Arena conceded the difficulty in keeping the roster together. Frankly, it sounded calculated, a wily MLS veteran’s way of setting the table for a big trade or a high profile parting or … something.

Clearly, they are in the market for a new goalkeeper. Robbie Keane said earlier this year that he wants a long-term deal; as reliably productive as the Irish striker has been, he’s 35.

Omar Gonzalez may require a career reboot; 2015 wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a DP-worthy year, now was it? And as the Galaxy bought down his salary with Targeted Allocation Money that is no longer available … well?

— If Seattle moves forward and ends up winning the whole shebang, well, that’s what a lot of people predicted to begin Major League Soccer’s 20th season, isn’t it?

But if Sigi Schmid’s pricey roster at CenturyLink can’t pull it off this year, don’t we all lean in to see what the offseason holds for the league’s all-time leader in managerial wins? Especially in light of recent events at Yankee Stadium? Considering what Sounders current general manager Garth Lagerwey and (the now unemployed) Kreis did on a ramen noodle budget at Real Salt Lake, what could they pull off in tandem at well-heeled Seattle?

SEE MORE: MLS faces values test as Audi enters Volkswagen’s scandal.

— Staying with Kreis as the potential fulcrum of moves around MLS, the manager’s chair is open at Chicago. It seemed to be at Toronto FC before Tuesday, when TFC president Bill Manning assured all that Greg Vanney was coming back. (On the other hand, Manning assigned some hard targets, like eight points from eight road games with which TFC will likely open the 2016 season. That seems unwise because it backs Manning into a corner once Vanney shoots high and wide on one of the targets.)

And are we convinced that managers are safe at Philadelphia and Real Salt Lake? Kreis won’t return to his roots at RSL – too much ownership baggage to wade through there. But his availability could alter the landscape, adding a big name to the pool of applicants.

Finally, should we add Ben Olsen’s name to the list of “Are we sure they are safe?” Given D.C. United’s late season collapse, and since the hour glass seems just about out of sand around RFK for 2015, this plateau may look increasingly problematic. Stay tuned.

SEE MORE: Giovinco on track to become the most important player in MLS history.

— Toronto FC needs defenders. Oh, for the love of all that’s good … get some defenders! (No truth to the rumor Giovinco has demanded a trade to another Eastern Conference team … so that he would get two or three shots a season at TFC’s beleaguered back line.) Of course, adding quality defenders might require some roster rearrangement, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room there. Well, there isn’t unless …

Could Jozy Altidore or Michael Bradley possibly me on the move? Clearly, every roster choice should start with constructing the best platform for Sebastian Giovinco; anything else would be foolish given the landmark season the presumptive MLS Most Valuable Player just had.

— Houston brought in a relatively big coaching name last year in Owen Coyle. The former Bolton manager certainly won’t look at 2015 as a raging success. Then again, a one-year mulligan, time to digest the quirky ways and needs of MLS, doesn’t seem unreasonable. Now, he has to get with GM Matt Jordan to make some big roster decisions.

The team desperately needs more speed, further creativity and a lockdown center back. Additionally, U.S. international Brad Davis, an MLS institution, is out of contract. Eyebrows were rightly raised when he didn’t even make the trip on Houston’s final match in Vancouver.

— How have we gone this long without getting to New England and Jermaine Jones, a longtime lightning rod in domestic soccer chatter? Jones is 34 and out of contract at Gillette. The U.S. international and perennial Jurgen Klinsmann favorite didn’t have a great 2015 (especially not compared to 2014, when his arrival in Foxboro turned a good team into a superior one that very nearly finished with an MLS Cup title.) Oh, and he’s sure to miss a few matches next year due to suspension; or maybe you didn’t see the way Jones completely flipped his lid a week ago?

SEE MORE: Taking inventory of LA’s abrupt exit from MLS’s playoffs.

So Jones looked at all that (age, looming suspension, declining performance, two significant injuries in 2015, etc.) and demanded a long-term deal. Of course he did. So, pop some corn and watch this one closely.

The increasingly abbreviated MLS season is always sardine packed with absorbing personnel news and views. This year seems especially so. We’ll watch the teams that make their way through the playoffs because … well … sports. That’s what it’s all about.

But don’t sleep on the teams that tumble aside early; they may have the more interesting things to say.

Yes, the LA Galaxy defense was an absolute disaster Wednesday night in Seattle, a real cascade of calamity. Yes, goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts was a mess -a predictable mess if we’re being honest. (See Item No. 4 here, written back in August.) Yes, Steven Gerrard’s performance in midfield was a dud, a highly predictable dud, one that appropriately punctuated his entire dead-on-arrival appearance in MLS.

The champs are out; there will be no fourth crown in five years. If you watched Seattle’s 3-2 win, helter-skelter start to finish, a victory by a team with its own injuries and flaws to sort out, you know why Bruce Arena’s team has packed away the gear until January. Arena was pretty clear himself, calling the team’s collective performance near goal “atrocious.”

SEE MORE: Why the LA Galaxy should have benched Steven Gerrard.

But let’s look closer at what happened weeks and months ago, unpacking the origins of Wednesday’s downfall. Frankly, some of this is on the LA Galaxy deciders. Not all of it, but enough of it.

Ricketts and Gerrard were the obvious weak points in the Galaxy title defense. So why was Ricketts there in the first place? Well, Jaime Penedo wanted his money in the summer, and you can make an argument either way about the Galaxy’s decision to shrug shoulders and let the Panamanian No. 1 go. His 2015 salary was listed as $175,000 as a base, which falls under “just OK” as a veteran MLS ‘keeper.

That’s about what Stefan Frei earned this year with Seattle, but well below 2015 base salaries for Vancouver’s David Ousted or Portland’s Adam Kwarasey. Hypothetically, if we needed a goalkeeper for a new club to debut in 2016 and could choose between Penedo, Frei, Ousted and Kwarasey, the former L.A. Galaxy ‘keeper would probably fall toward the bottom of the pickings.

Still, perhaps the Galaxy could have moved things around and found a little more cash under the admittedly tight cap. Better yet, they should have chosen a better replacement than the 38-year-old Ricketts (whom they acquired from Orlando in a summer trade). Promising young goalkeepers are all over MLS, along with a few veterans who might not be game-changers, but are solid choices that won’t fumble-bumble away matches the way Ricketts did on a rainy Wednesday in the Pacific Northwest.

Exacerbating the back line issues was Omar Gonzalez’s season of curious regression. He wasn’t a bad defender in 2015, but he certainly wasn’t a dominant force worthy of a Designated Player salary. Something went wrong.

PLAYOFFS NEUTRAL’S GUIDES: Eastern Conference | Western Conference

Gonzalez may need a career re-set, one that will goose better performance. We saw this with Bobby Boswell, who had gone a little stale in Houston but was reenergized after a move to D.C. United. We saw it with Chad Marshall; his performance was wildly inconsistent in his last couple of seasons at Columbus, but he made a move to Seattle and deservedly claimed another Defender of the Year honor in 2014.

And all of that is exacerbated, of course, by Gerrard’s inability to provide more protection to the back line. Go back and watch Erik Friberg’s game-winner and ask, “Where is Gerrard!?” He’s a central midfielder and yet he’s nowhere to be found as Friberg emerges from the midfield, from the very area where Gerrard needs to be tracking. All the problems we all saw with Gerrard were right there. It needs no more dissecting; he could possibly be a role player in L.A., but relying on the 35-year-old Liverpool legend to be an MLS force (and paying him to be one) should now be seen for what it is: pure fantasy borne of nostalgia and nursed by outdated perceptions of MLS.

Which brings us to the bigger point, one that reaches across the league: the DP dynamic is shifting fast in MLS.

It’s not enough to go get a brand name who will fill seats and sell jerseys at $90 a pop. It’s OK to sign a brand name, but GMs, technical directors, sporting directors (or whatever you call the man with making the significant personnel calls) had darn sure better get a brand name who actually makes sense within a bigger plan.

SEE MORE: Why knockout round teams will (or won’t) win it all | Capsules

Yes, we’re looking at you, NYCFC. Andrea Pirlo might make some sense. And so might Frank Lampard. But in tandem, it was clearly a fiasco.

Same with Gerrard, who was always a risk. He was slowing dramatically in those waning days at Liverpool. As for the move from there into MLS, some of us wondered whether his heart could truly be in it? After all, he’d been a Liverpool man for life.

“MLS as a retirement league” is a popular narrative. And it is absolutely true that some older, talented players can extend their days as difference makers by moving into MLS. Didier Drogba certainly is.

But the equation is changing. More and more, the mid-level foreign stars closer to their best years (Sebastian Giovinco is the obvious example, but also see Obafemi Martins, Clint Dempsey, Sacha Kljestan, David Villa and others) will be better choices for splashing the bigger bucks.

One of Major League Soccer’s ongoing struggles is creating best-case balance between regular season relevance and the playoffs, that far shorter window of matches that ultimately means so much. We can have the “regular season relevance” debate, but make sure this is part of it: There are eight teams today who wish they had done more in the regular season; they stand outside the postseason velvet ropes as the playoffs begin this evening.

And there are eight other teams who are in the playoffs, but who woke up this morning wishing they had also done more. Everyone fights hard to avoid this early, one match, single-elimination round, and this eight-some didn’t.

Here, then, is a quick look at each team playing Wednesday or Thursday as Major League Soccer’s 20^th playoff season gets started:

(The New York Red Bulls and Columbus in the East, and FC Dallas and Vancouver in the West have first-round byes; they begin their respective, conference semifinal series on Sunday.)

Eastern Conference

#3 (seed) Montreal Impact

Why they might go all the way: Didier Drogba! No MLS scorer is hotter; he has 11 goals in 11 games since summer arrival. No player has scored more big goals than the former Ivory Coast captain, a Champions League winner and four-time Premier League winner. And no player in MLS right now can inspire more confidence, which is why Montreal, practically giddy for it all, is suddenly a popular dark horse favorite to win the whole shebang.

Why they might not: They have to get past presumptive league MVP Sebastian Giovinco straight away. And the Impact’s outstanding central defender, Laurent Ciman, can occasionally let his emotions spill over. The Belgian standout was cautioned eight times this year and ejected three times. Without Ciman, the back line looks pretty ordinary.

SEE MORE: The neutral’s guide to MLS’s Eastern Conference playoffs.

#4 D.C. United

Why they might go all the way: No team grinds like Ben Olsen’s spunky bunch. It worked over the front half of the season, with a big assist from goalkeeper Bill Hamid and his heroic shot-stopping. And … uh … no, that’s about it.

Why they might not: The distribution of “spunk” needs to improve; they used too much over the first two-thirds of the season! Olsen’s team led the East in early August with a 13-7-5 record (44 pts) before things seriously fell off the table. United went 2-6-1 the rest of the way, collecting just seven of a possible 27 points. The attack was bad and, by the final day, the defense was awful. Or maybe you didn’t see the pile of garbage United put on the field in a 5-0 loss to Columbus to close the season?

SEE MORE: Beckerman, Jones, Borchers highlight WST’s MLS All-Hair Team.

#5 New England Revolution

Why they might go all the way: Jay Heaps’ team need only think back on last year’s mighty playoff run for inspiration. Driven by Lee Nguyen’s sizzling form and emboldened by Jermaine Jones’ unflinching pluck, they blew through the first round and then topped New York in the conference finals, landing in the MLS Cup final.

Why they might not: Early in 2015, Nguyen got tangled up in his own clumsy contract interests and never quite became the same midfield dynamo. Jones, 33 and fighting back twice from injury, never quite became the same midfield blockade. Last year’s “mighty” became this year’s “meh.”

#6 Toronto FC

Why they might go all the way: Considering the ongoing quality elevation of MLS, there has probably never been a season assembled like the one we just saw from Sebastian Giovinco. The Italian international claimed the Golden Boot, and his official acceptance of this year’s MVP award is surely ahead. They also have U.S. internationals Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore; both have had their moments in MLS this year.

Why they might not: They have to get by red hot Montreal right way, so the Reds first tippy toe into the postseason could conceivably last exactly 90 minutes. And can we talk about that back line? Ooof. No playoff team has allowed more goals (58) than TFC.

Western Conference

#3 Portland Timbers

Why they might go all the way: Talk about getting the formations and roles just right, and right on time. Portland finished with 10 goals in three consecutive wins. Darlington Nagbe was the big beneficiary (or perhaps the catalyst to it all), punctuating the regular season with his best performance as Portland warmed up for the playoffs by thumping Colorado. Speaking of thumping, they did the same a couple of weeks back to Los Angeles, 5-2. In Los Angeles!

Why they might not: The finishing has been superb lately. Before that? Well, let’s be polite and go with “something less than superb.” Caleb Porter’s team scored just seven times in the nine matches prior to that (season-saving?) win over LA. If that hot mess of bad finishing re-infiltrates Providence Park …

SEE MORE: The neutral’s guide to MLS’s Western Conference playoffs.

#4 Seattle Sounders

Why they might go all the way: When they are “on,” there is no better one-two punch in MLS like Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey, who have combined for a sensational 57 goals over two seasons. When building a defense, center back Chad Marshall and goalkeeper Stefan Frei, now 29 and building into his best self, are great places to start.

Why they might not: For everything Dempsey has been to club and country through his career, injuries and general wear and tear seem to be catching up. If “Deuce” finds that extra gear, look out. But Sigi Schmid’s bunch is so heavily dependent on the Martins-Dempsey duo, the attack starts looking pretty ordinary when the reduced Dempsey shows up. Elsewhere, Osvaldo Alonso isn’t quite the force he was for so many years, and he’s questionable for Wednesday.

#5 LA Galaxy

Why they might go all the way: Between Robbie Keane, Steven Gerrard, Giovani dos Santos, Juninho and Omar Gonzalez, no MLS team comes close to the Galaxy in collective experience in the big occasion. That counts. So does history; LA has three of the last four MLS Cup titles. Oh, and “The Bruce!” Manager Bruce Arena has an MLS playoff success rate like no other.

Why they might not: Robbie Keane’s outstanding playoff CV notwithstanding (nine goals, six assists in 17 MLS post-season contests), it’s difficult to like the Galaxy right now. They can’t figure out what to do with Gerrard, who looks completely worn, nor with a Dos Santos, who has little chemistry with Keane despite two months of efforts. The Galaxy come laboring into the playoffs with one win in seven matches. All that, plus Donovan Ricketts in goal isn’t concerning too many opponents these days.

SEE MORE: Knockout round capsules: Previewing the four mis-week playoff matchups.

#6 Sporting Kansas City

Why they might go all the way: Benny Feilhaber wore down somewhat in the season’s back half, but he’s clearly still got something left, orchestrating a terrific game-winner in Sunday’s closing win over LA. His 10 goals and 15 assists were easily career bests. As for his playmaking targets: Dom Dwyer and Krisztian Németh (a combined 22 goals) are both absolute handfuls.

Why they might not: The highs were sky high for the U.S. Open Cup champs, but the valleys ran low, too. Hard to pinpoint what went wrong in spurts for Peter Vermes’ team, other than U.S. internationals Graham Zusi and Matt Besler looking curiously pedestrian at times. Whatever the deal was, that’s why they may not go far.

There are so many great things to say about Sebastian Giovinco and, to a lesser but still significant degree, MLS rookie sensation Cyle Larin and the goods they delivered in bulk in 2015. But if we’re picking nits, here’s one: They sure subtracted a lot of drama from awards season. Thanks a lot, guys!

Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year are two of the awards to which we pay the most attention. Coach of the Year, too. At least there is some drama and debate over that one.

So here’s where we went with the MLS awards that matter – and a few awards that we made up for Major League Soccer’s just-complete 20^th regular season:

Most Valuable Player: Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco

Honestly, how much time do we need to spend on this one? We pretty much said it all here. Since then, Giovinco has become the first MLS single-season leader in both goals (22) and assists (16). For some perspective, he was the first 20-10 man in MLS history (first to record 20 goals and 10 assists).

His MVP season was much more than raw numbers. The Atomic Ant scored good goals, great goals and freakin’ otherworldly goals. And how about Toronto FC, member of MLS since 2007, finally getting past the post-season velvet ropes! Congrats, guys! It wasn’t Jozy Altidore or Michael Bradley most responsible for getting the Red there. That was all about Giovinco.

In another year, we might be talking about Columbus’ Kei Kamara, who challenged for Golden Boot. And some in Los Angeles thought Robbie Keane’s rate of production in a season slightly abbreviated by an early injury and by international call-ups (20 goals, 8 assists in 24 appearances) deserved consideration.

Oh, that’s so cute that they think anybody but Giovinco even has a shot at MVP!

SEE MORE: MLS TV numbers up on FOX, ESPN for 2015 season.

Rookie of the Year: Orlando City’s Cyle Larin

We need to say even less about this one. The league’s previous rookie scoring record was 11 goals. Larin scored 17 this year. In some MLS years, that would have gotten you a Golden Boot!

Larin was the top pick in January’s MLS draft, and he more than exceeded expectations. Remember, it’s easier for young defenders or even midfielders to make the jump into professional soccer. Between Damani Ralph in 2003 and Tesho Akindele in 2014, only one forward became Major League Soccer’s Rookie of the Year (Sporting KC’s C.J. Sapong in 2011). In between, MLS Rookie of the Year went to five defenders and four midfielders.

Like the MVP race, there’s no one else in this conversation. Larin struck regularly for a team that was mid-pack in MLS in team scoring, a club that regularly missed one of its top two creators, Brek Shea and Kaka. What he achieved would have been commendable for a veteran, accomplished striker. As a rookie, what he achieved was nothing less than sensational.

SEE MORE: Beckerman, Jones, Borchers highlight MLS All-Hair Team.

Defender of the Year: Montreal’s Lauren Ciman

This was a toughie. If we were picking winners in July, it’s a no-brainer, because Ciman went from MLS first-year man to “best center back in the league” in a big hurry. After July … well, something happened. He had been playing for a full calendar year without a break at that point, having arrived in January from Standard de Liège, where he started all six Europa League group matches in the fall of 2014. So, maybe he wore down. Or perhaps he was trying too hard for a club that couldn’t climb above the playoff red line for much of the summer.

Ciman dropped off. Still, looking around the league, we see a lot of defenders who had good years – but were they having exceptional years? Chad Marshall is in that group, especially as he had a rotating cast of central partners with Seattle. Others in that worthy group: San Jose’s Clarence Goodson, Vancouver’s Kendall Waston, New England’s Andrew Farrell, Dallas’ Matt Hedges, DC United’s Bobby Boswell and a scattering of outside backs.

Ciman was dominant for a period, at least; he was merely “quite good” over the back half of 2015. But stack that onto his first four months, and that was enough.

SEE MORE: MLS knockout round matchup capsules.

Goalkeeper of the Year: Vancouver’s David Ousted

We all know the old saw about how this country produces great goalkeepers, and it’s certainly true. Only this year in Major League Soccer, the best of the best were frequently from lands beyond.

Stefan Frei (Swiss, Seattle Sounders), Adam Kwarasey (Ghanaian, Portland Timbers) and David Ousted (Danish, Vancouver Whitecaps) were among the best in the net this year. Even fast-rising 20-year old Jesse Gonzalez (Mexican international, FC Dallas) finished with the league’s top goals-against average.

In the end, Ousted and D.C. United’s Bill Hamid were the best of the best, even if their seasons looked quite different. Hamid was called upon time and again to rescue D.C. United, an average team (well, a “bad” team toward the end of the year) that finished with a better record than it deserved thanks to Hamid’s habitual heroics.

Ousted was simply the picture of consistency, a solid presence in goal wire to wire for Vancouver. Carl Robinson is taking one of the league’s youngest rosters to the playoffs, and the steadying hands of his 30-year-old veteran backstopper is a big reason why.

SEE MORE: Univision posts impressive ratings in first season of MLS coverage.

Coach of the Year: New York’s Jesse Marsch

Marsch edges Dallas’ Oscar Pareja in the closest two-horse race imaginable. Hard to imagine this is the same Marsch who had to hold off the pitchfork-and-lantern crowd at that surreal supporters club meeting in January.

He sat there and took it that night. Then he took the club that had just lost Tim Cahill and Thierry Henry, remade it with a stylish, pressing, dynamic ethos and captured Supporters Shield along the way. He also did it with a back line that was average at very best, with 20-year-old Matt Miazga (admittedly a potential star in the making) as his best defender.

Oddly, Pareja hurts himself in this year’s debate. Because if we’re being honest, what he did in 2013 with Colorado (taking a team with essentially five rookie starters to the playoffs) and what he did with Dallas last year (dismissing an awful run of injuries to take a young FC Dallas team to the playoffs) probably represented a better coaching job than what his did this year.

Either way, Pareja may deserve a “lifetime achievement award” vote at some point. Because for the second year in a row, FC Dallas led the league going away in minutes played by homegrown, academy products. With them, he came within a whisper of Supporters Shield.

One more thing deserves note here: the Red Bulls and FC Dallas had two of the league’s lowest salary budgets.

SEE MORE: Philadelphia bringing in Earnie Stewart will make the rest of MLS take notice.

MLS Innovator of the Year: Uh, someone

Whoever in the league office (step forward and identify yourself!) finally pushed through the sticking point and made “Decision Day” a thing. The drama factor was tamped down a wee bit because most playoff spots were decided (although the ordering wasn’t) and because Golden Boot had more or less been decided. (Again, thanks a lot, Giovinco!) It will be better in years ahead, but for the first go-round, simultaneous conference kickoffs in 34 worked well enough in creating intrigue.

Best MLS Old Guy: Real Salt Lake’s Javier Morales

The guy is 35. Going on 25.

Morales was one of the few bright spots around Rio Tinto Stadium, where RSL’s seven-year playoff streak (best in MLS going into the year) just vanished into the Utah mountain air. His numbers this year (8 goals, 12 assists in 26 matches) are remarkably consistent with his production in 2013 and 2014. He passed the eyeball test, too, still stylish in performance, still doing enough of the two-way work.

SEE MORE: MLS average attendance up 13% in 2015.

Latecomer award: Montreal’s Didier Drogba

It doesn’t happen every year, but in plenty of MLS seasons, the long summer transfer window allows a talented man to jump into the pile late and still make a big impact. This year, no one did the deed like Drogba, the Ivorian international who has made Montreal a real playoff threat. Perhaps he couldn’t replicate such outstanding production (11 goals in 11 matches) over an entire MLS season, but that doesn’t really matter to 2015, does it? Besides, some of his goals were absolute beauties. We throw around the word “inspirational figures” a bit much, perhaps, but he is definitely a presence – a man who inspires a useful sense of bravado and belief around Stade Saputo.

Say it ain’t so, New York City FC! Say it ain’t so!

SI.com is reporting that Jason Kreis’ job may be in peril. If that’s the case – not doubting SI’s reporting, just hedging against the better angles of good sense prevailing – then it says a lot about Major League Soccer’s high profile expansion club. And none of it is good.

If the men on high at City Football Group dismiss Kreis, mark that down as the “starting line” for the club’s long, slow march toward ingrained nincompoopery. That’s the silly place where ignorance (of MLS), ineptitude and arrogance intersect.

The SI report suggests a shakeup wouldn’t be all about Kreis’ performance as the first man in charge of this new, moneyed club. (Although it seems safe to presume we wouldn’t have this conversation if NYC had romped and stomped in 2015, collecting additional “Ws” and a high playoff seeding this year along the way.)

SEE MORE: MLS finally got it right with Deadline Day’s simultaneous kickoffs.

Rather, the report suggest this is more about a desire to install former French standout Patrick Vieira, part of Les Bleus’ World Cup winner in 1998, a man now apprenticing as Manchester City’s top man in youth development.

First, NYCFC cannot do better than Kreis. The youngest manager to win an MLS Cup (with Real Salt Lake back in 2009) has more than proven himself in the league. People should write books about what he and general manager Garth Lagerwey did on shoestring budgets in Utah. They did it with a formula of balanced, shrewd roster assembly, tactical acumen and old-fashioned hard work on and off the training ground. No one toiled harder than Kreis at becoming the best manager he could be. (Sometimes to the point where you wondered if the man would push himself too hard and burn out too early.)

Kreis and Co. came within a whisker of winning MLS Cup 2013 in the frigid cold of Kansas City; that was his last match in charge at Real Salt Lake, after which he took a year to prep for his new position at Yankee Stadium, including a few months of study around the grounds of Manchester City.

He was the right choice, and good on NYCFC leaders for the smart appointment. So, what does it say now if they request a quick do-over? Kreis is the very same manager they hired (well, actually a better one). It’s not his fault if they overloaded the roster with aging Euros at the expense of a faulty back line. None of Kreis’ defenses at Rio Tinto Stadium were built of spare parts and youthful prospects, so it’s safe to wonder if he signed off on a back line at Yankee Stadium being constructed with such disregard.

(FYI, if they do pull the rug from beneath his feet, fear not: the line will form to the left. Ears undoubtedly perked up around MLS front offices Thursday morning when they heard this guy might soon be on the market.)

More to the point, this would say so many bad things about NYCFC.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from gameweek 33 of MLS.

First, it says expectations may be set too high, a concerning indicator of “arrogance” at work. As in, “Yes, other expansion clubs struggle. But we aren’t other clubs.” Well, for the record, the last 10 MLS expansion clubs have averaged 8.4 wins; NYC has 10 going into the final weekend.

Falsely inflated expectations are dangerous because they contaminate the decision making process.

Second, the lessons of Chivas USA are being ignored: that MLS teams aren’t just starter factories for the “bigger, better” out there.

Major League Soccer certainly isn’t the Premier League in quality, relevance, acclaim or financial heft. Then again, it’s not a Sunday pub league, either. If the king makers at City Football Group treat the club as Chivas USA’s Mexican owners frequently treated its “stepchild” — as training wheels for its “more important” operation up the food chain — then it’s already doomed. It might not be the financial dumpster fire and branding wasteland that Chivas USA was, but it will be doomed to years of competitive stumble-bumble.

SEE MORE: Organic growth with Canada’s clubs producing overdue, well-earned success.

Chivas USA arrogantly assumed its young reserves would suffice in the inferior MLS. Similarly, City Football Group seems to assume that Vieira can stride into MLS and immediately solve its quirks: the extensive travel that habitually surprises transplanted players and managers, the tight restrictions on player acquisition, best use of the American soccer players’ characteristics, etc.

Vieira surely has a sound soccer mind; this isn’t a knock on the man. But experience counts in MLS. Even a healthy budget for Designated Players cannot come close to guaranteeing success. Just ask the long-suffering fans around Toronto FC, where a first playoff appearance was just claimed, after eight years of failure to reach the easily-reached MLS post-season.

A few years ago I read a great book, Personal Velocity. It’s a story that probably sounds familiar, about a young person who stumbles around a bit through early adulthood but eventually finds her feet and strides forward successfully. When she finally gets her act together, her proud father announces in blissful summary, “Well, we all move at our own personal velocity.”

I generally feel that way about Major League Soccer. The league is far from perfect. (Who or what among us is?) But the league gets a lot right – even if it takes a confounding amount of time to get there.

The perfect example will be illuminated gloriously Sunday, when the league has arranged simultaneous kickoff times for the concluding Round 34 of matches. While I’m not a big fan of over-branding – they are calling it Decision Day – the idea is as sweet and spot-on as the latest Sebastian Giovinco delight.

Major League Soccer’s big finish is finally getting proper treatment. And it is long, long overdue.

Personally, I started banging this drum back in 2009. So while I wish this were already a thing, at least it’s here now, a shining example of where slow, prudent growth finally catches up with instances of long-simmer fan frustration.

More and more, MLS has this habit of getting to where it needs to be, or at least heading in the right direction, albeit at a frustrating (but perhaps necessary) pace.

Some of this is admittedly unfair, a product of imperfect place and time. Despite the league’s relative youth, we habitually hold it up against the veteran, established behemoth operations around the world. We say, “They do it like this in La Liga!” Never mind that Spain’s elegant La Liga was founded back when alcohol was illegal in this country (1929). That was “late” compared to other associations worldwide; plenty of clubs around the globe have a 100-year head start on MLS organizations, even on the group of 10 original “96ers.”

So, comparisons are as fair as an under-12 team going up against a beefy bunch of under-19s, but that’s not going to stop us. Which is why MLS commissioner Don Garber practically has this printed on his business card: “MLS is growing! It’s an operation constantly moving forward. Just give us time!”

SEE MORE: What are you top five favorite soccer commentators?

And yet, as eager fans and antsy members of the chattering class (media, pundits, bloggers, etc.) our desire for “better, faster, stronger … now!” gets the better of us.

A few “for instances:”

– We wanted a bigger league. Stat!

We just passed the 10^th anniversary of MLS Cup 2005. Ten years is hardly a long time in American sports. Those lovable Chicago Cubs haven’t appeared in a World Series since the year World War II ended, 1945, after all.

But consider that in 2005, MLS was a league of 12 teams, no Designated Players and just three dedicated soccer stadiums. The progress since then has been extraordinary. And yet it has also been calculated, with valuable lessons learned along the way. Or maybe you don’t remember the all-around fiasco that was Chivas USA? Or the shaky ownership before that of the Miami Fusion?

Until the last couple of seasons, Garber and his board of directors advised prudence and patience, which all looks pretty smart now.

• We wanted stars. Big stars! Today, not tomorrow.

Fans and media clamored for Raul or Ronaldo or the oft-rumored Samuel Eto’o back in the day. But the league’s rickety finances back then precluded it. If you think all-important TV revenue in MLS remains on the skinny side in 2015 compared to other American sports, consider that it was “nil” back in the day.

Eventually David Beckham landed and changed the game. DPs are a thing now, their numbers and collective quality swelling at appreciable pace. It took a while, probably longer than most fans wanted, but deliberate growth was always the wisest path. MLS fans’ patience is being rewarded now.

I mean … Giovinco! Enough said.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from gameweek 33 of the MLS season.

• The stadium scene has improved tremendously, and not just in raw numbers. That part is certainly impressive, with 15 of 20 clubs now doing their soccer business in facilities built or repurposed expressly for MLS clubs.

But other elements keep improving, too, in stadium design, location and amenities. The process of arrival is easy to overlook. For example: Yes, a couple of stadiums were built beyond the urban core that best fits the modern MLS model. But we tend to forget: someone had to build in the ‘burbs to launch the lessons. Then we stepped back, examined the contrasting models and said, “Yep, this one works better.” Point is, you don’t just discover penicillin; you experiment, tinker and observe, then you get that “A-ha!” moment – sometimes finding things you weren’t even looking for.

• Back in 2007 and 2008, two elements of MLS used to drive me batty: refereeing and the quality of local TV broadcasts. Not to be impolite, but both stunk like last week’s fish. As someone who watched every MLS match (with just 12-14 teams, it was easier then), I needed regular breaks to keep the frustration from boiling over. Seriously.

I wanted it to be better. Right then! Well, MLS refereeing remains imperfect. But performance from the men in the middle is night-and-day better than even five years ago. And the improvement in TV broadcasts, while difficult to quantify, is generally obvious to anyone paying attention.

• The shootout, the backward clock and other bad ideas of early, early MLS? Let’s just be glad those died a quick, merciful death.

Back to MLS Decision Day, which makes its belated arrival on Sunday.

Simultaneous kickoffs are going to rock, even if we don’t get the full effect this year. The schedule was arranged so that Eastern Conference games would kickoff at 5 p.m. Eastern; Western Conference matches would all begin at 7 p.m. ET.

MLS wisely “doubled down” on the 2015 scene by moving the Chicago Fire-Red Bulls kickoff to 7 p.m.; as it is, that match at Toyota Park outside Chicago won’t affect the Eastern Conference standings, but it will help determine Supporters Shield. So it will commence the same time as FC Dallas kicks off against San Jose down in Texas; Oscar Pareja’s team is the only club challenging RBNY for Supporters Shield.

If the drama factor tops out only at “pretty good” this year, it will be potentially brilliant in years ahead, when even more playoff positions, hardware and CONCACAF Champions League spots are in play.

Those who have observed the intense theater of simultaneous kickoffs before, they know. Remember the drama that unfolded just two years ago in the best night of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying in memory? Relive it here. You’re welcome.

That was child’s play compared to the epic theater that was 2011-12 Premier League decider day. Truly and all-timer, that one, and simultaneous starts across the league made it possible.

Going further back, so many of us remember the United States’ improbable quarterfinal run in World Cup 2002. But how many remember the drama of getting there? The United States was losing to Poland in the group play finale, so channels were flipping (or multiple screens were called into use) to monitor the South Korea-Portugal game happening simultaneously. (Spoiler: South Korea scored in the 70^th and then hung on, allowing the United States to advance. Whew!) Again, it was arranged by concurrent start times.

You get the point. This has long looked like a no-brainer for MLS. Drama gets cranked up to 11 when start times match up. The chances of creating magical, memorable moments rise.

SEE MORE: Organic growth for Canada’s club produces long-overdue, well-earned success.

Besides all that, it’s just fairer! Too many times in past MLS years, one team had a big advantage of knowing what it needed based on earlier results.

Why did it take this long? Generally speaking, it was about the needs or desires of individual clubs. Preferred start times at local addresses and local TV contracts were given priority over national interests. Yes, it was sometimes short-sighted. But if you own a club that loses money every year, you have a right to fight for every penny.

The time finally arrived when national interests and overall league matters could take priority.

Too bad it didn’t happen earlier, that this wasn’t already habit, that opportunities have been long squandered. But let’s not dwell on that. Sunday will be great. Future years will be positively brilliant.

MLS often gets there – sometimes you just have to pack a sack lunch and your patience.

Sometimes in life, the “way out” of a jam is by … doing nothing. You keep your head down and ride out the proverbial storm, uncomfortably perhaps, but more or less safe in the knowledge that worms turn, fortunes swing, the sun comes up tomorrow, etc.

The waves of frustrated discontent over Jurgen Klinsmann and his performance as all-powerful US mean’s national team boss are beating US Soccer shores like never before. The manager (and technical director) is increasingly embattled, to the point that his boss, US Soccer president Sunil Gulati, is feeling the pressure, too. Gulati must surely be into “sleepless nights” territory over the whole thing by now.

The “whole thing” is a miserable year for the national team. The calendar has not yet turned and, yes, World Cup qualifying begins before the New Year. Still, there is no other way to see 2015 other than the big steaming pile of poopy that it was.

SEE MORE: US Soccer has systemic problems in addition to holding Klinsmann and Gulati accountable

Every business, from the local snow cone stand to global corporate heavies, execute for long- and short-term goals. The national team’s short-termers for 2015 were, in order: Gold Cup championship; in lieu of that, claim the Confederations Cup spot through a playoff; progress in playing that more dynamic, high-pressing style Klinsmann promised all along.

Attached to Klinsmann’s personal, short-term to-do list – remember, in Klinsmann’s position as technical director, he is in charge of all U.S. men’s teams – was to gain a spot in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

So, did we check all the boxes? Uh … any of them? Nope. Not a one.

You may support the man and his transformative efforts, and you may have faith in the longer-term design. It’s a fair position to take. But there is no other way to see it: the calendar year for Klinsmann was a complete bust. Period.

If he was conducting revolution by completely turning over the player pool, this would all look different, of course. But he’s not. Otherwise … well, Jermaine Jones. Enough said.

Tuesday’s loss to Costa Rica in a meaningless friendly – pointless as a result, but perhaps meaningful in lack of fight and telling in the lack of attacking ideas – was a appropriate exclamation point on this turd of a year.

SEE MORE: Klinsmann fans are uniting with critics in wanting the US head coach gone.

Which brings us to today. I know it’s popular to line up and take your swing at the Klinsi piñata right now. And if you’re inclined to stew about all this a little longer, you may want to quit reading, because you probably don’t want to hear this:

I do see a fairly clear path out of this thicket for Klinsmann. At least for 2016.

Or have you not seen the United States’ group for fourth round World Cup qualifying, aka the semifinal round? (The United States, Mexico and other successful CONCACAF teams merge into World Cup qualifying in this round.)

Qualifying begins next month in St. Louis against St. Vincent. The nation, that is, of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, although in terms of relative strength, Klinsmann and Co. may as well be going up against the other St. Vincent, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter.

From there, the United States faces Trinidad & Tobago and Guatemala. Reports from a recent Guatemalan friendly cited Carlos Ruiz as the country’s top player that evening. Yes, that Carlos Ruiz … 36 years old, a pretty hard “36” as well.

T&T offers some threat, especially on the road, although the Soca Warriors will never be confused with the Seleção of Brazil. The match in Guatemala won’t be easy … but it’s not exactly a match at the Azteca either. Through a procession of managers, the United States has had Guatemala’s number, unbeaten in 20 games dating to 1988. Lately the gap is widening; five of the last six matches were US wins, the last two by a combined 10-0 margin. On US soil, the Yanks are 15-0-1.

All of this is to say, the United States will steer through this fourth round relatively trouble free. Yes, I know things are in a tailspin. I’ve written about it. Again and again, it seems. (Heck, look back at this one from January and then ask, did we see any progress at all this year?)

Still, you don’t need the eyesight of a Vegas bookmaker to see what will happen. The United States will whup some butt at home and, a potential hiccup at either T&T or Guatemala notwithstanding, manage things on the road. They’ll get out of the group (top two advance) based on talent. Yes, I said “based on talent.”

Even with Klinsmann’s quirky, questionable choices and his pinpointed disregard for MLS talent (hello, Benny Feilhaber), the talent pool is more than sufficient for this round. Remember, four years ago World Cup qualifying started with Jose Torres, one of the top creative players in the pool at the time, playing as a left back against Antigua. The semifinal round of World Cup qualifying is that forgiving; you can get away with Jose Torres as a left back and still win 3-1.

The final round of qualifying will be different, much more of a bugger. But even then, top three of six gain World Cup places; the fourth gets into a playoff – the path Mexico took into World Cup 2014. We’ll have time to debate the odds of success on that one.

SEE MORE: Gulati to blame for decline of USA.

But for 2016, the semifinal round will come and go with grumbling about choices and tactics, etc. perhaps, but ultimately with plenty of points. Onto the “hex” we will march!

It will be Klinsmann’s “out,” his opportunity to get things right. Or, at the very least, to get things pointed in a better direction. (It will be easier if he puts some stubbornness aside and understands that his approach needs adjustment … but that’s a different 1,000-word piece altogether.)

There is another way this could go; Klinsmann’s proverbial helicopter could lose a tail rotor and go into a seriously scary and swervy downward spiral. If he loses complete faith from the players and the team begins semifinal round qualifying with yet another apathetic stumble, sentiment will reach a tipping point.

In that scenario, confidence in Klinsmann drops to a point where media and supporters essentially say, “If Gulati doesn’t ‘get it’ and won’t admit that he chose poorly and needs to correct his own mistake, then he’s got to go, too.” Someone will make noise about issuing a strong challenge to his U.S. Soccer presidency down the road. (Gulati was re-elected to another four-year term in March of 2014, so he’s the man until 2018.)

Still, Gulati could begin to fear for his own U.S. Soccer place and hasten a move borne of self-preservation, never mind the big payout ahead for Klinsmann, under contract through 2018. (You really gotta think Gulati wants a “do-over” on that one now, especially seeing the trouble second-cycle managers historically have had.)

But, honestly, does anyone see all that happening?

It’s highly unlikely. Again, the talent pool may seem painfully shallow, but it isn’t. It just needs refreshing. It needs Klinsmann to go full “revolution.” Which means dropping faithful servants like Jones, Kyle Beckerman and, yes, probably Clint Dempsey, too.

Yes, any of the three could be useful in spots going forward, especially in the looming final round of qualifying. But against St. Vincent next month in St. Louis? Believe it: the younger guys will be fine.

This will be Klinsmann’s opportunity to get it right … or at least “right enough,” so that everyone will put away their pitchforks and lanterns for the time being.

Here is the very definition of irony: Jurgen Klinsmann and Landon Donovan share a common piece of real estate in domestic soccer.

Donovan once stood as American soccer’s most divisive figure. He was either a blue ribbon talent who faithfully served his country’s World Cup efforts for more a decade while propping up the cause for a fledgling MLS, or he was a soft underachiever who took the easy route, never fulfilling top potential by leaning harder into European soccer. (That one always smelled like a small-minded sentiment.)

Don’t get stuck replaying that worn out vinyl. The point is, most fans fell squarely into one camp or the other: faithful supporter, or unyielding detractor.

Now that Donovan has retired, it seems that Klinsmann, the increasingly embattled US men’s national team manager, has inherited the perch as the most polarizing US soccer figure. (If you know the duo’s bitter back story, then you know they would find it difficult to share an Uber ride, much less any real estate within the American soccer scene.)

The roiling debate over Klinsmann, just into his fifth year as the United States national team manager, could reach a boiling point by late Saturday evening. The United States meets Mexico inside Pasadena’s historic Rose Bowl – site of countless American football classics in addition to a men’s World Cup final and a Women’s World Cup final. One of these bitter border rivals will come away with CONCACAF’s berth in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia.

Some also see Pasadena as the potential site for Klinsmann’s waterloo, although his cushy contract situation most likely renders debate over his job status moot. US Soccer president Sunil Gulati has supported his hand-picked manager at pretty much every turn, advocating the long game even after the summer’s klutzy Gold Cup stumble.

There really is a Klinsi case to be made either way:

On the one hand, Klinsmann has seemed to advance the bigger US Soccer cause, even if the seeds of his plan have yet to reap full cultivation. Klinsmann is a bigger thinker, and most of his achievement has been at macro level, dislodging players and the establishment from comfort zones, attempting to modernize approaches, always with an eye toward the only competition that truly matters in world soccer, the FIFA World Cup. If he tinkers a lot … well, yeah, he’s supposed to. Right about now, in fact.

Again, we can all bloviate and bluster until the grass fed cows come home about friendlies and Gold Cups and even Saturday’s artificially pumped up CONCACAF Cup (pretty much a made-up name for a made-up event). But not much that happens beyond World Cup qualifying and the globe’s most high profile sporting event itself really matters in the final Klinsmann job review, does it?

MORE CONCACAF CUP: Ferretti’s legacy at stake | Coaches’ contrasting styles

At micro level, Klinsmann can point to a tidy little collection of impressive results in friendlies, and his 2014 World Cup bunch slipped past a first round group that was mean as razor wire. Along the way, Klinsmann has advocated a tough approach to scheduling friendlies and, aside from a slippery relationship with accountability, has stood out front in welcoming pressure for himself and his players.

That’s the argument in a nutshell for Klinsmann admirers. The manifesto from anti-Klinsmann types looks something like this:

Results have proven inconclusive, and more stylistic progress was expected, at very least. The more dynamic game he promised (higher pressure, faster tempo, less reactive) has never quite materialized. Yes, getting past a brutal first round group in Brazil represented accomplishment, but only Super Tim Howard stood between the United States and a globally televised Belgian ass whupping in the knockout round.

The United States went flat from there, possibly due to constant tinkering that sometimes seems to lack structure or a broader definition. Then came the 2015 Gold Cup fiasco, when a tournament Klinsmann himself identified early and often as highly critical sank into the crapper.

MORE CONCACAF CUP: Mexico’s defense settled | US’s remains uncertain

For most American soccer fans, fourth place (never mind the significant advantage of playing the whole thing at home) was tantamount to being lined up and kicked squarely in the front of the pants. A subsequent win over Peru was bit of healing balm that was quickly washed away when Brazil ran up, down and around a meek US response in a 4-1 buzzkill.

As if the blah-blah-blah over Klinsmann needed additional accelerant, Donovan spoke up earlier this week. In some corners, this was the bitter sentiment from a man famously jettisoned by Klinsmann on World Cup 2014 eve. Then again, ESPNC FC did ask Donovan the question. Not only is he entitled to his opinion, it’s an opinion shared by plenty.

In the sit-down with ESPN FC, Donovan said:

“Around the world, if a player plays poorly and a player has a bad string of results, they get dropped from the team. Jurgen said many times he wants our players to feel pressure – so if they lose a game they can’t go to the grocery store the next day. If they lose a game, they are getting hammered in the press.

“Well, the same holds true for the coach, and so we had a very poor summer with bad results in the Gold Cup. The last game against Brazil was probably the worst game I’ve seen them play under Jurgen.

“The reality is that now, anywhere else in the world, if this coach had those results, and they lose this game against Mexico, they’d be fired. I think if Jurgen wants to hold all the players to that standard, then he has to be held to that standard too.”

No truth to the rumor that he dropped the mic and walked away.

The upshot on Klinsmann probably falls in that great in-between. (Sorry, but this fence is made for sitting – at least for now.) Yes, Klinsmann tinkers away like a mad scientist, and his choices do sometimes look counterintuitive (or sometimes just plain odd.) Then again, quite a few of his quirky concoctions have yielded tasty teas.

Klinsmann’s real problem probably lies in the messaging. In a lot of ways, he brings the criticism on himself through an endless march of mixed messages, incomplete thoughts and too many opportunities missed to take the rap. Plus, he sometimes throws rocks at Major League Soccer. It’s OK if you agree with Klinsmann about the relative quality of MLS, but the league’s role in US Soccer’s progress can hardly be debated – not by anyone with a shred of common sense, at least.

Critics like to say he “plays favorites.” But that’s a silly argument when you think about it; every coach in every sport has “favorites” in that they prefer certain personnel attributes and tendencies, whether those be of physical, mental or tactical approach. The problem is that Klinsmann backs himself needlessly into corners when explanations and rationalizations begin to lose form or, at their worst, directly contradict last week’s.

Quite honestly, Klinsmann is a cheery fellow who wants to play nice, who seems to prefer that everyone likes him. Maybe he’d be better off with a little more Bruce Arena in him. The Galaxy and former US manager – truly, the dean of American soccer coaches – never bothers to explain himself. He just shrugs his shoulders indifferently if anyone dares to disagree.

MORE CONCACAF CUP: Why USA-Mexico matters | Where will you watch? | FOX or Univision?

The current US manager seems sure to keep his job no matter what happens Saturday. But a US loss will deepen the Klinsmann crisis. At very least, even those who don’t read any of this as “crisis” will likely be persuaded otherwise.

The blah-blah-blah over Klinsmann will go on either way; the balance of the camps, the Klinsi supporters versus the Klinsi detractors, will just shift a bit, one way or the other.

I read somewhere on one of the internet’s dependables that Mexico’s back line is looking pleasantly settled ahead of this weekend’s Rose Bowl biggie. Must be nice. The United States’ back line is … well … let’s go with “ongoing work in progress.” Settled? If it were any “less settled” it would be a fidgety 5-year-old on a sugar high. In 16 matches of 2015, US manager Jurgen Klinsmann has used 13 different combinations along the back line.

So who gets their turn in the churn Saturday as the US meets Mexico outside Los Angeles, with a place in the 2017 Confederations Cup on the line? Only Klinsmann knows. Except that, given the state of ongoing flux, even he can’t be assured of his own choices to face El Tri.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the ongoing disquiet in the US rear guard:

The team’s preferred left back got his first cap in pre-9/11 America. DaMarcus Beasley is 33, so not exactly “over the hill” just yet, and he’s still performing quite well for the Houston Dynamo. None of that is the issue. Rather, it’s that he keeps trying to retire, only to have Klinsmann lure him back. Such is the telling need.

SEE MORE: Jurgen Klinsmann vs. Tuca Ferretti is a battle between 2 different coaching philosophies.

The preferred right back, Fabian Johnson, is a solid choice. But he is naturally left-footed and therefore better as a left back. Even better is Johnson deployed in midfield. But such is the need.

Johnson looks fully recovered from an August calf injury. While that’s great news ahead of Saturday’s clash, consider this: With Brek Shea out of the picture for now, with Graham Zusi’s form weaving in and out like an agility dog through poles and with Alejandro Bedoya playing interior positions so frequently in a US shirt, we could make a good argument that Johnson is the team’s best threat to provide natural midfield width. Which would be great – except that he’s needed at outside back due to a concerning lack of other options.

SEE MORE: Mexico’s defense looks surprisingly settled.

So the situation at outside back is somewhat stable, although this thin layer of security has been achieved more or less through temporary fixes. Mark that down as “less than ideal.” Still, it’s a picture of enduring steadfastness compared to the situation at center back, which really is a complete mess.

One of last year’s World Cup starters (Matt Besler) has fallen alarmingly low on the depth chart. Then again, at least he is on the current roster! Not so with Omar Gonzalez, who has been “just OK” in Major League Soccer this year. That may be good enough against San Jose or Sporting KC, or someone else in league play. But to put some “just OK” on the field against a motivated bunch of Mexican attackers is really asking for it. Klinsmann doesn’t currently adjudge the longtime Galaxy man to be one of his best eight defenders of the moment.

So his choices at center include Ventura Alvarado, the Club América man who has been consistently underwhelming on the national team and is not starting regularly in Liga MX, or Besler, who wasn’t playing well enough in the summer, apparently, to be on Klinsmann’s Gold Cup roster.

Or Tim Ream, whom Klinsmann has never seemed to favor, even though he’s the best defender in the player pool for passing smoothly out of the back, the very way Klinsmann himself prefers. (Yes, that one remains a head-scratcher.) Or Brad Evans, who is far more likely to play on the outside, although he has generally been used as a converted center back this year for Seattle.

Klinsmann’s best choice at center back looks like Geoff Cameron, starting at the position now for Stoke City. Thing is, Klinsmann has always looked at Cameron and seen “outside back” or even a “holding midfielder.” He has typically leaned away from Cameron as center back.

Answers have hardly been forthcoming, even as Klinsmann has deployed six different center backs at some point over the last four matches, including that latest alarm bell clunker, a 4-1 loss to Brazil.

Ordinarily, this would be a reasonable time for tinker-dinker in all areas. We are still in the comfy zone, a period before World Cup qualifying gets serious. Yes, Russia 2018 qualifying commences next month for the United States. But the competition in the upcoming round looks soft as high quality tissue paper. Klinsmann could drag Thomas Dooley out of retirement and install him along the back line and the United States could still probably advance into the final round of the CONCACAF process.

But the timing here became tricky and problematic when the United States stumbled so badly at the Gold Cup, setting up Saturday’s one-off for all the Confeds Cup marbles. Mercifully for the United States, Giovani dos Santos is injured, so he won’t be available to dice up the United States the way he did in the very same Rose Bowl four years back (during the Gold Cup final, a loss that ultimately cost Bob Bradley his job). Still, Mexico has enough offense to make life difficult on Brad Guzan or Tim Howard, the choices to keep U.S. goal before a sold-out crowd inside the historic ground.

SEE MORE: Why I’ll be watching USA vs. Mexico on FOX, not Univision.

The temptation may be to blame Klinsmann for not assembling a more trustworthy, consistent rear guard. While developing a competent back line is a priority order for any manager at any level, Klinsmann’s defenders in the pool haven’t exactly stepped up and seize the moment, now have they? The reality is that personnel must do its part, too; no one has put a grimacing, unyielding stranglehold on any of the positions.

(Well, Beasley has … but he is practically begging “let me go!” And Johnson is fine, although he’s needed elsewhere.)

Michael Orozco, John Brooks, Alvarado and plenty of others have moved off and on the back line, mostly with results ranging from “not bad” to “needs work.” (Brooks continues to struggle with an injury and wasn’t named to the current roster.)

You know what the United States back line needs? It needs Carlos Bocanegra. Not actually Bocanegra himself, of course. But a presence like the former US captain, who earned 110 caps not so much for his speed or raw ability. Rather, he was a back line marshal, a cop on the beat who directed traffic and kept the law and order.

It’s what Klinsmann has always wanted from a figure like Gonzalez, who has more physical ability on his worst day than Bocanegra had on his best. Or it’s what Klinsmann wants from Besler, who reads the game with aplomb and is certainly dedicated, but who is such a nice, swell fellow that perhaps he doesn’t have the requisite bark and bite of a commanding back line general.

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So Klinsmann’s back line looks like a classic “conundrum,” defined more generally as the choice between equally unappealing options. In this case, his options aren’t so much “unappealing” as they are “unconvincing.”

No matter, though. He’s got to get this one right. Then, this chosen foursome has 90 minutes to accomplish something we haven’t seen since Brazil ’14, a year and change back: the United States put together a cohesive, commanding, locked-in 90 minutes against a worthy attack.

A crackerjack of a match happening Oct. 10 inside Pasadena’s historic Rose Bowl is, of course, the big fire sucking all the oxygen from our domestic soccer “room.” Meetings with a bitter border rival will do that, you know, and US versus Mexico is practically a brand. (I forget, does the hashtag dosacero take an exclamation point, or no?)

Less heralded is the United States’ quest for 2016 Olympic qualifying, which begins on Thursday but climaxes mere hours before events inside the Rose Bowl. The “money matches,” if Andi Herzog’s team can get there, that is, are Oct. 10 inside Real Salt Lake’s Rio Tinto Stadium.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that as the United States enters matches of equal consequence – maybe the Olympic qualifying is even more so due to longer-lasting implications – the drive for Rio 2016 is getting “also in the news” treatment. It’s an under-23 tournament, after all, less sexy and lesser blessed of star appeal.

Too bad, in a way; there’s a lot riding on this road Rio de Janeiro, too.

We’ll just skip past CONCACAF’s inexplicable decision to hold two such momentus events on the same day. With all its trouble – bribery, corruption, fraud … pretty much the whole white collar crime shebang – you would think CONCACAF would create the biggest possible window for media focus on actual matches (as opposed to the greedy shenanigans that now have a bunch of former movers and shakers in jail or banned). But, it’s quirky CONCACAF, so here we are.

So both “big days” fall on Oct. 10. We all know, the result in the Rose Bowl that day will be a referendum on Jurgen Klinsmann. Seems to be a lot of that going around, eh?

To wit: what happens that day in suburban Sandy, just outside Salt Lake City, will also be a referendum. And there is a wild, wild degree of swing as to which way this thing could go.

This could turn into Klinsmann’s shining moment. He’s had a few exalted days in four-plus years in charge. A restorative victory in the unforgettable Snow Clasico, a subsequent, helpful result days later in Mexico, the World Cup win over Ghana and qualifying for second round in the 2014 World Cup are his signature achievements. A win over Mexico inside the Rose Bowl would be one-half of another.

SEE MORE: Overrated/underrated – the truth about the value of the Confederations Cup.

If the United States also qualifies that day for Rio 2016, it might well be hailed as Klinsmann’s grandest day yet. Herzog is his hand-picked choice to guide the Olympic team; in Klinsmann’s dual role as U.S. technical director, he deserves credit/responsibility, depending on how things go.

Of course, the darker side of this wide avenue goes as such: Mexico prevails in the Rose Bowl to claim that coveted 2017 Confederations Cup berth, and the United States stumbles in Utah (again, assuming Herzog’s team gets there). Then, everyone around U.S. Soccer is left to explain away Olympic qualifying failure for a second consecutive time.

If that sounds ridiculous, then perhaps you don’t remember events of a certain, forlorn night in Nashville four years back, when the previous Olympic men’s qualifying attempt unraveled so spectacularly in a draw with El Salvador. Qualification for the 2012 Olympics in London had been presumed, especially as Caleb Porter’s team was the bully in such a lightweight foursome (alongside Cuba, Canada and El Salvador). Somehow, they fumbled it all away: the group of life; home field advantage throughout the tourney; all of it. They didn’t even advance past group play.

Fury and embarrassment ensued (even from Klinsmann). There were whispers then that Klinsmann had winced at the choice for under-23 coach; Porter had coached only collegians at the time. It was early days for Klinsmann’s time in charge, so it wasn’t his choice to make. Therefore, limited blame fell on U.S. Soccer’s top coaching figure for that particular little domestic soccer disaster.

SEE MORE: Who is Lynden Gooch? Another US prospect on Premier League radars.

Klinsmann’s own coaching choices are no stranger to scrutiny. The timing on that pre-World Cup house cleaning in 2014 left some wondering about the stability and planning – uh, there is a blueprint here, right? – ahead of the only real moment that mattered for Klinsmann’s initial three years in charge.

This one will be different. Believe it. Klinsmann himself lamented the vast opportunities lost by not advancing into the 2012 Olympics. Big clubs were there to kick the tires on young players, after all, and the chance to steel themselves in a high-pressure cauldron went to Mexicans and Hondurans instead.

Not to paint too bleak a picture; no need to hover over the panic button just yet. It’s just that the consequence of failure is so high. Well, that and the unforeseen, improbable, raging embarrassment of four years ago.

The United States should make it to Rio, with its road starting Thursday in Group A action. Up first is Canada, then a date against Cuba, both at Sporting Park outside Kansas City. Herzog’s team finishes group play against Panama at DSG Park outside of Denver.

Two teams from each group advance into the telling semifinals at Rio Tinto. Winners that night qualify for the games of Rio. The third-place team gains temporary reprieve, facing South American runner-up Colombia in a playoff next March.

As for Herzog’s 20-man selection, the midfield looks particularly capable. Fulham’s Emerson Hyndman, Columbus’ Wil Trapp and Arsenal’s Gedion Zelalem (currently on loan to Scotland’s Rangers) give Herzog lots to build around. Behind them, the Red Bulls’ Matt Miazga can build on a breakout year where he has become a trusted center back for a team leaning towards a possible Supporters Shield.

SEE MORE: One of the US’s best goalkeepers is not getting a chance at the starting job.

A lot will be expected of Jordan Morris, the Stanford kid who galloped heroically toward goal last April in San Antonio, scoring in the full national team’s win over archrival Mexico.

The roster certainly isn’t perfect; as the tournament begins on non-FIFA international dates, clubs are not obligated to release players, leaving Herzog and his fellow under-23 coaches in a bit of a pickle. Best case in point is Rubio Rubin. Herzog would love to have the versatile forward, who plays for Utrecht in the Dutch Eredivisie. Dutch clubs have a history of reticence in releasing U.S. players and, sure enough, the highly regarded Oregonian will remain back in the Old World for this one.

There have been better, more talented and more accomplished men than Sebastian Giovinco to perform in Major League Soccer.

Start with a fellow who just left MLS, Thierry Henry, who is sometimes called “King” for a reason. The majesty of his best days in the game can hardly be overstated.

In terms of team accomplishment, David Villa can stand alongside Henry; both are World Cup winners, European Championship winners and European Champions League winners.

Heck, even loafing Lothar Matthäus was a remarkable presence on the field at his best, before he signed up to practically steal money from the New York MetroStars. The point is, through 20 years of Major League Soccer, some very special talents have immigrated into MLS as their fabulous careers marched inexorably toward winter. Their body of work over an entire career trumps Giovinco’s – even if they weren’t at their tippy-top best by the time they got here.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from MLS gameweek 30.

But if we talk about the player who actually performed best in an MLS season, an artist whose outstanding deeds in the present, over a single season, deserves highest recognition, it’s the man who really deserves a better nickname than the slightly cartoonish moniker Atomic Ant.

At no time in Major League Soccer’s 20 years has any one man been more of a tour de force, more singularly impacting in performance and achievement. Simply put, in Giovinco’s first year in North America, the Italian international is having the greatest season witnessed yet in MLS.

Giovinco, who now has both hands on the league’s Landon Donovan MVP Trophy, is passing every single test this year for Toronto FC. First, for everything that his fellow DPs, U.S. international mainstays Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore, are doing around BMO Field, it has been Giovinco’s drive, confidence, creativity and outrageous skill in the attacking third that will see TFC safely into its first playoff spot.

Toronto joined MLS in 2007. To have not made the playoffs yet in a league where postseason passage remains far too easy is testament to how badly the early management regimes screwed things up around BMO Field. For Giovinco to drag the organization past its own raging incompetence says so much about the longtime Juventus figure’s impact, one that will at once be instant and lasting in Ontario.

Toronto FC is not there yet, but official qualification is as close as the nearest cold brew around the team’s newly expanded ground at Exhibition Place. With four games still to play, only the most improbable series of goofy events would prevent it.

Giovinco is also passing the statistical test. This being a league based in the United States, where we love our stats, mileposts and sporty records, that is important.

SEE MORE: Dramatic races are the silver linings of MLS’s permissive playoff system.

Major League Soccer has never before seen a 20-10 man: an attacker who accumulated 20 goals and 10 assists. Consider that Giovinco is already a 20-15 man. He already passed Chris Wondolowski’s record total of combined goals and assists (34), and the little Atomic Ant still has that quartet of regular season matches remaining to pad the numbers.

A couple of other, quick points about his amazing statistical output in 2015: TFC needs all those goals and assists thanks to its bedraggled back line. As it stands, Greg Vanney’s club, clearly top-heavy in the attack, will march into the playoffs with the most goals conceded among the postseason participants.

Also, some of the other individuals who established big, statistical footprints -– Stern John’s 26-goal season, Roy Lassiter’s 27-goal season, Carlos Valderrama’s 26-assist campaign or Jason Kreis’ 18-goal, 15-assist MVP campaign in 1998 –- did so in a day when goal scoring was much higher in MLS. Plus, assists were handed out more liberally back in the day.

Suffice to say, it took 20 years for someone to assemble a 20-15 season, and it might take another 20 for someone to lap Giovinco’s single-season burst of prodigious production.

Finally, he’s passing all the eyeball tests.

Did you see his staggering work of genius Saturday against Chicago? We can add that to his collection of jaw-droppers this year, but it’s really his overall command of matches that stand out. His tireless, shrew movement has left most defenses powerless. And Giovinco has generally risen in big moments, whether that means dragging his team back from a deficit, providing the goods to secure wins or seizing the moment when the spotlight is brightest. Or maybe you don’t remember that dazzling hat trick inside Yankee Stadium on a nationally televised July afternoon?

How far he can take Toronto FC, where defense remains a work in progress, remains to be seen. But what the man has already accomplished can hardly be debated. His Most Valuable Player award is a foregone conclusion, for MLS has never seen a better single season.

A certain school of thought says for everything we gain in life, we necessarily give something up. Skipping the philosophical debate and just accepting the premise, a perfect example is happening in Major League Soccer at this very moment.

When league planners expanded playoffs from eight to 10 teams back in 2010, I said it was the wrong move. Eight was a good, round number that provided for a sound playoff structure with blissful symmetry. Ten teams, then, required jacking up the system with unbalanced rounds, etc. Mostly, too much relevancy of the regular season was lost.

This year, MLS leaders moved the target again, adding two more teams; now 12 clubs qualify for the post-season. As such, it is once again mathematically easier to make the playoffs than the miss, which seems counterintuitive to the actual “playoff” concept.

So we find a playoff field that looks too much like the average American diet – on the overly indulgent side. The system hacks away at the essential relevancy of way too many matches in spring and summer.

Simply put, too many match days in March, April, May, June, July and even into August aren’t attached to serious, no-nonsense levels of consequence. This drift from gravity on every single match seemed unwise and perhaps even short-sighted in efforts to sell MLS (at the gate and on TV).

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from week 29 of the MLS season.

But league leaders had a strategy behind it all. Now into the first bursts of glorious fall, I’ll back off a little on my ongoing disregard for an engorged playoff field. For all that summer relevancy forfeited (i.e., what MLS leaders “gave up”) ,here is what they surely gained: A fierce fall full of wonderful playoff races.

To their credit, this is what commissioner Don Garber and his board of MLS deciders told us they wanted all along. So, here ‘tis! And admittedly, it is glorious.

You could feel the weight of it all mounting last week in MLS Round 29 (of 34). Every game has meaning, some more than others; loses by Colorado, San Jose, Portland and Houston were particular crushers, imperiling playoff aspirations to various degrees. All were punctuated by a telling, hangdog walk off the field, one heavy of knowing consequence.

On the other end of the joy spectrum, two New York City FC wins over four days restored temporary joy to Yankee Stadium, where such slender threads of hope still support playoff wishes. The next loss will cut the cord for sure.

More of the same is ahead. If you follow MLS at all, to glance quickly at the schedule is to immediately absorb the looming sense of consequence.

Round 30 begins Friday with Orlando City visiting the surging Red Bulls. Adrian Heath’s playoff target for his expansion team was certainly ambitious, but here they are, limping somewhat, but still heroically in the fight. Orlando will not win it all this year, but making the playoffs would signal tremendous achievement for Heath’s hard-trying debutantes. Meanwhile, Jesse Marsch’s Red Bulls have a finger or two on the Supporters Shield trophy, so they’ll lean into the effort accordingly.

Saturday starts with Chicago facing Toronto, a club whose inability to make playoffs (it hasn’t happened yet; the team debuted in 2007) has made the BMO Field bunch something of a perennial MLS punchline. A team with Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore and likely league MVP Sebastian Giovinco simply cannot miss the playoffs. Right?

Even within the playoff blessed, the weight of it all is creeping closer to crush depth. D.C. United is sliding backward, winless in five, and desperation grows to get things right around RFK. Yes, Ben Olsen’s team will make the playoffs, but squeaky bum time draws closer with each flagging result, and the next chance comes Saturday at Montreal’s Stade Saputo. There, Didier Drogba’s arrival and yet another coaching change has also ratcheted up the intensity noise.

Colorado faces Houston in a virtual elimination match. Winner keeps some hope, at least; loser may as well start playing a younger lineup, looking toward 2016.

If teams aren’t straining for a playoff berth, they certainly covet improved positioning. Top two teams in each conference avoid that dodgy, initial single-game elimination round. The Galaxy, for instance, seemed well positioned to avoid it, but three consecutive losses have Bruce Arena’s side well aware of the coming residual: an early match against Seattle or Sporting Kansas City, or some other side that could quickly derail the lofty ambitions of the league’s glamour club.

SEE MORE: Change in CONCACAF Champions League schedule would benefit the region.

You get the idea; every match has ramifications galore now. And not just in the standings; jobs are clearly at stake, too.

The very structure of MLS (again, only 40 percent of the clubs don’t get past the postseason velvet ropes) means supporters and management alike are (rightly) tremendously disappointed not to qualify. So, jobs are (rightly) frequently lost. When the last teeny-tiny yarn of playoff hope broke last week in Chicago, Frank Yallop and his old school management style were mercifully sent packing.

Caleb Porter was the “it” man of American coaches just a couple of years ago. But if the Timbers fail to make the playoffs again this year – the Timbers currently sit sixth in the Western Conference standings, with approximately zero margin for error – owner Merritt Paulson, devoted Porter advocate that he is, will have some serious thinking to do.

Jim Curtin at Philadelphia and Jeff Cassar at Real Salt Lake are standing over the trap door, and both seem bound to tumble if they can’t scratch their way into playoff grace. Neither seems likely to, although RSL’s big weekend win over those curiously sliding Galaxy men have temporarily resuscitated hopes around Rio Tinto Stadium.

Heck, for Frank Klopas in Montreal, just hovering too perilously with the playoff red line was enough for Impact higher-ups, who have trouble keeping their managers anyway. Klopas was fired two weeks ago.

So, miss the playoffs and you soon may begin missing paychecks. That works similarly for players, too, and it’s all reflected in the amped up emotion and anxiety.

SEE MORE: Poku has to wait, the same way Kreis waited 20 years ago.

The collective intensity will thin out marginally over the remaining five rounds. Not every single match will remain consequential for every single team. But the system sets up such that pretty much every contest means something for at least one determined club.

Twelve teams qualifying for postseason joy in a 20-team operation is too many. I won’t back off that. But I will enjoy the bountiful September harvest that it cultivates. These are easily the most delicious weeks in MLS.

Major League Soccer can be an odd and fascinating place. A great case in point came Wednesday night inside Yankee Stadium.

Two undeniable legends of the game – no hyperbole here, honest – were in the midfield, both delivering the goods as NYCFC clung desperately to playoff hopes wedged somewhere between “dead” and perhaps “mostly dead.”

Andrea Pirlo was large and in charge, leaving his best imprint yet on the fledgling club. His passing was, well, Pirlo-esque, and he even contributed a couple of important defensive moments. Further, his celebration at the late, clinching goal was telling; if Pirlo isn’t “all in” emotionally for City FC, he did a damn fine job of acting like it in that moment.

Frank Lampard also shined, easily his best outing for City FC (even if that’s not saying much). Lampard has certainly struck better goals, but his first-half effort sneaked into the back post, mercifully venting some mounting pressure and clearing the runway for the typical, two-way proficiency for which the England man has always been known.

Yes, things were swell around the tiny Yankee Stadium field, and the two pricey legends were finally living up to expectations. And yet all along – now we get back to the oddball part – who did the crowd want to see in midfield? Why Kwadwo Poku, of course. Yes, that Kwadwo Poku.

Poku’s rise to cult hero status is well known around the Bronx, a tale perhaps lesser told beyond City FC’s temporary home inside the famous baseball stadium. It has also caused some consternation among supporters. Poku’s blend of power, pace, want-to and productivity has the fans around Yankee Stadium clamoring for more. He’s 23, after all, and if the deciders around City FC (whoever they are within that nebulous City Football Group) can get out of their own way, he’s tip-top of a list of fine, young attackers the club can safely build around. Mix Diskerud, Tommy McNamara, Patrick Mullins, Angelino and Khiry Shelton fall in somewhere behind in that talented group.

All of which is why the crowd, even with Pirlo, Lampard and the U.S. international Diskerud managing things well against similarly star-filled Toronto FC, kept chanting for Poku’s introduction.

So manager Jason Kreis, perhaps hamstrung by the requirement to play the stars, is hurting Poku, right? Holding him back from becoming the star he’s destined to be, at very least, right?

Well, maybe.

There’s something important to know about all this: Kreis is the perfect manager to handle this highly imperfect, somewhat unwieldly, situation. Because Kreis has been Poku before.

Kreis was a rookie star in Dallas in 1996. He scored the club’s first goal nearly 20 years back and went on to strike 13 times that year. He was clearly a star in the making – one who would, indeed, be a future Major League Soccer Most Valuable Player and the league’s first to reach 100 goals.

But he wasn’t there in 1997. Far from it, in fact.

The club signed Swiss international Alain Sutter, who was something of a thing back then. Sutter, who shined in the 1994 World Cup, arrived into Texas after four Bundesliga seasons, including a one-year hitch at fabled Bayern Munich.

As an attacking midfielder, Kreis’ spot at the time, Sutter was more skillful and far more worldly. So Kreis, at roughly the same age as Poku now, was relegated to a lesser role. Oh, he played for coach Dave Dir, but his minutes fell and his role was reduced. Kreis came off the bench more often and became something of a utility knife, filling in along the wing or in other roles as needed. And he wasn’t happy about it.

Long story short, Kreis has said since that the pot-holed road in 1997 made him a better player. He had to fight harder for his spot, work harder to improve and prove himself. He had to learn the hard way that things were about the team, not about himself.

Dir’s ultimate solution (a year later) was to move Kreis further up the field, to forward. Two years later, Kreis spearheaded a very good Dallas Burn team with 18 goals and 15 assists, earning league MVP honors along the way.

So back to Poku. When Kreis tells us that Poku still has moments where he leaves the team tactically exposed, you can believe him. When Kreis talks about areas of growth in Poku’s game, you can believe him.

Mostly, though, Kreis can empathize with a talented, young, go-getter who craves and probably deserves more minutes. He’s the perfect person to remind Poku to play the long game, to understand that he’s getting minutes and learning along the way, even if he’d prefer “starts” over “minutes.”

The great crowds filling Yankee Stadium will keep chanting, and that’s a great thing. Soon enough, they’ll get the “full Poku” treatment. Between Lampard (age 37) and Pirlo (36), you have to think one of them will not be brought back to Yankee Stadium in 2016. Surely someone within that accountability free City Football Group will be sensible enough to recognize the mistake of signing both.

The Poku that finds his way into a starting role at that point will be a better, more finished version for this season.

Let’s talk about that looming Oct. 10 date, the one of such super-duper importance in our part of the soccer world. And then let’s hack away at some conventional wisdom that needs taming – a false narrative has spilled out, and it needs cleaning up.

The match is United States versus Mexico inside Pasadena’s historic Rose Bowl. Preliminary rosters came out Monday, so things are starting to bubble already. We know the match will generate tremendous interest. These are bitter border rivals, and for the good, sweet, clean U.S. soccer supporter, any chance for another bite off the juicy dos a cero apple is mouthwatering stuff.

We also know about the spoils, the Confederations Cup berth at stake. A victory certainly gives U.S. fans something to anticipate in 2017, 12 months before a Russian World Cup.

But it’s that weighty competitive advantage of mere Confeds Cup participation that really stands out, right? Because ticket punchers reap huge rewards just for showing up, right? Ah, the ability dip toes into local waters in 2017, an early round of Russian inspection before stuff gets real at World Cup 2018.

Yes, the edge is massive for teams that can visit and play in a competitive (ahem) tournament a year before the big show, right? Coaches, players and officials gain tremendously from checking out the scene a year early. Presumably, they are carefully identifying the best places to bunk and train, testing the local water for mineral count, taking temperatures of stadium soil and sourcing local farms for grass fed beef.

Coaches tell us all the time that “the game is about players.” But, c’mon! We know better. Identifying the optimum bus route into the stadium a year out … that’s got to be worth at least one goal, right?

Yes, we know the Confederations Cup is critical stuff. We know so because … well … because the teams trying to get there tell us so!

Only, it’s not so. A growing sample of evidence simply doesn’t support the claim.

Again, I would personally love to see the United States go to the Confederations Cup. Simply put, it will make the summer of 2017 a lot more interesting. For any nation, given the choice of going or not going, I’m pretty sure most would stand up and proclaim, “Yeah, we’re in!”

SEE MORE: Azteca spins infamous Trump speech into amazing playoff promo.

But as a card-carrying journalist, I am duty bound to knock down any false narratives that break loose. And here we seem to have one. In providing an actual advantage to the Confederations Cup participating teams, there is scant evidence that demonstrates any real boost for the more significant events of 12 months hence.

Jurgen Klinsmann can say it all he wants, banging on about the tremendous advantage that Mexico had in 2013, buzzing into Brazil for a competitive tournament a year early, but him saying it doesn’t make it so. The Fox network started promoting this Oct. 10 showdown and talking up its bigger picture implication weeks ago, but clearly they have an interest in ginning up the significance. You know, ratings and all.

But the notion that Confederations Cup is some super fuel that drastically improves engine performance during a World Cup is just wishful conjecture, presumption and conventional wisdom gone wrong. The Confederations Cup’s usage as an eight-team dry run for the ensuring World Cup, one year out, began in 2001. Brazil did indeed grace the Confeds Cup field in 2001, and did indeed win the whole shebang one summer later. But it’s Brazil, which has won four other World Cups, so for theorem proof, that one has limited value.

You know who else got an early preview of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan? France – and how did that work out for Les Bleus? Their historic flop (no wins, two losses and a scoreless draw) was among the memorably infamous tales of World Cup 2002.

Other 2001 Confeds Cup visitors, the ones who came back a year later? Cameroon went 1-1-1 and didn’t get out of group play in 2002. Mexico lost to the United States in the Round of 16. Of course, Mexico always loses in the Round of 16, so that doesn’t prove much either.

Brazil not only qualified for the 2005 Confederations Cup in Germany, but that Ronaldinho-led team won the darn thing. So, big edge for the 2006 World Cup, right? Well, I’m pretty sure that falling to France in the quarterfinals in Berlin probably isn’t any Brazilian fan’s notion of “raging success.”

Tunisia and Japan were Confeds Cup participants in 2005. Both came and went quickly in the 2006 World Cup without so much as a first-round win. Australia is one team you might circle as a team that did gain some advantage from tire kicking the grounds a year out. Maybe. They escaped group play in 2006 and then gave Italy a handful in a Round-of-16 loss.

Mexico was a Confeds Cup 2005 participant. The next year? Yep, the fell in the Round of 16. Mexico always loses in the Round of 16.

SEE MORE: Who is Lynden Gooch? The latest U.S. prospect on Premier League radars.

More of the same in 2009 during the dry run for South Africa. Neither Italy nor New Zealand (both participants of the 2009 Confeds Cup) could propel themselves past the first round a year later. No big shock for New Zealand, of course. But Italy? Yikes.

The United States did quite well in 2009; upsetting mighty Spain was a signature win of the Bob Bradley era. But a year later, we were all saying “opportunity lost” when something that looked like a fortuitous path into later rounds was squandered in an underwhelming afternoon against Ghana.

Spain, of course, claimed the 2010 World Cup crown a year after visiting for the Confeds Cup. And you are certainly free to make the argument that getting acquainted with the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, or whatever, was instrumental in Spanish success. I would argue it was more about Xavi, Andres Iniesta and others in that fabulously talented group of serial winners, surely among the best national team we’ll ever witness.

Mexico claimed CONCACAF’s Confederation Cup berth for Brazil 2013. You can hoot and holler all you want about Arjen Robben’s embellishment in Mexico’s loss to the Netherlands. But either way, Mexico lost in the Round of 16. Mexico always loses in the Round of 16.

And Spain? Well, my heavens, that early inspection visit of 2013 certainly didn’t help La Furia Roja at Brazil 2014, now did it? That aging generation could have lived in Brazil for the previous year and still not have overturned a sad, miserable flameout.

Italy, just like four years early, went to the Confeds Cup and then went into the World Cup toilet. Once again, the Azzurri didn’t escape first-round play at Brazil 2014.

We can turn all this around, too. Generally speaking, the tournament surprise teams do not come from the list of eight who punch their Confeds Cup tickets. Colombia and Costa Rica were the little teams that could in 2014, and neither had the advantage of a Confeds Cup head start. Similarly, Germany, Argentina and the Netherlands did just fine last year in Brazil, all qualifying for the semifinals, at least. None were in the previous summer’s Confederations Cup.

One more time: Of course, it would be nice to be in the Confederations Cup. And it surely cannot hurt to be in the Confeds Cup.

Intuitively, it seems like there would be some kind of advantage gained. But we can learn a lot from those hard-working number crunchers from the Freakonomics franchise, who keep showing us through books and podcasts and lots of data mining that sometimes the numbers overturn conventional wisdom.

It’s OK if you want your team to beat Mexico on Oct. 10 (or, if you want your team to beat the United States.) But this notion that a Confederations Cup appearance works any better than a couple of selective friendlies inside the host country (or even just staying home to train) just doesn’t hold water.

No, the soccer sky isn’t falling, even if it felt that way for some U.S. soccer supporters watching events unfold Tuesday night in Boston.

This wasn’t Belize, after all, that was running circles around Jurgen Klinsmann’s experimental crew of miscasts and positional applicants. This was Brazil, where good players practically fall out of first-floor windows, packed too tightly into whatever talent factories they’ve got working double shifts down there.

So U.S. supporters probably weren’t looking for a win Tuesday at Gillette Stadium. Obviously, a confidence-inspiring “W” was the preferred result, but a decent showing against the five-time world champs would likely suffice.

Fans and the fourth estate were just looking for things to feel good about, a couple more unmissable signs that skies are blue over Klinsmann Valley and things are generally moving in the right direction. Show us an entertaining match on a good surface, in front of another large, hootin’ and hollerin’ U.S. gathering, where the Yanks had their moments on the field, and most American supporters would probably enjoy their post-game beers well enough.

Instead, we got a night where U.S. Soccer totally crapped out. In more ways than one.

There was just so darn little to feel good about after this one.

SEE MORE: USA 1-4 Brazil: Klinsmann delivers new low.

Bad choices by U.S. Soccer apparently had a lot to do with an underwhelming attendance (29,308). Ticket prices that started at $75 needed a re-think. I mean, gas prices are down and all, perhaps leaving a bit of wiggle room in the family budget, but let’s not get carried away!

Gillette has always been a preferred U.S. venue; the club’s longtime ties to U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati always seems to be in play. Gillette just hosted its 25th U.S. men’s match since 1991. Maybe that needs a re-think, too, especially given the needless expense (and all the other pitfalls) of the dreaded temporary grass surface.

The field was … well, let’s go with “better than we’ve seen from other temporary surfaces.” Brazilian manager Dunga criticized the surface prior to Tuesday’s kickoff, although his team managed the imperfect ground far better than the home side, clearly.

It was certainly better than the cow pasture that Argentina and Mexico endured outside Dallas. Still, is that the bar we’ve set? To play against the top teams (Brazil!) on a slow field with no bounce, one that rates “adequate at best?”

Then landed the match itself. Oooof!

Perspective is critical here; this was a friendly, and I am among the legions always warning not to make too much of them.

But sometimes the “meaningless” actually develops meaning. Like the pair of results earlier this year against Germany and Netherlands. Two wins away from home against world powers (never mind the Dutch face-first fall in ongoing European 2016 qualifying) deserved and received special praise.

Similarly, Tuesday’s tire fire deserves a circle drawn around it, too, albeit for wildly different reasons. This was one where Klinsmann practically pounded his fist as he declared the United States “ready!” No more experimenting! Time to get down to business.

And yet … here we are again, scratching our heads, wanting to believe in the man in charge, and yet straining in the inability to see the larger plan. Everyone understands the importance of ongoing research and development — a.k.a. the Klinsmann penchant for tinker and trial — but there has to be a destination. And as destinations go, does anybody feel good about anything as the United States approaches this Oct. 10 date with Mexico? The goalkeeping situation is, at least, one soft place to land, thanks to the trusty likes of Brad Guzan and Tim Howard. Otherwise, we’re parachuting in the darkness into trees and jagged rocks, aren’t we?

Who are the center backs? Or the fullbacks? Is Jermaine Jones, approaching his 34th birthday, still up for the job? Overall, the personnel situation in midfield is a mess. There’s really too much wrong to even go into it here, although the conflicting information on Alejandro Bedoya deserves mention.

The poor fellow was clearly a duck out of water as a holding midfielder, a position he says he’s never manned as a professional. So when Klinsmann declares that Bedoya at that position is a “good option,” as the manager did late Tuesday, what are we to make of it? Remember Jose Torres as a surprise experiment at left back? That worked wonderfully. And you know why? It was against Antigua & Barbuda! That’s a small twin-island country none of us could point to on an unlabeled map.

Again, there’s no shame in losing to Brazil. But the one thing Klinsmann’s team could not afford Tuesday was big confidence drain. The players and coaches tried to tell us that self-belief and momentum weren’t fumbled away into the Massachusetts night. But does anyone really buy that?

SEE MORE: Klinsmann’s experiments equal a difficult viewing experience.

You know what would have rescued this thing? If Klinsmann would have taken the hit. He needed to walk into that post-game news conference, raise his hand and say, “My bad. I made a couple of bad choices and didn’t prepare team correctly. I put Alejandro Bedoya in a bad position. That’s my fault. This one is on me.”

If he does that, he may spare a couple of player psyches. Plus, even the Klinsmann critics would probably give him a pass. In that case, at least he is acknowledging the issues. Rather, he makes things more difficult on himself by declaring, more or less, that everything is fine. After last week’s peculiar comments to Steven Goff in the Washington Post, it sounds again as if he believes we American nincompoops just cannot see the bigger plan!

Again, the sky isn’t falling here. It’s a friendly. And Brazil is good. But there was a time when the United States was best with its backs to the wall, when things started looking a little dark over the horizon. That’s when they could generally summon their best selves, dig deep and scratch out a result.

Klinsmann’s job now is to forget this bigger plan for the time being. Rather, he’s got to get guys back into their best positions. At some point, it’s about getting the most players into the spots with which they are most comfortable. Period.

That’s the best chance of allowing the players rediscover that particular American “can do” spirit.

It was sorely lacking on Tuesday, when there was really only one thing going right for U.S. Soccer: the relatively poor crowd, plus plenty of TVs tuned into a huge U.S. Open tennis match down the road or awaiting Mexico-Argentina kickoff, meant that a lot of fans missed this night to forget at Gillette.

It certainly is nice that we have some U.S. national team matches that mean something. Well, check that. They feel like they mean something.

This short camp and two-match set – Friday’s win over Peru and Tuesday’s contest outside Boston against Brazil – is all preparation for the big skirmish coming over the hill. That’s the Oct. 10 Rose Bowl date against Mexico, a team with its own identity crisis at the moment.

So, yes, it’s nice that these are registering a notch or two higher on the meter of relevancy and intrigue. If not for the impending battle in Pasadena, these would just be two more ho-hum friendlies, further opportunity for Jurgen Klinsmann’s ongoing hodgepodge of experimentation and tinkering. Instead, there’s a finish line here; that 2017 Confederations Cup spot beckons.

SEE MORE: USA 2-1 Peru – United States wins after mixed performance.

So fans and the fourth estate (writers, broadcasters and the punditocracy, all of which apparently amuses Klinsmann so) will all do our best. Over the span of five or six days, we’ll all lean in, study hard and then make assessments of preparedness for the biggie ahead.

But let’s not get carried away. Because it’s worth remembering that these are just friendlies and that, more to the point, a lot can happen over five weeks (before the Oct. 10 date). It’s worth wondering: what are we really learning that we don’t already know?

Case in point: there is real competition in goal for the first time since … what, 2002? Since then it’s generally been Kasey Keller. Then Tim Howard.

But Howard went on sabbatical and now its Brad Guzan’s job. The Aston Villa backstopper did what he needed Friday against Peru, so things look status quo for now. Besides, is anybody really worried about the U.S. goalkeeping situation? Between Howard and Guzan, there really is no bad choice.

The situation looks much different in front of them. The back line remains, frankly, a bit of a disheveled mess.

These two games will come, and go and we still won’t have a good idea of what Klinsmann’s best back four looks like. Last week’s starters, John Brooks and Omar Gonzalez, had their good moments and bad. For Gonzalez, things certainly tilted too far toward the bad. Just ask Guzan, who is still probably wondering why Gonzalez stepped backward, rather than forward, as Daniel Chávez lined up a shot from 22 yards.

Matt Besler and Ventura Alvarado entered later to make it a foursome on trial at center back. So we know … uh … well, not a lot more. Except now we are 100 percent sure that Klinsmann still doesn’t have one center back who is an automatic selection, the way Carlos Bocanegra or Eddie Pope once were (much less two of them).

It’s possible that someone steps up against Brazil and more or less demands that Klinsmann starts him on Oct. 10. But then again, players can fall in and out of form quickly, can’t they? And Klinsmann has been very clear that having a “hot hand” matters.

SEE MORE: Remember DaMarcus Beasley on your Mount Rushmores.

So someone like Besler or Brooks could smite the (once) mighty Brazilians. But if they stumble-bumble through a couple of league games subsequently, would Klinsmann trust them with confidence at low ebb, in a match with such high stakes?

Tim Ream, on the other hand, did make everyone feel a little better about the left back position. Given injuries to DaMarcus Beasley and Fabian Johnson, it’s a good thing he played there so much last year at Bolton (before the recent move into Craven Cottage, where all good Americans abroad eventually land, apparently).

In the midfield, we don’t know much more about the ideal shape. Nor about the ideal way to combine Jermaine Jones and Michael Bradley. We did gain further evidence that Alejandro Bedoya is best in wider spots. (At least when Jones is a central partner; we have seen before that Jones’ tendency to freelance can make it hard on his central mates.)

We have more evidence that Jozy Altidore can be an effective striker – when he’s properly motivated and not hurt, that is. This is where I draw a circle back up to the part that says we are still five weeks away.

Clint Dempsey? Who knows? His hamstring remains problematic, so part of the roster changes announced Sunday by U.S. Soccer is that the Sounders striker will not join the team in Boston after all.

Gyasi Zardes did shine, didn’t he? That part was encouraging. Now, can he do it when the stakes are higher, in a match that matters? We’ll see. This is a good place to issue the usual disclaimer about friendlies, about how we can never get too excited or too bummed out about anything that happens within them. We write things in pencil, so to speak, until these guys rise when the pressure is truly on.

It certainly will be on Oct. 10.

Until then, anything we learn comes with an asterisk. Friendlies are fun distraction, but assigning too much weight to any particular lesson is unwise at best, and maybe even a bit naive.

LA Galaxy star Robbie Keane, truly as good a forward as has ever stalked for goals in Major League Soccer, tops a lot of lists for me.

Before anyone gets too excited, or wonders if there’s some kind of cash prize for that, let me explain that this is not necessarily a good thing. The man tops some “good” lists, but he tops some “bad” ones, too.

Yes, the Galaxy’s prolific Irish international, the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player, is mostly a man among MLS boys in his off-the-ball movement, his opportunism near goal, his instinct and desire to find the right spots near goal and his clinical finishing. But you know what he’s also tops in? In being a big ol’ whiny-pants complainer, someone whose persistent remonstrations and habitual, tired-ass excuse-making are unsportsmanlike at best. And sometimes, they’re just plain lame.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from MLS game week 26.

Long story short, I have a real love-hate relationship with the fellow. Every time I work up a good beachhead of admiration, some wave of Keane nonsense comes along, threating to wash away all the well-earned sparkle.

Last week’s comments following a loss in San Jose are a perfect case in point. Keane was coming off a brilliant spell, with two goals in a road win at Dallas and an even more dazzling follow-up: two goals and two assists as his team absolutely took apart New York City FC.

On they went to California rival San Jose, where things didn’t go as planned in a 1-0 loss.

In fairness to them, manager Bruce Arena and Keane both said that LA didn’t deserve the points, that San Jose was better, wanted it more, etc. I like when players and coaches say that, even when controversial moments have something to say about the outcome. Not just because it’s the proper way to handle things, but because the good and bad refereeing decisions typically balance out over the long haul.

So why didn’t Keane just stop there? Just congratulate the other side, talk about doing better next time and then hit the post-game buffet or one of the food trucks outside Avaya Stadium?

No, Keane had to keep going. Arena and Galaxy players were in a twist about a 47th-minute incident, when Galaxy center back Leonardo was sent off, having gotten tangled up with San Jose forward Quincy Amarikwa on a breakaway. Replays are not definitive, but it looked like the right call.

Either way, as they would say closer to his Irish homeland, Keane “had a go” at the referee:

“I do have a problem when you’ve got a referee who thinks it’s all about him instead of actually all about the players. The referee should never be mentioned in the game. Never. That’s the sign of a good referee. Never ever be mentioned in the game. Just concentrate on his own job instead of trying to be the center of attention.”

It’s certainly OK to disagree with a referee; happens all the time. But to further impugn and to question motive is unbecoming and, in this case, highly hypocritical.

Further, it’s all too common with the Galaxy, emblematic of the club’s ongoing sense of entitlement, an attitude cultivated famously by David Beckham and perennially fostered by Arena. Yes, the Galaxy is a good club. And, yes, Arena is a crackerjack manager. But they aren’t perfect! They aren’t going to win every important match. Only, ever since Arena arrived to bring some needed structure to the Galaxy, the club never seems to actually lose a match. Rather, they always get screwed. It’s the field. Or it’s the weather. Or, mostly, it’s the referee’s fault. It really becomes tiring.

SEE MORE: .As NYCFC learned, it’s the LA Galaxy then everyone else in MLS right now.

Back to Keane. No one tries harder to referee the match than he does. Sometimes it really is amazing that he can score so prolifically while simultaneously working so hard to supervise the officiating. So Keane talking about “concentrating on his own job,” is high folly.

And this accusation of referees as strivers to become the center of attention is completely lame. That was a favorite Beckham tactic. If the referee didn’t call things as Beckham liked, he used his bully pulpit – seriously, who had a bigger media platform than Beckham and his treasure chest of endorsement deals – to fly the weak banner of “attention seeker.”

So let’s make sure we have it right: If the Galaxy gets the benefit of most of the calls, the referee is doing his job, humbly serving the game while letting the real stars shine. But when a few key decisions go against Galaxy, then the referee is an attention seeking narcissist who needs to step aside and understand his place in the world. That about right? What a bunch of Irish hooey.

Keane’s tempestuous side comes out just as much during matches. If he isn’t gesticulating wildly to over referees’ decisions, he may be dressing down a teammate. Or gesturing unprofessionally toward fans; he was fined for this one.

These are the times when Keane’s passion sometimes spills over into something less flattering. He doesn’t seem to enjoy dealing with the media, never mind that’s just part of the deal in a league that could always use more publicity. And when he does speak up, his comments often reflect a narrow world view.

A lot of people may agree on his comments on artificial turf, for instance, that it should be outlawed in the game. But it doesn’t reflect the here-and-now reality of MLS, a league that has been boosted tremendously by the wildly successful Pacific Northwest trio, the Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps. They all play on artificial turf. Hopefully not forever, but they are only in the league now because MLS is still a place where “imperfect” beats nothing at all.

Another example: Keane may have had a point when he complained about the heat during an afternoon match last year. But the bigger picture of league scheduling is about a lot of things, not the least of which is television contracts (otherwise known as, the biggest reason he can make $4.5 million a year.)

SEE MORE: Giovani dos Santos signing is a win-win for the L.A. Galaxy.

For balance, let me return to the reasons I like to watch the guy. Again, anybody who doubts the man’s ability and his impact on the field, please see me after class. Because you are not paying enough attention. The sheer numbers are indisputable.

Consider the usual, statistical aiming point for strikers pretty much anywhere: about one goal every two matches. Do that in a good league and you’ll be the kind of guy who can afford boats and nannies and designer dogs or whatever. Keane is well past that standard with 68 goals in 102 regular season MLS matches. His hit rate of 9 goals in 17 playoff appearances is just as impressive.

Yes, he plays for the Galaxy, where abundant talent eases the load. But you can also look at that another way: It is Keane’s cunning off-the-ball movement – habitually active, instinctive and wise – that propels the Galaxy’s attack.

That’s why I love watching the guy. That’s why I admire his ability. Keane, more than Landon Donovan and perhaps as much as Arena, has been the primary factor as the Galaxy claimed three of the lasts four MLS Cups.

There has never been a repeat MVP in MLS. (Not a back-to-back repeat, that is.) But what he has done over the last few weeks has people talking about one. Sebastian Giovinco’s injury may just open the door.

And you know what? I might just vote for the guy. I still contend he should have won in 2013.

If I do vote for him this year, and if the man does win … I’ll do everyone a favor and not ask for a comment afterward.

Maybe Jurgen Klinsmann is right about John Brooks, Timothy Chandler and Ventura Alvarado, all of whom have labored lately in locking down consistent, starting spots at their clubs in Germany and Mexico. Maybe they got entangled in unfortunate circumstances as they merged back into club soccer a few weeks ago, fresh off United States men’s national team performances that could charitably be stamped as “works in progress.”

Either way, it’s a bit of a smudge on the US national team windshield, isn’t it? These guys are national team starters for a country with ambitions to climb beyond world soccer’s middle class, and yet they are just keeping their heads above water at club level.

There are potentially mitigating circumstances in each case. Chandler, for instance, consistently underwhelming in the U.S. shirt, took some additional vacation time on the back side of a (painfully predictably) underwhelming summer. So perhaps that’s why he was behind. Alvarado missed two early Club America starts.

SEE MORE: Analyzing best options for US left back position.

So maybe Klinsmann is right when he explains or justifies their club situations.

“It’s kind of a consequence of maybe that they came late into the preseason of their club teams and the coaches gave the other players a head start first,” Klinsmann said in a recent U.S. Soccer Q & A. “They have to fight their way back; it’s as simple as that.”

Or is it? There is another possible explanation, after all: That maybe Klinsmann is wrong. Maybe they just aren’t good enough.

Maybe they just aren’t quite at the level where they are more or less automatic choices with their clubs. More to the point, maybe other coaches see what so many of us see: that Alvarado, Brooks and Chandler just aren’t quite ready for prime time on the international stage. Oh, they might get there. Brooks is just 22 and Alvarado turned 23 just a couple of weeks ago. (Chandler is 25.)

Maybe – and here is where we hack further into the bigger-picture Klinsmann thicket – his measuring stick is bent, or even busted. Perhaps the way he gauges player capability, his essential personnel ranking mechanisms, deserves reconsideration or recalibration.

We all raised a curious brow when Alvarado and Brooks lined up ahead of Omar Gonzalez and Matt Besler, last year’s World Cup starters at center back. The new pair’s wobbly performances certainly played a part in a Gold Cup bust.

There is certainly an element of larger strategy at work, as Klinsmann balances the risks of “on the job training” against the here-and-now need for results. But when they go back to their clubs and can’t find solid traction, our fears draw closer to confirmation: Maybe they were in over heads all along, even against regional middleweights such as Panama and Jamaica.

As for Chandler, who has so rarely looked up to the job internationally, that’s the itch that just refuses to be scratched as Klinsmann’s sometimes unconventional choices go. His ongoing starter status simply defies explanation.

But, again, perhaps Klinsmann is correct, that these guys deserve starting spots internationally. As someone who has accomplished so much as a player and a manager, and someone whose counter intuitive choices have intermittently proved downright prophetic, he always deserves some benefit of the doubt.

But when guys look shaky in the national shirt, when so many of us wonder if they deserve their elevated status assigned by Klinsmann, and then they begin to confirm our suspicions by failing to quickly establish themselves as club starters (the way international players generally should), then his explanations sound like something else.

It starts to feel like the U.S. coach is feeding us nonsense.

SEE MORE: Jurgen Klinsmann’s eventual replacement: How about Peter Vermes?

Players shouldn’t be “behind” because they aren’t in their club’s preseason camp. Not athletes who have truly earned their international chops, that is. Quite the opposite, in fact. They should be ahead, out front in conditioning, problem solving, technical craft and speed of thought, sharper of edge in shooting, tackling, etc. They should come in fully armed with confidence, fire and desire.

That’s what Klinsmann has told us before about players who get a head start in the January camps – that he wants them taking the lead with their clubs, setting the pace, emboldened by the U.S. Soccer crest.

We mentioned fitness, right? That’s a big one for the way it feeds into everything else, not to mention a perennial Klinsmann point of emphasis. So these guys should come into their clubs ready to lead from the front. They should be, that is, unless they just aren’t good enough in the first place.

Maybe they aren’t starting because, you know, there are better choices at their club addresses, at Hertha Berlin (Brooks), Eintracht Frankfurt (Chandler) and Club America (Alvarado). And if there are, then maybe Klinsmann’s selection methodologies deserve review.

It’s just another possibility to consider.

Capt. Obvious would say this after watching the LA Galaxy clobber New York City FC in 2015’s highest profile MLS match to date: The Galaxy engine is revving fast once again, the game-changers doing their thing to nourish thoughts of a fourth championship in five years.

But a clever first mate might then quietly add this, almost ominously, as if issuing a warning of something fiercer and more threatening ahead: The LA Galaxy is no finished product, and Bruce Arena’s team, talented and increasingly tight of weaving, is almost sure to get getter.

And he would be correct.

In years ahead, with apologies to Seattle, Toronto FC and even the New York Red Bulls, this LAGvNYC series might be the ultimate MLS bell cow in terms of matchups with hefty national appeal. Beyond the obvious of teams from the two largest U.S. markets, consider that NYCFC wants to spend. The Galaxy always has spent, of course, from David Beckham to Giovani dos Santos and a few brightly lit, pricey places in between.

Perhaps one day, the team from the Bronx, sharing an ownership Sugar Daddy with free spending Premiership heavy Manchester City, will be the equal of the machine that Arena has built in Southern California. But that day isn’t today, and how. The Galaxy’s Sunday 5-1 result wasn’t really as close as that.

After 15 minutes, when New York held possession well enough, even if Andrea Pirlo’s passing and Kwadwo Poku’s midfield drive didn’t create many clear cut chances, the Galaxy was running downhill. But for some heroic, emergency defending in front of NYCFC’s goal and Josh Saunders’ typically capable performance in that goal, this would have been something more embarrassing still for NYCFC and its proud manager, Jason Kreis.

For the first-place Galaxy, tidy in possession, good enough in front of goal and increasingly perceptive of movement, a full-fledged 6-1 or 7-1 romp-and-stomp wouldn’t be so hard to envision.

That’s the hard reality of the here and now. Here is the part that gets more speculative, about how things are likely to get even more prosperous out in fertile Bruce Arena Valley: there is more gas pedal to be pressed here. In his post-game comments, Arena talked about a “good” relationship between Robbie Keane and dos Santos. If we could administer a little truth serum or perhaps even a high quality scotch or two, Arena would probably concede that “good” is merely the starting point for this big-ticket tandem.

SEE MORE: 10 things we learned from MLS game week 25.

We know about Keane, who treats Major League Soccer’s regular season the way most of us treat the days of the week: we work earnestly enough from Monday-Thursday, but we live for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Well, it’s “Friday” for Keane, with “Saturday” and “Sunday” still ahead. His Most Valuable Player campaigns – one that he won in 2014, and a previous run at the prize that he probably should have won – were built on elevated performances over the regular seasons’ last two months.

(And by the way, as the Irishman sits with 15 goals and seven assists over just 15 starts in this injury-delayed campaign, he has now joined Sebastian Giovinco, Kei Kamara and Benny Feilhaber in the ongoing MVP conversations. There has been just one two-time MVP (Preki), and winning back-to-back would be a first in the 20-year-old league. The guy is 35 years old – going on 25, apparently.)

Meanwhile, dos Santos, the talented Mexican international, has been on the field for less than a month. It was obvious at first that he and Keane weren’t in sync. Sunday’s show at the StubHub Center was the first time we really saw these two reading from the same script. It will get even better in days ahead, as dos Santos gets fit enough to play more minutes out wide in the position that better suits him.

None of this should be a surprise, by the way. Arena has forgotten more about MLS than a bunch of league supporters could ever hope to know. He definitely understands that MLS in March, April, May and even into June is more or less an extended preseason. You can’t completely stink up the joint, but so long as you don’t fall too far behind, you have lots of room for R&D (research and development, that is). You can tinker and trial and tiptoe your way into the summer, so long as the pieces start falling into place by July or so.

Since falling to Real Salt Lake on July 14 in the Open Cup (Steven Gerrard’s debut), the Galaxy has won seven of eight over two competitions. So if you were among the doubters who thought the wheels were coming off back in May (a 3-3-5 record at one point) — especially after falling at Orlando, 4-0 — please see me after class. You should know better. (And I tried to tell you so back then, by the way.)

So, yes, the Galaxy arrow is pointed decidedly “up,” and if you listen carefully to Keane, he’s telling you so, albeit with the appropriate level of cautionary humility.

“Certainly, there are exciting times ahead,” he said after Sunday’s match. “But we’ve got to continue, not get carried away, continue the way we’ve been playing for the last month. As long as we can do that, I think we’ll be fine.”

Indeed.

SEE MORE: In MLS 3.0, small spenders will get smaller margin for error.

It helps to have a defense playing so well behind all that attacking might. Robbie Rogers was two-way force at left back. (Ah, yet another opportunity to raise the flag of “Rogers for national team.” It feels good, I have to say.)

Over his right shoulder sits Leonardo, an average defender in most of his time around the Galaxy’s Carson campus (75 appearances in six years). But he’s 27 now and a more mature, focused performer. What’s more, he has been nothing short of outstanding over the last two weeks – probably Man of the Match last week against Dallas and again Sunday against New York. Well, he might have been, that is, if Keane wasn’t hogging the spotlight so dominantly, scoring twice in last week’s road win and then elevating his performance even more (two goals, two assists) in Sunday’s tar-and-feathering.

NYCFC: The other side of the coin

From the other side of Sunday’s statement, we continue to see that management just didn’t get it right when assembling the basic, DP bones of NYCFC. If you want to build around the aging Andrea Pirlo, fine. Or if you want to build around the aging Frank Lampard, fine. But both? Who thought that was a good idea? What, they couldn’t find a way to beat Montreal to the aging Didier Drogba, too?

More to the point, they needed to funnel a little more money toward that beleaguered back line, the one let so vulnerable from Pirlo’s MO. “Effortless” is a great way to describe the man’s unearthly vision and world class passing, but it’s not what you want said of your defending.

In fairness, this is an expansion team. Even one that could afford to buy Connecticut isn’t immune to the struggles of first-year clubs. Heck, fellow MLS newbie Orlando City has been out-scored 13-1 over its last four, now getting the deluxe package of expansion club distress.

Back to the Galaxy now: If you’re a little bored or tired of the StubHub Center as site of the MLS Cup final – it was there in 2011, 2012 and 2014 – you might start steeling yourself for more of the same come December.

SEE MORE: MLS teams must shake things up for playoff push.

If you’re a little tired of Arena and the well-heeled Galaxy as MLS Cup champion – it happened in 2011, 2012 and 2014 – well, you might just have to get over it. Because the Galaxy is so clearly the MLS Cup favorites right now, there really is no other way to see it.

That doesn’t mean it’s certainly going to happen; the playoff system increases chances that some other team gets hot, or that an unfavorable matchup or a bad day at the office trips up the favorites. But it does mean the Galaxy’s chances of lifting that crown once again look better than any other team’s.

If you don’t agree, well, you probably didn’t see Keane, dos Santos, Gerrard, Juninho, Leonardo, Rogers and rest absolutely destroy NYCFC on the sunniest of days in sunny SoCal.

I’m not sure we are in MLS 3.0 just yet, but the contours of it are becoming easier to define.

MLS 1.0 was, well, that’s pretty much self-explanatory, eh? It wasn’t always pretty – heavens, some of the early grounds could only have been more ill-fitting if they were ice rinks – but things must begin somewhere.

Toronto FC ushered in MLS 2.0 around 2007, showing how urban-based, grass roots support was the optimal growth driver. Seattle, Portland and others helped codify the new MLS way.

Previous attempts to tell you we were high-stepping in the end zone of MLS 3.0 have been premature, optimistic reaches at best. We haven’t gotten there yet, although it draws inexorably nearer.

We still don’t know exactly what MLS 3.0 will look like, but the outlines of the hills ahead look clearer and clearer.

For instance, we know MLS 3.0 will spin around an axis of ample DP delight, now up to four per team.  We know TV contracts are now weighing equally with gate receipts when it comes to economic concerns, and that will affect every high-level choice going forward. Bigger stadiums, like the one being developed in Orlando (as 25k looks like the new 20k), could be the new standard.

And here is something else, perhaps less obvious but just as meaningful, that will quietly help shape MLS 3.0 in so many cities of lesser bright lights: Small markets will have a significantly smaller margin of error. The pressure to get it right will intensify.

SEE MORE: What if MLS clubs switched jerseys from adidas to Nike? Check out these concept designs.

Teams that aren’t squeezing all the green off the dollar, the ones willing to spend for game changers and difference makers, will simply have greater margin for error on those big personnel decisions. For instance, if Seattle gets it wrong on a Designated Player choice, no problem! The Sounders just cut bait and go get another big name.

Same for the Galaxy, NYCFC and Toronto and anyone else that gets into the big spenders club. Heck, NYCFC has Frank Lampard, and he looks increasingly like the odd man out in the Yankee Stadium midfield. Of course it helps to get things right, but clubs that live in the champagne room can generally afford to get it wrong here and there.

Bruce Arena figured that out long ago. Through mid-summer, he can be as wrong as M. Night Shyamalan on most of his movies. So long as he’s getting the team right by August or so, the StubHub Center remains a happy place. A steady stream of league MVP candidates helps make it so.

In Toronto, the jury is out on whether Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore will fulfill expectations at Toronto, but Sebastian Giovinco has been such a smash-hit success that the U.S. internationals have time to find their best MLS selves. See the pattern? Spending as provider of room for error?

So for now, the pitchfork and lantern crowd aren’t at the front office gates around TFC or NYCFC or Seattle, even if things are less than swell.

But let’s look at Real Salt Lake.

The RSL front office dismantling is complete. First went manager Jason Kreis, who remains the youngest MLS Cup-winning coach. Then went Garth Lagerwey, who is now with Seattle. And on Tuesday, team president Bill Manning left.  That leaves owner Dell Loy Hansen with a more hands-on role, which has a lot of Rio Tinto Stadium faithful squirming, less assured.

Perhaps a more involved Hansen will prove to be a good thing; he says a growing club in a new-day MLS requires a different structure, apparently desirous of something more aggressive.  We’ll see. What we do know is that he had a good thing with Kreis and Lagerwey, but let them both get away. There seems to be a lot of fixin’ what ain’t broke in Hansen’s world.

Either way, Hansen had better be right, because he doesn’t have any wiggle room. If he doesn’t find the right people to fit the right structure, they will quickly become the Chicago Fire, where the fans have to stretch their memories back to 2009 to recall the most recent playoff win. The history of DP failure there is long and sad, evidence of how the frugal set of MLS clubs cannot afford to be wrong. The floundering will only get worse if owner Andrew Hauptman can’t make better choices.

Colorado is another place with an apparent force field that prevents good choices from penetrating the outer layer. Gary Smith may not have been “top man” in stylistic approach, but his English-style pragmatism worked at DSG Park, where the Rapids plane old vanilla approach captured a 2010 MLS Cup crown.

SEE MORE: Jurgen Klinsmann’s eventual replacement: How about Peter Vermes?

He left a year later in a philosophical split with upper management. They had a good thing in Oscar Pareja, but let him get away. Now they have Pablo Mastroeni, who seems less and less likely to keep his job, now 14 games under .500 in a season and a half. What’s worse, Pareja was building around youth; his team of five rookie starters (well, they were all practically rookies) went to the 2013 playoffs. Now too many of those promising youngster are gone. Rather than building something for the future, Mastroeni looks like a coach hoping to build a better record for the here and now, straining to create greater job stability.

A real game-changer or two would help – but there isn’t an Andrea Pirlo or even a Didier Drogba coming through Denver International Airport anytime soon – not unless he’s wearing the uniform of NYCFC or Montreal, etc., anyway.  Irish international Kevin Doyle – who will never be confused for Kaka or even Robbie Keane – is as close as Rapids ownership will come to securing a difference maker, apparently.

The stars don’t just fill seats, see? They  cover up weaknesses, and they provide cover when management gets its wrong on coaching hires, or when coaches get it wrong on tactics.

In MLS 3.0, that will be especially true on game day, never mind the bigger picture. Clubs that don’t spend will have far less margin for error.  They’ll need to be picture perfect when the first whistle blows or they probably won’t get points.

We saw it just last weekend in Dallas. Bruce Arena’s Galaxy wasn’t exactly on top of its game, with Robbie Keane, Steven Gerrard and Giovani dos Santos still learning how to play with one another.

But teams with so much individual talent, even if they aren’t in Swiss watch-level synch, can brutally punish mistakes.  Dallas’ makeshift back line, with three converted midfielders, dropped their focus and made a couple of second-half mistakes. That was enough … Galaxy 2, Dallas 1.

For all the great young talent Pareja has assembled – for the second year in a row, Dallas leads the league in minutes by homegrown players, including both of his holding midfield starters – they don’t have the talent to afford mistakes.

That will be a hallmark of MLS 3.0, whenever its completed version arrives.

Money buys a lot of things, as we know. In this case, it will buy a few “get out of jail free cards.”  It will buy the ability to get it wrong here and there.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

For the United States national team, left back is the problem child that just cannot be tamed.

Surely you’ve heard that before; this is hardly a recent thing. Going way, way back, left back was a mostly unsettled spot for Steve Sampson, then for Bruce Arena, then for Bob Bradley and now, generally, for Jurgen Klinsmann.

Oh, the occasional answer would arrive in someone like Eddie Lewis or DaMarcus Beasley. Both, however, were converted midfielders. In fact, it is far easier to recall the converted, stop-gap fill-ins (Brek Shea, Bobby Convey, Jose Torres … on it goes) than to recall the true left backs who provided brief respites of low-level stability. (“Low-level” stability because we were typically underwhelmed with the results. Or perhaps you felt differently as Heath Pearce, Jonathan Bornstein, Timothy Chandler, Eric Lichaj or even Carlos Bocanegra took their spins on the left fullback wheel.)

Suffice to say, there has been no Steve Cherundolo, the right back who took that position by the scruff of its neck and kept an MMA-worthy choke hold on it for years.

But we aren’t here to go another few rounds pounding away at the punching bag of history here. Today we are just focused on the swirl of current goings-on with the potential occupants of the U.S. left back position – because a lot seems to be happening at the moment.

First is the movement of Tim Ream, who seems bound for London, even if the ultimate destination remains a bit unresolved. Bolton’s two-time Player of the Year first seemed destined for QPR, but now seems en route to the slightly more tony West London address not far from Loftus Road.

Ream will apparently soon join Fulham, where all good American soccer players eventually land. (That’s not exactly true, of course, but it’s not far from it. Some do call it Fulhamerica, after all.)

Ream was a bit of a utility knife at Bolton, appearing first as a center back but also filling in at midfield and eventually seeming to find a home at left back around the Reebok. Hard to say where he might play at Craven Cottage, but Fulham seems most in need of a left back.

Good move for Ream? Probably as it relates to any national team prospects. Despite recent calls into the national team, and despite a tidy passing ability at various ranges, he seems to be only 4th or 5th at very best in the ranking of U.S. center backs. (That’s the only place Ream has lined up internationally.)

Fulham seems slightly better positioned for a run back into the Premier League than Bolton. (So, also, does QPR for that matter. As for Bolton’s chances of once again running with the big dogs of the EPL, well … hard times, man, hard times.)

Klinsmann likes ambition in his player pool, so that might elevate the St. Louis native’s stock. And a sustained run at left back around Craven Cottage should help, too.

If nothing else, at Fulham he’ll be in a position to mentor young Emerson Hyndman, just 19, one of the top young prospects in Klinsmann’s player pool. While some may have occasionally wondered where Ream was best positioned, no one has ever questioned his dedication or professionalism, going back to his fast-rising days with the New York Red Bulls. So, as mentors go, you could do far, far worse than Tim Ream.

There seems to be some opportunity at U.S. left back. Beasley has been a good and loyal soldier from the first day Klinsmann asked the well-traveled veteran to fill-in at left back (in 2013). His retirement didn’t exactly “take” last time, as Klinsmann recalled the 33-year-old Houston Dynamo man for Gold Cup duty.

But further national team involvement would seem unlikely and probably even imprudent for Beasley. Not that he couldn’t assist in the U.S. matches ahead, but the time to develop a longer-term replacement surely is now, not later.

That could be Fabian Johnson but for two issues. First, the old problem of where to station the talented Borussia Monchengladbach left-sider: Klinsmann prefers him further up the field, and seems inclined on getting Johnson there whenever possible. (Even if it means dragging trusty ol’ Beasley out of retirement to do so.)

Even if Klinsmann wanted Johnson at left back, an apparent hamstring injury will make that impossible for the near future. The time sucks, too; The United States has early September friendlies ahead against Peru and Brazil, and then the far more consequential Oct. 10 date against Mexico at the Rose Bowl, with a 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup berth there for the taking.

So who is the answer? Is it Greg Garza, now at Atlas in Liga MX, who has looked promising in spots over nine U.S. appearances over the last year? Possibly, although getting sent home from the Gold Cup (in favor of Beasley) doesn’t say good things about where Garza stands in Klinsmann’s book.)

Or could it possibly be … Robbie Rogers?

There seems to be some resistance there from Klinsmann, and who could really say why? Klinsmann certainly isn’t obligated to say why he rates one player ahead of another. That’s not part of his job description, which is probably for the best; we’re all probably wandering past our pay grade in attempting to crack the fluid Klinsmann code.

Rogers has excelled since his move about a year ago to left back for the L.A. Galaxy, a move that seems destined to extend Rogers’ once-stalled career, and perhaps a move that may one day be Arena’s final gift to the U.S. national team. It could be, that is, if Rogers’ ever finds his way once again past the velvet ropes of the national team. If it weren’t for Benny Feilhaber, Rogers would already be the figure summoning the most curiosity and angst among U.S. supporters.

He does the defending well enough (not perfectly, but not badly, either) and at 28 years old still plenty of up-field push thanks to the pace that always made him such a valued prospect. Rogers just picked his second assist of 2015 (along with one goal), an important one on Robbie Keane’s first goal in a road win over Dallas.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

For those you who wanted Major League Soccer to be more of a free-spending, big-money, champagne room kind of league, congratulations!

Some of you have long coveted big names. The bigger the better – and more them! Another ballyhooed Euro wants his swipe at the suddenly flush MLS ATM? Sign ‘em up!

For those of you who have turned your nose up at Major League Soccer because it didn’t have enough of that intoxicating affluence of leagues from lands afar, congrats! You got your wish.

Because today MLS looks a lot more like EPL, La Liga, Serie A and other money leagues of note in one important way:

Today MLS is a two-tiered league. There really is no other way to see it. Whether that’s a good thing … well, we’ll see.

I’m not saying this is necessarily a terrible thing. Personally, I cannot wait for another chance to watch Andrea Pirlo do his majestic work from inside Yankee Stadium. And I won’t miss a chance right now to see Toronto’s outrageously in-form Sebastian Giovinco flummox yet another MLS defense; he is almost everybody’s no-brainer mid-season choice as MVP.

They are among the Designated Player money men of MLS, and I’m on board. So, yes, shooting money into the player pool like souvenir T-shirts into the stands has its advantages.

Still, growth means change, and MLS has just altered its essential DNA.  It’s worth asking if league leaders have paid enough attention to the prickly laws of unintended consequence? Did they properly consider this lurking danger: what happens to a brand when you significantly change it?

For those who always advocated a policy of “remove the training wheels and go, go, go!” … well, let’s just hope this doesn’t become a lesson in “be careful what you ask for.”

As the league prepares to celebrate its 2015 All-Star event outside of Denver, it is a different league than today. The latest salary machination, one that paves ways for clubs to sign a fourth Designated Player, pushed it past the tipping point to this new, two-tier status of Big Spenders and Hard Triers.

MLS has long been a league of parity. Since Eric Wynalda curled in the league’s first goal 20 years ago, the operation was built on the foundation of equal footing. Ostensibly, anyway. We all know a couple of teams were given a leg up in player signings back in the day, but the pretense of parity served as guidewires, at least.

Now it’s like all the other leagues of haves and have nots. We will now march predictably into every season essentially choosing among a handful of big brand clubs as the real title contenders. Everyone else will fight for the scraps.

It will be like the celebrated Premier League that way.  The EPL is known as a collection of haves and have-nots. It is a place where a handful of globally branded heavyweights, with their billionaire conglomerate owners, compete at one level. Then comes the yawning gap. Then come the rest.

So who is your EPL favorite this year? Chelsea, Manchester City or Manchester United? Or is this one of the years where the junior varsity of big spenders, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham, might just sneak away with the title.

By the way, it’ll look the same at this time next year. And every year hence, unless another club strikes ownership oil and buys into the exclusive cigar room. Such is the way in a lightly regulated free market system, one rife with financial inequality. Does that sound a little bit like MLS now?

Two weeks ago league leaders engineered the Targeted Allocation Money initiative, adding yet another layer of complex salary legalese.

Thus, yet another rule was created essentially so that the Galaxy could sign its next big player, Mexican star Giovani dos Santos in this case. Every time the league bends a player acquisition rule or just outright makes one up (yes, that happens), it’s because the Galaxy, Seattle or Toronto needed it fixed in order to sign so-and-so. If certainly looks that way, at least.

Today, 15 MLS clubs spend roughly in the $4-6 million range in player salary. (Specifically, it’s $3.8 million on the low end, up to $6.5 on the highest end.) There’s your gaggle of bus riders, so to speak. And here are the league’s limo riders:

According to figures recently released in the annual Players Union salary dump – a.k.a. the most interesting non-game day all year in MLS – Seattle and Orlando are paying north of $11 million each.

Orlando is the market for a big ol’ fist-bumping summer signing, so the Lions may soon climb the salary hierarchy. Maybe they’ll get as high as NYCFC, backed by the bucks of Manchester City and the parent company Abu Dhabi United Group, with its current payroll of $17.8 million. The L.A. Galaxy, already with three of the last four MLS Cup crowns, is at $19.4 million. And Toronto FC will ride its league-high $22.7 million payroll to the club’s debut playoff appearance this year. (Or, if TFC still cannot get there, with those big bags full of cash and an extra playoff spot in MLS this year, then seriously, we need to pull a Chivas USA and disband that club.)

These teams have stars that plenty of people will pay to see. That part works. Here’s what might not:

But being bullish on a greater, league-wide practice of paying big bucks for big stars always wrongly presupposed one important element: that every MLS club would buy in.

That was never going to be the case. To believe that all comers would enthusiastically pile into the spending spree ignores reams of case studies, here and abroad.

Again, look at the European Leagues. Take La Liga, where each year is generally a contest between Real Madrid and Barcelona. In Italy, the financial heavies are generally Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan. They have won 68 league titles; all other clubs combined have won 44.

Back over to England: Anybody like West Brom’s chances this year? How about Leicester? Anybody wanna wager a paycheck on Sunderland? Of course you don’t – because you’re not stupid that way.

This isn’t just a soccer thing. I don’t know Major League Baseball or the NBA very well, but I can still (more or less) tell you which teams have historically spent on free agents and which teams have generally been more frugal.

Back to MLS. Again, in fairness, the league needs some of this; Dos Santos, Clint Dempsey, David Villa, Steven Gerrard et al, these marque signings boost TV contracts and sponsor revenue and nourish league growth in a big way. But there was always going to be a tipping point, and here we are. A league that has always sold itself on parity simply can no longer make that claim. Not with a straight face.

Oh, the playoff system does create opportunity for a team like Sporting Kansas City to sneak away with a title every once in a while. But generally speaking, when we talk about MLS Cup favorites, Supporters Shield favorites and the mostly likely claimers of CONCACAF Champions League spots, you’ll be choosing from a short list MLS elite level spenders.

Welcome to the new MLS. Try it on. See how it fits.

Just don’t be surprised if you look in the mirror after a while and don’t exactly like everything that you see.

Photo credit: Athronos.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

Major League Soccer, still relatively young, just past its awkward teenage years, is occasionally a strange place. Sometimes it performs like a talented young prodigy undone temporarily by a growth spurt – which means between the posh passes and savvy feints, he sometimes stumbles over his own fast-growing feet.

Consider the past few days of fast-moving MLS signing news. This is a week of celebration for Major League Soccer, where the league’s very serious (buttoned up owners, officials and sponsors) and the league’s very talented (cream-of-the-crop ‘keepers, defenders and attackers) are gathered in Denver for the annual All-Star Game.

All-Star games are, by obvious definition, where the league’s best and brightest hog up the limelight. But the star men of MLS keep arriving – and at a rate that is proving too rapid for the usual processing into operations.

Yes, something funny is happening this week: In some ways, plenty of MLS fans will be eager to get past the “distraction” of All-Star festivities and get to this weekend, Week 22 of the regular season, which is the place to see the league’s newest wow-wow men perform in more meaningful moments.

Andrea Pirlo. Frank Lampard. Giovani dos Santos. Shaun Wright-Phillips. Didier Drogba.

They are all MLS property now, and they are men of a certain accomplishment. None will be on the field at the All-Star game, where MLS selections will face Totttenham on Wednesday evening at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park just outside Denver. (Major moment of fame for the tidy little ground in suburban Commerce: the unforgettable 2013 Snow Clasico.)

Yes, most of them are into their 30s, some well so. But let’s get past that for now and enjoy the moment.

Because a year ago we were talking about these guys in actual pursuit of high achievement on some mighty distinguished stages.

Plus, they all have practical utility to go with their global influence and name recognition, even if Pirlo, Lampard, Wright-Phillips and Drogba are undeniably on the backside of their exalted career trajectories.

Pirlo didn’t get on the scoresheet as he debuted last weekend for fast-improving New York City FC.  But his effect on the match in 30-odd minutes was quietly profound. His ability to slow the game for teammates and his skill at eliminating two, three or perhaps four defenders with one pinpoint mid-range pass can absolutely be a game-changer. It was definitely useful in a crackerjack of a match, a 5-3 NYC win over Orlando.

Pirlo is 36, and we’ll see how the Italian giant and 2006 World Cup winner is holding up at age 38, when his 2.5-year MLS hitch is up. For now, personally, there isn’t a more interesting figure in the league.

And how much better might Pirlo be once he gets an experienced hand like Lampard alongside? Admittedly, the longtime English international’s entry into MLS has been as been every bit as awkward and clumsy as a junior high school dance.

He was coming over in the winter transfer window. Until he wasn’t. But then he did finally arrive in Jason Kreis’ club and was set to get on the field almost a month ago. Until he wasn’t. So we all wait to see what Lampard has to offer once we get past the politics and uncooperative ankles and such. We do know he was a two-way marvel for years at Chelsea and a nifty tool in Manuel Pellegrini’s belt last year at the Etihad. Safe to say, Lampard will have his moments of magic in the States, even if they don’t arrive at the same rate as those salad days at Stamford Bridge.

SEE ALSO: Listen to the MLS All-Star Game against Spurs on Rabble.tv.

A midfield that includes Pirlo, Lampard, U.S. international Mix Diskerud (not to mention exciting young Ghanaian Kwadwo Poku and underrated MLS mainstay Ned Grabavoy) is a potent and evocative mix of age and skill set. That back line still looks iffy, but matches at Yankee Stadium now have more star power than any other MLS ground.

Meanwhile, Gio Dos Santos does seem up for it; soon after the Mexican star helped El Tri lift the latest CONCACAF Gold Cup trophy, the former Barcelona and Real Madrid attacker was posting on Instagram about “New Beginnings/New Challenge.” That came with a photo of himself in a Galaxy kit.

Shaun Wright-Phillips joins his brother, Bradley Wright-Phillips, across the river from NYCFC at Red Bull Arena. Shaun was always the bigger name, the bigger talent. He’s three years older and, alas, was part of the everything-must-go cleansing at Loftus Road, where Queens Park Rangers have been relegated once again. That’s why the suddenly frugal Red Bulls could absorb a man who has 36 England caps.

Clearly, his best days at Chelsea and Manchester City are behind him. That doesn’t mean he can’t be an effective figure in spots for Jesse Marsch’s team, one that continues to play an exciting brand of pressing, attacking soccer. Bradley Wright-Phillips isn’t coming anywhere near his breakout, MLS record matching 27 goals of 2015. (Oh, where have you gone, set-up-man supreme Thierry Henry?) So Marsch needs a little more goal-scoring “umph” to get his team out of the gaggle in the Eastern Conference standings.

Drogba, in some ways, may be the most interesting among this fun bunch of MLS summer signings. The new Montreal Impact arrival best fits the demeaning (but not completely untrue) narrative of MLS as a “retirement league” for Euros of a certain age.

Even with that, the 37-year-old Chelsea legend – 381 games, four Premier League titles across two spells for the West London club – can leave an imprint at his final career stop.

The Impact is just hanging on in the league playoff race. (Approaching the two-thirds point, this is about where it’s safe to actually see relevance in, and start paying attention to the league standings.) Drogba’s mere presence can be a boost, and proper utilization by manager Frank Klopas – save the Ivorian legend for big moments and big games, Frank – is the best hope for a positive return from a competitive standpoint. Either way, they’ll sell some additional tickets around Stade Saputo for signing up the Ivory Coast’s all-time top scorer (65 goals in 105 international appearances).

None of this means Wednesday’s MLS All-Star game isn’t worth watching. Tottenham’s Harry Kane (30 goals last year in an absolute wonder season for the breakout kid) is worth two hours in front of the TV by himself.

Spurs also brought regulars Hugo Lloris, Kyle Walker, Eric Dier, Nabil Bentaleb, Christian Eriksen, Nacer Chadli and Erik Lamela. And right now, any chance to see MLS MVP frontrunner Sebastian Giovinco shouldn’t be missed; the diminutive Italian frontrunner really is something else.

So, there’s star power. There is just a lot more of it waiting back at MLS grounds far and wide, where the league’s increasingly aggressive buying practices are importing the splashy names at rate yet unseen in MLS.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

American soccer fans, we need to talk. We have issues … with our stadiums. We need to sort this out.

At very least, we need to our feelings on the table: American soccer must find some peace in its conflicted relationship with the stadiums where our matches play out.  It’s working for now … but only “kind of” working. Eventually, we just have to find a more stable place.

At some point, we have to decide: Are we a country that truly likes soccer and wants to function as one (a nation that loves and values the game, that is). Or are we a country that wants to make money off soccer, and doesn’t really give a crap about the game itself?

That’s where we are, and this is the best time to discuss it, during a summer of big and lucrative matches. They are “big” — at least, in the sense that hordes of fans here will happily rush forth, cash in hand, to watch the world’s iconic clubs in varying degrees of interest against other clubs with varying degrees of interest. That’s the International Champions Cup, where Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona and other globally recognized heavies are once again drawing swell crowds.

And we have the CONCACAF Gold Cup, an actual international competition, even if it’s not all that competitive. Not yet, anyway, for the United States. But never mind that, the crowds have been solid.

Here’s the problem: Each time a promoter or tournament organizer sketches out plans for one of these matches, they face an all-to-familiar American soccer dilemma: Go with a smaller “proper” soccer stadium and its more suitable field, or; follow the money, utilizing a larger American football facility, where history has taught us the playing surface will probably fall somewhere between “garden variety poor” and “dangerously awful.”

Mostly, they go with the money –and that leaves us rehashing the same old tired conversation about how these champagne clubs and these matches deserve better.

Hence, American soccer’s complicated stadium issue.

Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal certainly had his say last week, lamenting the poor condition of CenturyLink Field. He even made a funny – Who knew the hard ass Dutchman had it in him? – about how other places had facilities for football, not for One Direction concerts, referencing the musical act that complicated field conditions in Seattle that were always going to be imperfect. At CenturyLink, you get artificial turf (which disgusts most players) or grass laid over it (which rarely works).

He mentioned similarly difficult footing last year in Ann Arbor, Mich., for a preseason match against Real Madrid. A record-setting crowd of 109,000 made a bunch of money for a bunch of folks … never mind the bad field.

Sure, the aesthetics of a match blessed with such fabulous talent would have looked better inside Crew Stadium in Ohio or at Toyota Park outside Chicago, the nearest “proper” soccer stadiums. The trouble is, matches between these highest-profile, Richie Rich-run clubs would never happen there.

Even selling seats at a premium, the financial reality of 20,000-seat stadiums would be prohibitive. Without huge financial guarantees, clubs like Manchester United or Real Madrid would never bother to come over. They show up in the United States for one reason, and we all know what that is.

MLS is alive and well thanks to places like Toyota Park and Crew Stadium; 15 clubs now perform inside of grounds built or renovated exclusively for MLS teams. That stadium initiative has been a real success story in American soccer. In some ways, the development of these soccer stadiums has been the savior of American professional soccer. At the very least, development of proper soccer stadiums has driven the growth of the game here. These facilities generate a cultural permanence, not to mention the vital revenue streams that pave ways for further growth drivers like Designated Players, better TV contracts, etc.

But the stadiums are what they are: appropriately small- to mid-sized grounds. They are built for the San Jose Earthquakes and Colorado Rapids and New York Red Bulls, etc.; we aren’t talking about the gleaming San Siro of Italy’s Milan here or Boca’s teeming La Bombonera in Argentina.

Thus, when a club like Juventus or a Chelsea comes calling for its annual U.S. cash grab, we stick them in a bigger stadium, where the temporary turf is so bad that we all nod in agreement at Van Gaal’s old-man-on-the-porch rant.

Or when the United States needs a bigger venue for the latest unfriendly friendly with Mexico, we have to suffer the crappy sod of (fill in the blank). In the spring, it was the Alamodome in San Antonio, where team officials on both sides were in a twist about the field, and rightly so.

CONCACAF officials chose the venues for the ongoing Gold Cup. Sure enough, the desire to fill additional seats trumped the better angels of actual competition. Last night inside Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, as the United States tested itself in a tournament semifinal, the match took place on yet another temporary grass surface laid over artificial turf. Mark this down as the third temporary field for the United States in its foursome of matches to date; Jurgen Klinsmann’s team also made do with slippery, bumpy, slow temporary surfaces in Foxboro, Mass., and in Baltimore.

Crowds there were larger than in suburban Dallas, where a sold-out crowd saw Klinsmann’s team open the tournament on an actual soccer field. But “sold out” meant 21,000 and change. So the payday was more “box lunch” than “fancy dinner spread.”

At least U.S. Soccer has more or less made its peace with the stadium situation for World Cup qualifiers. (Mostly, anyway, as exceptions remain.) Most matches the United States actually need to win take place inside actual soccer grounds, attached to more reassuring and predictable field conditions that favor the more talented side.

Now, come the next opportunity to make splashy cash in a meaningless friendly, all venue bets are off.

Eventually, we’ll have to get to a more stable place. Perhaps the stadium issue will solve itself with further growth of the domestic game. I wrote last week at another site about whether the conventional wisdom of domestic soccer stadiums was already changing?

For now, we’re stuck in a bad place, choosing regularly between two equally unappealing options. Lose a chance to see soccer’s global luminaries or stash the games in grounds on surfaces of discontent and pretend like there’s not a problem.

Alas, for now, this is a snapshot of big-time soccer in the United States: the sport has come so far, and yet still has miles and miles to go.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

After every press conference to introduce a new manager through the years – and I’ve been to a bunch, mostly in soccer, but in other sports also – some fan or supporter, thrilled about the new program savior, would approach me afterward to ask eagerly: “Well, what do you think about the new guy?”

And I always had the same response, each and every time:

“Well, everyone has all the right answers at the introductory press conference. That’s the easy part. Let’s wait and see how they handle the first crisis – the first locker room malcontent, the first destabilizing run of injury to key players or the first run of losses. Then we’ll know.”

It was never the answer they wanted to hear – but that’s the deal. In a lot of ways, that’s when managers truly earn their pay; that’s where we get to the real nitty-gritty of their leadership skills, their ability to plot a new course when ill winds blow the vessel askew. Only then do we discover whether the coach has true grit and sufficient stores of self-confidence, unbending belief in what they are doing.

That moment is upon Jurgen Klinsmann.

Make no mistake, crashing out in the CONCACAF Gold Cup semifinals represents a real crisis, the first actual trial of his four years in charge.

Oh, there have been a couple of hot potatoes here and there. The dance floor was getting a little unstable back in 2013 when the Sporting News story broke of creeping discontent in the ranks. But the Snow Clasico happened and then a draw at Azteca and all was well and swell again.

Landon Donovan’s notorious World Cup exile certainly stirred the pot. It became a strategic boo-boo the minute Jozy Altidore’s hamstring gave way, but the team escaped the Group stage, so World Cup 2014 was more or less “mission accomplished” anyway.

Those were little unplanned detours; this is the first real crossroads.

Previously, the man’s mad scientist tinkering tended to pay off. For instance, John Brooks and Julian Green seemed to be stretches for the World Cup roster, but we all applauded wildly at their goals last summer in Brazil. Point: Klinsmann!

Back in 2012 and 2013, the madding crowd wanted Jermaine Jones barred from the national team. But Klinsmann kept preaching his value, and eventually most supporters came to understand how the German-American’s steely fearlessness rubbed off on others. Point: Klinsmann!

Klinsmann once sent Altidore a big message, omitting the streaky striker from two important World Cup qualifiers in 2012. The result was a motivated Altidore soaring over the summer of 2013 for the national team.

So, those bold choices and others, plus the 2013 Gold Cup crown and several resounding results in friendlies (Germany and the Netherlands just recently) will keep Klinsmann in place for now.

He doesn’t deserve to lose his job over this.

Besides, it’s not like his team was completely overmatched Wednesday inside the Georgia Dome. Thanks to another industrious night from Alejandro Bedoya and a real captain’s response from Michael Bradley in the second half, the Americans halved the deficit, created more chances and pressed for the result. But the Jamaicans did enough, and credit to the Reggae Boyz to making Sunday’s final.

There is another side of that coin, however: the team never looked particularly impressive in the cushy group play stage; we wanted “commanding” but had to settle for “borderline capable.” When the powerhouse country gets the significant advantage of (always) hosting the tournament, the deck is stacked and nothing less than an appearance in the final, at very least, is acceptable. So the 2015 Gold Cup tournament is a failure and a major black eye on the Klinsmann regime, period.

Don’t forget, Bob Bradley was perhaps teetering after what everyone saw as “opportunity missed” in the 2010 World Cup, and when his team looked somewhat feeble against a relentless Mexican attack in the 2011 Gold Cup final, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati had seen enough. While it’s not really fair to say Bradley was fired for what happened in the 2011 Gold Cup, it probably is fair to see the event as a “last straw.” So if we’re connecting dots here, be sure to get the context right.

Either way, Klinsmann won’t lose his job here, nor should he. U.S. Soccer made the investment, and if the federation is going to lose patience at the first real crisis of every managerial regime, then pretty soon we are going to be Mexico. El Tri has had 11 managers in the last 15 years (if you include a couple of interim bosses along the way). The United States has had three during that time, as Bruce Arena, Bradley and Klinsmann have provided the kind of stability that El Tri never even approached.

So the calls to fire Klinsmann – plenty of them this morning – are premature. But … he does have problems that need addressing. And there are questions that need answering about the Gold Cup.

First, Klinsmann badly miscalculated on the center backs. He had something pretty good in Omar Gonzalez and Matt Besler, last year’s starting pair in the World Cup. But he wanted something better, so he wagered that Anthony Brooks and Ventura Alvarado had more potential upside – and fair enough there.

The problem, of course, was the developmental curve. And that’s where Klinsmann got it wrong. They simply weren’t good enough in tandem; Klinsmann would have been better to pick one or the other and then station them alongside one of the veterans, tutoring the youngsters more and bringing them up to speed more deliberately at the international level.

Or just go with Besler (who wasn’t even named to the team) and Gonzalez in the elimination rounds; then Brooks wouldn’t have been in there to issue that meek challenge on Darren Mattocks on Wednesday’s opening goal.

Klinsmann also miscalculated on what Gyasi Zardes could deliver at his less-optimum spot along the wing. Zardes ended the tournament the same way he started it (in a close win over Honduras), looking lost out there and unable to contribute anything substantial to the attack.

And when will Klinsmann land on a basic formation (or two) and stick with it? This year alone we’ve seen 3-5-2, 4-4-2 with flat midfields 4-4-2 with a diamond in the middle and a 4-2-3-1.

Bradley is the team’s best player, and he is best as a connector between a holding man and a creator. Anyone else out there want to see Klinsmann build around Bradley and his best role?

Timothy Chandler? Most of us just shake our heads at this one, unable to come up anything close to an explanation.

These are discussion points, but not troubling issues so long as the team is progressing and winning its share. Perhaps the team isn’t progressing sufficiently under Klinsmann, in your opinion. But given the wins and results, U.S. Soccer could previously make a case, at least, that it was.

Not this morning. Not after last night’s distressing misadventure.

Now the pressure is on. Another stumble and Klinsmann’s position will be quite tenuous. How things come together now will reveal so, so much.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

The ability of splashy stars to drive attendance in Major League Soccer has long been overstated. The evidence over 20 years just doesn’t support the narrative that adding one big star from Europe or Mexico will significantly move the attendance needle.

Of course, a figure as massive as David Beckham could be a game-changer in terms of adding seats in MLS grounds. But there’s only one David Beckham; Generally, teams are smarter going for quality and value when adding big-budget salaries, because winning will always be the best driver of revenue and attendance.

There are few exceptions, a small set of names who fall into the sweet spot of this equation, able to improve a team on the field while adding big bucks to the balance sheet on their own.

The L.A. Galaxy just got one of those in Giovani dos Santos.

There is a reason the deciders at the StubHub Center have been chasing the Mexican star since 2011, which is about the time Dos Santos helped El Tri pick apart a beleaguered U.S. back line in that year’s telling CONCACAF Gold Cup final. Dos Santos (who scored this beauty of a goal that day at the Rose Bowl) helped convince U.S. Soccer leaders that a change was needed for the national team that day, and the Mexican attacker convinced the Galaxy he was worth pursuing.

A gifted playmaker or scorer, the 26-year-old’s club career has been a bit of a mixed bag, with enough changes of address (seven clubs in nine years in Europe) to raise a few eyebrows. Starting at Barcelona helped launched the legend, but his most successful days were at Mallorca and Villarreal in La Liga. Dos Santos did enough along the way to stay in the Mexican national team plans, shining in appearances at the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. Those magic moments on the biggest stage, like his high-quality goal last summer in an elimination match against Netherlands, helped ensconce the new Galaxy man as an enormously popular figure in his homeland and with Mexican Americans here.

That puts Dos Santos in an elite fraternity of players like Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Luis Hernandez and Jorge Campos, figures with enough brand appeal to individually spike the attendance numbers over a bigger window. Fans will certainly come out to see a recognized name like Steven Gerrard or a Michael Bradley (the U.S. international now with Toronto FC), but they won’t necessarily become fans of the team and go to multiple matches because of them.

But that’s exactly what happens with a figure as large as Dos Santos, especially considering the demographics of his new community; latest figures show that Latinos, many with Mexican ancestry, account for almost 50 percent of the Los Angeles population.

As for his ability to help a team that has won three of the last four MLS Cup titles: he goes a long way to replace what the Galaxy lost with Landon Donovan’s retirement after 2014. Like Donovan, Dos Santos has speed and knows how to use it, on and off the ball. Like Donovan, he can attack from a variety of positions, and he’s highly capable as a passer, dribbler or shooter.

Playing just wide of Gerrard and behind Robbie Keane, who still represents the gold standard of off-the-ball movement in MLS, will certainly increase the chances of getting the best from Dos Santos.

Plus, don’t underestimate the larger value of getting Dos Santos at 26, closer to his prime. The ratio of “aging star signings” to “stars in their prime” still tilts too heavily to the old guys in MLS, but that ground shifts every time a name like Dos Santos, Bradley, Sebastian Giovinco, Jozy Altidore, Mix Diskerud or others are added.

There is this matter of Dos Santos’ landing spot, as yet another huge name goes the Galaxy way. Whether that part is good for the league in the long run is another matter; with every big name added to the Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, Toronto FC or New York City FC, the league drifts further to a two-tiered collection of haves and have-nots. And the increasing incidence of big transfer fees – the L.A. Times says Los Angeles paid $7 million for Dos Santos – represents a sea change for a league that not long ago made hard policy of not shelling out for transfer fees.

All of that still needs sorting out. But for a club looking to boost attendance and performance with one stroke, this has the look of a clear win-win.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

Major League Soccer All-Star team selection is always a tricky mix of fan popularity and entertainment value, held tenuously together with a blessed twine of pragmatism.

On the popularity and entertainment front, MLS’s mid-summer event is no different than other domestic All-Star events; there will always be tension and debate when fans have their say, as they frequently favor name recognition over actual, current performance value. That argument will go on and on, and in truth, stirring up lively conversation is surely good for the league’s bigger PR cause.

All that said, the latest fan selections and commissioner’s pick have a certain “jumping the shark” feel.

This one looks even more suspect than All-Star teams past. The “misdemeanor” violations are: Real Salt Lake’s Nick Rimando as goalkeeper when there are better choices this year; Sporting Kansas City’s Matt Besler as a starter when he is not having his best year; SKC teammate Graham Zusi as a starter when he is not at his best; Houston’s DaMarcus Beasley misplaced as a marking back in a 3-4-3, and when he is not among the league’s top defenders, and; Orlando’s Kaka as an outside midfielder, apparently.

The “felony” violations are not having Toronto FC’s Sebastian Giovinco (the far and away league MVP leader at this point) or Columbus’ Kei Kamara (the Golden Boot leader at this point) as starters.

SEE ALSO: MLS attendances are 12% greater than 2014 thus far.

Yes, these are just the fan selections, and All-Star game manager Pablo Mastroeni will surely patch some of those holes when he completes the roster with his own selections. Columbus set-up man Ethan Finlay, for instance, will surely find his way into the roster mix, based on his splendid, breakout season.

On the other hand, most managers have attempted to remain true to the fans’ selections as much as possible, which means the starting 11 against Tottenham inside DSG Park on July 29 will likely look quite similar to the list announced Monday night by MLS, based on history.

Fan selections are always flawed; again, this isn’t just an MLS issue. Somewhere in the country, Major League Baseball fans are surely debating something similar about tonight’s All-Star Game at this very moment. But when this many flaws infiltrate the process, perhaps it’s time once again to examine the process (as MLS has been good about doing in the past as the selection mechanisms have evolved along with a young league).

The other issue is this: it is not just the fans getting it wrong. The real knee-slapper here, the establishment choices announced Monday that needs calling out, are Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard as All-Stars.

SEE ALSO: 10 things we learned from MLS Gameweek 19.

Don Garber selected Lampard and Gerrard, in part, because they add value as the globally recognized stars.  Also, according to the league, because they are players who make “any team better.” That second part is debatable, considering Gerrard’s current level of form and fitness.

But the league also says the pair of former England internationals were selected in part for their “extensive experience playing against Tottenham.” Uh … that one smells too much like a reach, a telling attempt at league justification.

These guys certainly are legends in England and recognized global stars due to their years of quality service in the world’s most visible league. So they absolutely deserve a place at the All-Star Game – as celebrities to be feted in the events in and around that July 29 match outside Denver. On the field? Not so much.

New rule I’ll thoughtfully propose for MLS leaders’ consideration: In order to be selected for an All-Star game, you must have at least warmed up for a league match.

To put these two on the field tilts the event too far toward an overly commercialized dog and pony show.  What makes Major League Soccer’s All-Star event unique: there is some competitive value to it, as MLS pits itself against a bunch of good players out of England or Germany or Mexico or wherever.

Past commissioner’s picks have been used to recognize MLS men with years of outstanding service; think Dwayne De Rosario, Eddie Pope and Cobi Jones. That’s a better use of the device.

But guys who couldn’t name five previous MLS Golden Boot winners, or who wouldn’t know Dominic Kinnear (one of the league’s most successful managers) if they shared a common table at Starbucks? I’m not so sure about that one.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk. 

FRISCO, Texas – We probably make too big of a deal about captains in soccer. Maybe back in the day, on the muddy pitches of old Maine Road or wherever, when only the captain was technically permitted to address the referee, the position carried more than honorary weight. Maybe it had some functional benefit then.

Now it’s mostly just a ceremonial title. It does still mean a little something inside the locker room, mostly as a show of respect from teammates and a hat tip of recognition from management.

So even if we stretch the significance of the armband, it does remain something of an honor.

With that in mind, how nice was it that Michael Bradley, having recently been named U.S. captain, wore the armband for his 100th national team appearance Tuesday night in suburban Dallas? And there was symmetry about it all, too.

No, it wasn’t a pretty game, the United States’ 2-1 win over Honduras in the sides’ CONCACAF Gold Cup opener. It was a grinder’s game, which made it a game tailor made for figures such as Bradley and Texas man Clint Dempsey. It was another of those scrappy CONCACAF affairs that we tend to see … a lot.

Bradley played a big role, adding a veteran’s steadying hand and helping to problem solve in the midfield against a stubborn Honduran bunch that may well go far in the Gold Cup. (That’s no huge surprise; the Catrachos have, after all, qualified for the last two World Cups.)

So the veterans, Bradley and Dempsey, Kyle Beckerman and Brad Guzan, all provided the moments that mattered and managed out a U.S. performance that, all agree, still requires significant tuning. Dempsey, performing down the road from where he trained as a youth player, got both goals. Bradley supplied the far-post cross on Dempsey’s game-winner.

And he did it as captain, appropriately, in his milepost 100th  U.S. appearance.

Bradley, surely, will be the team’s captain for the foreseeable future.

Then again, Bradley has long been the U.S. captain – even if not officially so.

When we think about the attributes that make Bradley a captain – that make any captain a captain – he checks all the boxes. In fact, he doesn’t just dutifully fill the roles, he absolutely nails them.

He plays for the team. It’s all about the group for Bradley, which is immediately obvious to everyone who shares a national team camp with the 27-year-old midfielder. That buys him tremendous, enduring respect within the group.

He’s an eloquent spokesman, able to communicate capably and thoughtfully about what’s going on with the team. Bradley is a pro’s pro in work habits and arranging his routines in ways that allows him to be the fittest, smartest, most complete performer he can possibly be. He’s a grinder extraordinaire, perennially among the fittest of the U.S. herd, which is why he was still moving with purpose toward the tail end of Tuesday’s match as the Hondurans pressed valiantly for a late equalizer.

That was also Bradley clapping and exhorting teammates to keep the focus on those late, defensive set pieces. Maybe if someone had done the same for Honduras, Dempsey would not have been criminally unchallenged from point blank range on his game winner.

And Bradley has long been the brains of the team, the connector of pieces and, generally, the midfield stabilizing arm, going back four or five years now. (Supporters who still, somehow, don’t see Bradley’s true value on the field should study more of the matches where he didn’t play. Then maybe they will understand.)

SEE MORE — Whose stock is up or down among 10 US Men’s National Team players.

Last year, a brow or two was raised when Jurgen Klinsmann named Dempsey captain for the World Cup. The suspicion was that Klinsmann knew Bradley was an ultimate team guy, and that handing the armband to Dempsey was the manager’s way of squeezing just a little more from the team’s top attacker. Dempsey always knew how to get the best from himself; maybe this was Klinsmann’s effort to get Dempsey thinking a little bigger, trying to do more of the little things that get the best from an entire group.

That’s what Bradley has always done. No surprise, either, that a coach’s son would take a more comprehensive look at the world (and the team) around him. Which is why he has long looked like the team captain.

Three years ago at a World Cup qualifier in Kansas City, I watched closely as Bradley interacted with teammates and then, not long after, with the media. I turned to a colleague and said, “Bradley is the de facto captain of this team … I don’t care who is actually wearing the armband.”

Anytime I’m around Bradley, something happens to reinforce that feeling. Two months ago, I asked him about whether he’s more effective in that advanced playmaker role – the one Klinsmann is so keen on Bradley adopting – when Dempsey isn’t in the lineup. My observation was that Dempsey’s freelancing style makes it more difficult to operate as a playmaker (because they frequently find themselves in the same spaces).

Bradley’s response was that of a true team man. Essentially, Bradley told me the team (there’s that word again) is clearly better with Dempsey in the 11. Bradley said the task of adapting is on himself, that every game has different needs, contingent on the opposition, his own team’s personnel, the conditions, etc., and he’s fine with the responsibility of being the one who plays chameleon and adapts.

That is a real captain’s response. So is this one:

I asked Bradley last night about his 100th cap. Unless you want to look like a big ol’ dummy, the only way you start that conversation with Bradley is by saying “I understand the result is most important thing to you … ”

But then I asked if he will allow himself, in the hours ahead or the days ahead or sometime ahead, to consider it, to relish it, to feel good about reaching 100 caps for his country?

Said Bradley after his usual pause, his way of attempting to consistently formulate considered responses: “Anyone who knows me knows that I play for the team, give everything I have for the team. And that’s what I enjoy. There will certainly come a point where I’ll be able to look back on this, and hopefully look back on even more, and enjoy it and be proud of it. And even now, in the moment, I’m very proud. Don’t misunderstand. But I’m also focused on the task at hand. And in the bigger picture, in the moment, we all know it will take six performances, six all-out efforts to be holding a trophy at the end of the month.”

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

The media got it wrong about the United States women’s soccer team. Not all wrong … and not all of us. But too many of us missed the real story as Jill Ellis’ team has driven into another Women’s World Cup final.

While we grumbled about Ellis’ vanilla tactics, her inflexibility and about a dependence on Abby Wambach that seemed to border on obsession, we overlooked the principle element in this U.S. surge toward Sunday’s tournament climax: a defensive effort that has been about as proficient and dependable as it possibly could be.

Oh, we talked about center back Julie Johnston’s improbable rise to stardom through the tournament. And we made frequent mention that sure-handed goalkeeper Hope Solo was back there – in case she was ever needed, that is, and mostly she hasn’t been.

They are perched on the edge of a Women’s World Cup crown – it would be the country’s first since 1999, when the team rode a home-field edge to glory – thanks to this world-class defense.

No, the attack hasn’t been anything to shout about; this is hardly the women’s equivalent of Brazil’s fabled 1970 team. But that doesn’t matter. Because lots of titles in the game, domestic and international, are claimed without some regal, flowing, military grade attack. Not everyone can be Spain of those recent, glory years.

Rather, so very many titles are won because the prevention of goals is woven so tightly into the team fabric, because so much of the effort, from training ground to game day, is about not just preventing goals, but faithfully and fiercely preventing chances on goal. And that’s the team that Ellis has created.

That’s the story to which we didn’t pay enough attention.

Personally, I’ll raise my hand and say I was half wrong. Two weeks back I wondered whether the United States was working its way patiently into the World Cup or simply not up to the job. But I certainly did not recognize the full capability of this team’s collective defending.

Yes, dissenters may grumble about a big referee decision on Johnston’s foul Tuesday, but here is something that can hardly be argued: that penalty kick wasn’t just Germany’s best chance to score over 90 minutes, it was the team’s only real chance to score. Johnston and fellow center back Becky Sauerbrunn, screened so faithfully by Morgan Brian, Carli Lloyd and Lauren Holiday, led an effort that saw Germany reduced to a collection of feeble shots from 25 yards or further. Let that soak in: Germany, a team that had scored 10 goals in one match on its drive into the tourney semifinal, was credited with zero shots on target against the United States.

Not that it should have been a total surprise. Solo has not allowed a goal since the first half against Australia back in the U.S. tourney opener. She was tested twice in that tournament-opening 45 minutes, but Solo has seen stunningly little activity in subsequent group matches against Sweden and Nigeria and then in elimination contests against Colombia, China and now Germany.

While we lamented a predictable attack, we were woefully insufficient in praise for a shutout streak that has reached 513 minutes, the second-longest in tournament history behind a 679-minute run by Germany that stretched over three tournaments (including the entire 2007 event).

SEE MORE — Women’s soccer doesn’t need male approval or political correctness

If we did talk a bit about Johnston and Sauerbrunn, we weren’t making a big enough deal of left back Meghan Klingenberg, who is filling up this tournament with the kind of incisive passing that we were all complaining wasn’t arriving in sufficient quantity from Lloyd or Holiday. Her telling ball into Megan Rapinoe created a penalty kick against Colombia. Tuesday night in Montreal, she found that critical passing channel once again; we are talking a lot this morning about Lloyd’s work to create the chance and Kelly O’Hara’s timing and determination to get in front of her marker … but let’s not forget about Klingenberg’s swell entry ball that initiated the match-clinching thrust.

And we weren’t talking enough about the indomitable Lloyd, whose drive and doggedness helped the team earn Olympic Gold three years ago in London. While we focused on whether Ellis was finding Lloyd’s best use, we missed how effective she was on the defensive side in a role assigned earlier in the tournament. We might have forgotten what a big-game figure she really is.

This all looks so much like Italy’s successful 2006 World Cup run, when a center back was the Azzurri star. Fabio Cannavaro was large and in charge along a back line that – Does this sound familiar? – allowed just one goal en route to the final. (Trivia answer: who was the only team to score on Italy in that six-game run toward the Berlin final? That would be the United States, in that wild night in Kaiserslautern that finished 9-v-10.)

That Italian team, like Ellis’ in Canada, found just enough offense in front of all that well-organized defending, in front of center backs who were unflinching cops on the beat, in front of a goalkeeper who may have been the best in the world. Heck, that Italian team, like this U.S. side, even took down Germany in the semifinal.

Yes, there is an element of luck to the American ladies’ march to Vancouver for Sunday’s final. Referee Teadora Albon certainly could have shown red to Johnston on Tuesday for tugging down Alexandra Popp. Albon adjudged that a penalty kick and yellow card for the dominant U.S. center back was sufficient, and German players did not appear overly put out by that choice.

SEE MORE — Women’s World Cup TV schedule, bracket and app.

Of course, they didn’t expect their icy PK taker Celia Sasic, the tournament’s leading scorer to this point and a striker who nailed two spot shots with extreme prejudice as her team advanced past France in the quarterfinals, to yank her golden opportunity wide left.

Ellis’ team will continue to reap the benefit from Albon’s huge choice of yellow over red; not only did the United States get to finish with all 11, they’ll have Johnston for Sunday’s final. She would have been suspended, of course, with a red.

The United States also fell on the right side of another controversial choice as Albon pointed to the spot as Annike Krahn fouled a driving Alex Morgan. If the contact didn’t occur inside the penalty area (and it did appear to), we are talking mere inches. Most referees would surely have seen it that way, although German manager Silvia Neid might (and did) beg to differ.

Finally, we should say something about Ellis’ tactics and personnel choices. A big complaint was her inflexibility, but she did bench Wambach for the tourney’s two biggest matches. And she started Brian along with Holiday and Lloyd in the midfield for the first time since December, doing so in a way that got Lloyd higher up the field and into a more comfortable attacking role.

There is one match remaining, and things could still go wrong. But at least now maybe we can talk about the right things. This team is no offensive juggernaut – but it is fortified by a defense that is absolutely deserving of further praise. And we all probably have some catching-up to do on that account.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

When we think of the warrior-like legends who have so fiercely and skillfully defended the U.S. Soccer crest, no man or woman could check any more boxes than Abby Wambach.

It’s not just that amazing resume, the one that shows a six-time U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year winner, the all-time leading U.S. scorer (men or women) and a national team figure for almost 15 years. It’s that competitive edge, that fearlessness on everything, from indifference to pending goal mouth collisions to her brave outspokenness on her sexuality. Wambach has long been the figure you want lurking near opposition goal and the person you stand near in a barroom brawl.

And talk about being a manufacturer of memorable, heroic moments! Who can forget Ian Darke’s fabulous call of Wambach’s late, late equalizer against Brazil in that 2011 Women’s World Cup elimination match?

Which is why it would be such a shame to see the 35-year-old forward, now clearly an athlete in winter, taint her amazing legacy.

Wambach hasn’t done that. Not yet. Not exactly. But she’s not doing herself any favors right now. And if she’s not careful, she risks being remembered as the aging goal scorer who went out as a complaining, wrongheaded and faded figure rather than the roaring, goal-scoring lioness of all those previous years.

Wambach was right to call out FIFA over the winter and then into the spring for its sexist stance on artificial turf. She made her point, and was 100 percent right; FIFA would never even consider holding a men’s World Cup on the fake stuff, but they filled up a women’s tournament with it.

But she had made her point! As the tournament started earlier this month, it was time to get over it already. Only Wambach didn’t. And when she missed three clear chances on headers in group play, the focal point of the U.S. attack made herself look bad by suggesting that scoring at the tournament – including her own – was suffering due to artificial turf.

It was the wrong sentiment at the wrong time from the wrong person. At 35, having inevitably lost some spring in her legs and having shorn her timing near goal by skipping club soccer over the last few months, making a case that errant headers are about the turf just doesn’t pass the smell test.

Consider what Wambach told the New York Times earlier this year, in frank self-assessment of her own performance at the time. “As you get older, you slow down a little. Then it’s a reaction thing. You’re too slow, and you’re too late, and then you’re like, ‘I hope it gets over her head,’ rather than beating your defender to the ball, using your pace moving forward as a force to beat the goalkeeper.”

Yep, sounds about right. So it’s not about the turf … only it was, according to Wambach last week.

Her latest, potentially toxic comments look even worse. Following Monday’s win over Colombia, Wambach suggested that first half yellow cards issued to Lauren Holiday and Megan Rapinoe were somehow premeditated, that they were targeted. It was the second booking for both players, who now will miss Friday’s quarterfinal match against China. They were the only two U.S. players sitting perilously on one yellow and therefore in jeopardy of suspension.

Said Wambach: “It seemed like she was purposefully giving those yellows to the players she knew were sitting on yellows. I don’t know if it was just a psychological thing. Who knows?”

Well, “who knows?” just isn’t good enough when lobbing such accusations. Wambach has since walked back on those accusations – sort of, anyway. But the damage has been done.

The United States is a power in women’s soccer, not some oppressed minnow that FIFA suits would prefer to see eliminated. (And can we pretty please not start with the “FIFA wants revenge” angle?) Either way, those comments look pretty tacky. They make her team look bad – and make Wambach look like someone who needs to put a lid on it and just play soccer.

(Fox analyst and former U.S. international Alexi Lalas had his say about it, and it wasn’t pretty for Wambach; well done, sir.)

SEE MORE — Get the Women’s World Cup TV schedule and bracket.

The next part isn’t necessarily Wambach’s fault, but it is an element of this larger conversation: Coming into the tournament there were already whispers that the older players, Wambach foremost among them, were de facto coaches. That started upon Jill Ellis’ hiring last year.

Wambach has remained part of the starting lineup and a focal point of the attack that has looked ordinary and predictable at very best. In combination with Alex Morgan, perhaps Sydney Leroux or Christen Press could help create a more dynamic dimension. This tournament may come and go without us ever knowing, because Ellis has hitched her wagon to the Wambach express, apparently content to live or die with it.

At the very least, we should have seen the last of Wambach from the penalty spot. Facing Colombia’s third string goalkeeper, who wasn’t even properly warmed up, all Wambach needed to do was put a ball on frame from 12 yards. Ouch! She didn’t even do that.

Wambach looks slow, and there is nothing she can do about that now. But you know what she can affect? Her professional comportment and her lasting image. She still has control of how she goes out in women’s professional soccer. She still (mostly) has control of her legacy, and she should treat it with utmost care. Especially when it’s so easy to do so – just play soccer! To the best of your ability.

Leave the politics and the protesting back at the team hotel, and be the Abby Wambach that U.S. soccer supporters have always admired.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

Jurgen Klinsmann is very clear about his CONCACAF Gold Cup selections, announced just today. These are the 23 players that provide the best chance for ultimate success as the United States defends its title in the biennial regional tournament (and fights for that spot in the Confederations Cup that the manager wants so badly).

Yes, there is an opportunity to change out the roster following the group stage, which begins in less than two weeks at Toyota Stadium outside Dallas. But there is no plan to do so, apparently, barring injury.

These guys are out front in the current pecking order, Klinsmann said in a U.S. Soccer Q&A that accompanied today’s roster release.

U.S. Soccer had previously released its 35-man provisional roster, as required by CONCACAF. Today we got the final list of 23 (see below) — so, we won’t be discussing Julian Green or Bobby Wood or anyone other absences; they weren’t on the provisional list, so any fan outrage or indignation should have been duly expressed two weeks ago. Sorry ‘bout that.

GOALKEEPERS (3) : Brad Guzan (Aston Villa/2007), Nick Rimando (Real Salt Lake/2011, 2013), William Yarbrough (Club Leon) 

DEFENDERS (7) : Ventura Alvarado (Club America), John Brooks (Hertha Berlin), Timmy Chandler (Eintracht Frankfurt), Brad Evans (Seattle Sounders FC/2009), Omar Gonzalez (LA Galaxy/2013), Fabian Johnson (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Tim Ream (Bolton Wanderers/2011) 

MIDFIELDERS (9) : Kyle Beckerman (Real Salt Lake/2009, 2013), Alejandro Bedoya (Nantes/2011, 2013), Michael Bradley (Toronto FC/2007, 2011), Brad Davis (Houston Dynamo/2005), Mix Diskerud (New York City FC/2013), Alfredo Morales (Ingolstadt), DeAndre Yedlin (Tottenham Hotspur), Gyasi Zardes (LA Galaxy), Graham Zusi (Sporting Kansas City) 

FORWARDS (4) : Jozy Altidore (Toronto FC/2011), Clint Dempsey (Seattle Sounders FC/2005, 2007, 2011), Aron Johannsson (AZ Alkmaar), Chris Wondolowski (San Jose Earthquakes/2011, 2013)

Tuesday’s final roster helps us learn a couple of things about Klinsmann’s thought process – and about that top-secret (virtual) depth chart on his wall back at U.S. Soccer HQ outside Los Angeles.

First, Matt Besler’s stock has apparently fallen measurably in just one year. We all saw that Besler wasn’t at his best after last year’s World Cup. But now last year’s starter from Brazil is apparently no better than fifth or sixth in the pecking order of center backs. Besler remains on the 35-man provisional roster, but won’t be a first-choice initially.

Ventura Alvarado, a fast-riser later for his work at Club America and in recent U.S. friendlies, has lapped Besler. So, too, has young defender John Brooks, another member of Klinsmann’s always-growing German-American brigade. Tim Ream and Omar Gonzalez complete the foursome of center backs on the Gold Cup roster. (Along with Brad Evans, who is now a center back for Seattle but who can handle chores pretty much anywhere along the back or even in midfield.)

We can also glean that Juan Agudelo’s comeback into the national team has stalled for now. Klinsmann has adjudged that, at least for the time being, Chris Wondolowski and Aron Johannsson (along with higher-ups Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey) can be of greater assistance to the tourney title chase.

That doesn’t leave Agudelo, who scored against Mexico back in April while earning his first cap in more than 13 months, in a terrible place. Agudelo is just 22, and he would probably be “next up” in case one of the named strikers falls to injury during Gold Cup group matches against Haiti, Honduras or Panama.

SEE MORE — CONCACAF announces USA opponents and schedule for 2015 Gold Cup.

Considering that Dempsey has been increasingly nicked by injury over the last few months and Altidore’s ongoing hamstring issue, that doesn’t seem too far-fetched. (Then again, Agudelo could nudge his case further by scoring just a bit little more for New England, where Charlie Davies is the Revs man with the scoring plan for the moment.)

Bill Hamid’s status as the apparent 4th choice in goal may be a little different. Hamid has been terrific this year around RFK Stadium; in his case, no need to take a first-choice ‘keeper away from his MLS club to be the third ‘keeper for a month-long tourney.

We also see that Tim Ream continues to be a factor in national team selections, even though he wasn’t named for the Euro-heavy roster that was so successful in two wins recently over Netherlands and Germany. U.S. Soccer officials had indicated that Ream’s only real chance to get some rest after the grinding season in England’s second tier fell right around those two matches; sure enough, he was named among the defenders Tuesday.

Also notable: the “2015 Lee Nguyen” just hasn’t been “the fabulous 2014 Lee Nguyen” for the Revolution, and he will remain on the U.S. sideline for now. So will Brek Shea, who has moved back into the midfield for Orlando. That, along with his exclusion from Tuesday’s final Yankee list leaves us to wonder: is the Shea-to-left back experiment officially kaput? Or, perhaps more appropriately, why did his coaches make that move in the first place?

The complete list of players on the previous provisional roster but not named to Tuesday’s final list of 23: Bill Hamid, DaMarcus Beasley, Matt Besler, Greg Garza, Michael Orozco, Brek Shea, Joe Corona, Perry Kitchen, Lee Nguyen, Juan Agudelo, Alan Gordon, Jordan Morris.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

An effective but rather humdrum start for the favored United States into the Women’s World Cup is either one of two things:

This is manager Jill Ellis not having a solid handle on what her team is all about, especially on attack, still struggling with how to balance an aging workhorse inspiration of a forward (Abby Wambach) and a younger horse coming off injury (Alex Morgan, a.k.a. Baby Horse).

Ellis was also straining to sort out her midfield, which wasn’t much of one for two matches. Or, not one capable of competing at a world class level, at any rate.

The other way to look at this team’s tentative tippy-toe into the Women’s World Cup, a point of view dappled in a little more sunshine, looks like this: the United States was content to work its way into the tournament, confident that they came to Canada to play in seven WWC 2015 matches, not just three.

It’s certainly better to have all your attacking and defending ducks in a row before arrival into a big tournament, but working your way into a World Cup is not exactly a felony level offense in soccer.

After all, we’ve seen teams do this in plenty of men’s World Cups, haven’t we? We can find examples going back as far as you’d like.

SEE MORE — Get your Women’s World Cup TV schedule, bracket and more.

Argentina looked anything like a world beater in 1990 group play but eventually made the final during that year’s title defense. England scored just two goals in group play at Italia ’90 but found its feet (somewhat) and made it all the way into a semifinal PK loss to eventual champion Germany

Italy started with a thud in World Cup USA in 1994 but finished at the Rose Bowl in the final. Netherlands teams in 1998 and 2010 looked a bit average in group play but advanced into the semifinals and the final of those tournaments, respectively.

And on it goes. Whether teams can develop into the best version of themselves throughout a month-long tournament isn’t in question. They can and have. What does remain in question as the United States awaits word on its second-round opposition is this: which case will eventually describe this ongoing U.S. effort? Because right now, we’re all just guessing.

The United States did win its Group, and congrats for that. And if you follow the women’s game, you know if was a bugger of a group, one that included a rising Australia, a traditionally powerful Sweden and a highly athletic Nigerian team. So credit to Ellis’ side for finishing atop a formidable foursome.

But there are so plenty of flashing warning lights here, so there are lots of U.S. supporter hands hovering near the panic button now that the elimination round lurks. While the U.S. group was certainly a toughie, a tournament format that allowed safe second-round passage for 16 of the 24 participants always provided some comforting wiggle room. That is to say, there was some pressure – but not a lot of it, if we’re honest. Not for the tournament favorite.

Before we paint ourselves into a dark corner of depression, there were elements to like about Tuesday’s 1-0 win over Nigeria, one that closed out group play amid another big backdrop of impassioned U.S. support.

The first time we saw a forward pairing of Wambach and the still-recovering Morgan wasn’t perfect, but it was better than pairings seen in the win over Australia and a scoreless draw with Sweden. Wambach and Morgan have chemistry; we can see it, even if the connection was understandably rickety at certain times in Vancouver on Tuesday.

The midfield remains a work in progress, but Ellis showed a willingness to adjust, at least, rather than continuing on the path toward boring predictability (“Abby ball,” which means a long diagonal toward Wambach … rinse … repeat). Tobin Heath didn’t help in possession the way everyone thought she could in her first WWC start. But Heath’s relationship with left back Meghan Klingenberg, who continues to attack up the wing like her life depends on it, was helpful.

With Klingenberg pushing relentlessly up the wing, Heath tilted inside to add another body in the middle, allowing Carli Lloyd or Lauren Holiday to push further forward. So even if Heath wasn’t at her best on the ball, the net out was OK as the midfield shape looked … well, let’s go with “improved.”

Ellis has a back line that provided the United States the opportunity to work the team into the tournament. Aside from some shape issues in the first half of the opener – remember those two sparkling saves from Hope Solo, which was essential in those first 45 minutes of the United States’ tournament – the back line has been rock solid. That’s thanks in large part to Julie Johnston, who won’t collect young supporter shrieks the way Morgan, Wambach and Megan Rapinoe will, but who has nonetheless been the standout of this side.

Solo has been fairly bored over the last 180 minutes. That’s a good thing, obviously.

So why the hovering hands (over that big red panic button)? Well …

Wambach scored the only goal against Nigeria, and that is surely a big push forward in confidence for a towering figure who simply has not played much in the last few months. But in that drive for confidence, there was a potentially damaging miss on yet another uncontested header.

So concern will persist for a striker who is clearly not sharp, although one who can still be effective due to her commanding aerial ability (especially as it relates to Morgan’s smart’s runs off the ball). Wambach now has missed three headers near goal in the tourney. She can blame that dastardly artificial turf if she likes, but there is a more likely explanation: she is 35 years old, and those legs probably don’t have the spring of previous days. That means she’s late on balls, or not quite able to get over the top of them.

The team remains overly predictable: too much of the offense is about long balls toward Wambach, individual creativity from Rapinoe or set-piece dependence. After that, ideas get pretty scarce.

And the overall attitude seems alarmingly tentative for a side favored to win it all. There were still too many times Tuesday without enough numbers committed to the attack, even when Nigeria went down a man. The match was begging to be put to bed, but Ellis’ team seemed indifferent to the task (or perhaps unable to perform it).

Plenty of teams have waded into tournament waters one foot first, then a leg, then up the waist, etc., rather than splashing noisily off the high dive right away.

The issue with Ellis’ team right now, if we’re honest: none of us can really say if this USWNT version is gaining speed strategically, or if Ellis’ team has already reached its maximum upside.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

After watching the United States nail down deserved wins against two global heavies of world soccer, it’s hard to resist the temptation to declare “corner turned.”

For years, the United States has been a solid middle class citizen in the pecking order of world soccer – living comfortably but not exactly among the wealthy. Moving forward from there is like losing those last 10 pounds; getting to this point was one thing, but driving past the stubborn sticking point is a tougher assignment.

For three years and change under Jurgen Klinsmann, who was added at considerable expense to be a transformative figure, we waited and waited to see evidence that he was the conjurer of something more, something better, something more grand for U.S. Soccer.

Well, are we seeing it? Wins in five days at the Netherlands and then Wednesday at Germany … it sure looks like it.

You start that conversation with the once-and-always disclaimer on friendlies: it’s just a friendly. We can’t make too much of them, because the pressure of real consequence just isn’t there to weigh everything down, and that will always be a big asterisk.

On the other hand, we aren’t talking about one game here. We are talking about two. Yes, there were stretches where the United States didn’t look good last week against the Netherlands and Wednesday against the reigning world champs, Germany.

But the final result in both places, in Amsterdam last week and Cologne on Wednesday, speaks in booming volumes. In both cases, resilience and perseverance meant a lot, as the Americans rallied from behind in both matches. Friendly or no, doing that on the road is a big assignment.

The United States were almost shockingly dominant over the last 50-55 minutes of Wednesday’s 2-1 win over Germany.

Klinsmann’s most pressing, early priority once inheriting the U.S. position in 2011 was changing the mindset individually and collectively. He banged and banged the drum for taking the initiative, for taking the game to the opposition. To do so, he needed players who were ultimately fit, focused and professional, so the manager went about emphasizing those attributes through comprehensive education, habitual attention and tiresome repetition.

We may finally be at the “reaping rewards” portion of all this.

No, it wasn’t all perfect. Just like last week against Netherlands, it took the United States players some time to find their feet. To that point: we like to aim pointy fingers at Klinsmann for his selections and tactics, and fair enough. But if you’re going to beat up the U.S. manager for tactics, then you have to be fair and credit the eternally optimistic Klinsmann for an ever growing list of matches where adjustments and substitutions seemed nothing less than prescient.

We saw that again in Cologne, where the shape adjustments and key personnel changes paid massive dividends. Bobby Wood, a man whose club scene is tenuous at best, was the unlikeliest hero – for the second consecutive match! He had the game-winner against the Dutch. And against the world champs.

Now Klinsmann adds “Germany” to an impressive list of places where his team has came, saw and conquered – at least for a day. His teams have also gone into Italy, Mexico and Czech Republic (and, of course, the Netherlands) to emerge with “all three points,” so to speak.

Once we get the Timothy Chandler complaints out of the way – and if Chandler is in the lineup, the legitimate complaints and laments will surely fall like spring rains – there really was so much to like about Wednesday’s performance.

Among them:

– Kyle Beckerman, a halftime change for Danny Williams, reminded us that a veteran midfield screener who plays with smarts and positional discipline means so much. Once again, it was Michael Bradley’s command of midfield that mattered so much – but Beckerman’s diligence behind Bradley allowed the U.S. captain to be even brighter in the second half.

– There probably wasn’t reason to “worry” about the U.S. goalkeeping situation. But perhaps some “early concern” was warranted. After all, Brad Guzan, didn’t have the best of seasons at Aston Villa. And trusty old Tim Howard isn’t around to play the hero – not for now, anyway. That left the United States with good goalkeepers, but with question marks on whether they had one outstanding, unquestioned starter.

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Well, Guzan helped hold things together Wednesday with two big first half saves. And even in the end, as Sami Khedira put a late header off the crossbar, Guzan may have had that one covered.

– By the way, Brad Evans issued a big, strong challenge on Khedira on that late, last gasp, putting off the German attacker just enough. It was exactly that kind of challenge that has been missing as the United States made an ugly habit over the last few months of conceding late goals. It was the exact kind of challenge that Jermaine Jones has missed out on issuing as his string of center back appearances petered out.

– Bradley was captain once again, and there really should be no one else wearing the armband until his time in the international game is done. This is so clearly Bradley’s team! He was the architect of two goals versus the Netherlands – easily the most important man on field for his team, and the best man on field, period. And then Wednesday, his pinpoint pass to Mix Diskerud for the first U.S. goal was marvelous stuff. Generally, Bradley’s passing and work rate through the midfield were nothing less than world class.  Clearly, his move into MLS has done absolutely nothing to remove the edge from his game.

SEE ALSO — Stay tuned to World Soccer Talk on Thursday around 6pm ET for Steve Davis’ Reddit AMA where he’ll answer your questions about USMNT, USWNT, MLS and more.

– Speaking of that goal, Diskerud has four goals in 14 appearances since 2013. That is fantastic production in the international game from a midfielder. Consider how close that comes to Clint Dempsey’s production as a striker or attacking midfielder over the same period: 4 goals in 11 matches.

– Yes, Germany was missing a few front-line types.  But this was still a team that could take Bastian Schweinsteiger off the field and replace him with the likes of Khedira. And if we name the top 5-6 U.S. players, Dempsey and Jozy Altidore are surely on most lists. Neither of them were on this trip, nor were the two first choice center backs from last year’s World Cup, Matt Besler and Omar Gonzalez. The point is, both teams were somewhere around three-quarters strength.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.  

Diehard U.S. Soccer fans, prepare to feel conflicted.

A bunch of you will watch this evening as the United States women begin chasing a Women’s World Cup crown that has been frustratingly elusive since 1999.  There’s the sunny side of life today, one that quickens the Yankee Doodle pulse.

But at some point most of us will squirm uncomfortably as the real world intrudes, and American soccer fans will feel conflicted about cheering for the country’s star goalkeeper Hope Solo.

Should you feel conflicted? Of course you should. This is tough stuff all the way around.

Troubled individuals such as Solo put us in uncomfortable places. If you are close to the situation, like Solo’s U.S. teammates and the broadcasters now in Canada hoping they can get back to soccer and griping about FIFA’s sexist choice to play on artificial turf, they put you in terrible positions. At the very least, they force all of us to remember that life gets messy.

We know this to be true, of course, that the world gets complicated. But does it have to interrupt our happy soccer times? Why can’t the tough stuff in life be placed more conveniently? Why can’t we just keep the music going and enjoy the Women’s World Cup party? I mean, they get bulk sized attention only once every couple of years, right? Can’t we just salute our heroines and enjoy some good soccer?

Well, we can’t, because the bad stuff in life is inconvenient by definition.

Here’s another reality, one more truth that may not sit well: this is on U.S. Soccer. They should have long ago cut ties with Solo. She is drama and distraction waiting to happen and has been for years. All of this was avoidable.

Yes, Solo is head and shoulders above whatever nominal competition she has for the No. 1 spot. But let the debate begin on addition by subtraction, because when you keep figures like Solo around, you risk team chemistry, you run the risk of this very thing happening. U.S. manager Jill Ellis gambled; U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati provided Ellis the latitude, so he is implicitly responsible, too.

Not that U.S. men’s team manager Jurgen Klinsmann has gotten every decision correct, but knowing how he feels about “givers” and “takers” in life and in his player pool, and seeing how certain, talented figures have been relegated conspicuously to the margins, I have a strong suspicion that Solo would have long been jettisoned if he were in charge of the women’s team.

Before you take umbrage at any of that, ask yourself: Would we even have this discussion if Solo weren’t the best goalkeeper in the world?

Of course not. Don’t be a hypocrite here. Admit it: it’s always a sliding scale, isn’t it? We make allowances for talent, don’t we? It’s something we don’t like to talk about in polite company. But then along comes someone like Solo, linked to really bad stuff, slamming heads into the floor and swinging harmful fists at relatives.

But, uh … well … we’re in the so-called Group of Death, aren’t we? We need the best players out there. So we wince a little while sliding the scale just a little further toward tolerance.

Even if you don’t believe the troubling allegations made in Sunday’s Outside the Lines report, there is a history of bad choices and unnecessary theater around Solo.

It’s difficult, because we hope to see people get their lives sorted out; we would love to see Solo tame her demons and self-destructive tendencies. So plenty of fans will lean on the old saw that “people like this need help.” That her best chance of avoiding trouble is through the loving, caring, built-in support network within the U.S. women’s soccer team.

But they aren’t running a recovery program; that’s not U.S. Soccer’s mission.

Sure, it would it be better (read: easier, more comfortable) if we were talking more about the underrated Carli Lloyd, about Sydney Leroux and Abby Wambach and the team’s relentless drive to overcome the heartbreak of 2011. Wouldn’t life be less tangled if the biggest worry in U.S. camp was Alex Morgan’s sketchy knee? Yeah, of course it would. But that’s a life planned, not a life of random events and consequences, which is closer to the truth.

I’m seeing a lot of criticism aimed at media, most of it not even close to being justified. Believe me: you want legitimate news outlets reporting news, period. You can quibble with the precise timing of ESPN’s report, but if you are reading this, then you are an adult (or getting there quickly), and you do not need “protection” from the darker corners of celebrity culture.

When new revelations of an ugly incident involving a public figure come to light, that is clearly “news.”  And if that upsets you, well, it’s an upsetting situation for everyone – which brings us back to why Solo shouldn’t be with the team right now.

So media members are forced to ask questions they would prefer not to; most of writers and broadcasters in Canada are there because they love soccer, and they hate that they are dealing with this mess. (And before you say, “So why are they doing it?” … Well, because they are professionals who are doing their jobs. That’s why.)

It puts the players in bad positions. They say they are focused on the opener, and I’m sure that’s true. But they can’t completely escape distraction, so when asked about Solo’s issues they feel compelled to be, well, let’s go with “something less than honest.”

Of course they hear about this stuff; you simply cannot build a completely impenetrable bubble, not in today’s connected world.

SEE MORE — Download our Women’s World Cup bracket, TV schedule and predictions.

It has certainly put FOX Sports in an awkward position; read Richard Deitsch’s excellent analysis of the FOX Sports talent’s squishy positioning here.  In that piece he quotes former U.S. midfielder Leslie Osborne, who is now on the FOX broadcast team: “… We are now at the World Cup. Why are we focusing on Hope Solo and what she did previously? Right now, we are focusing on what their job is and what they are going to do to be successful in this tournament.”

At best, that’s PR spin from the rights holder. At worst – I don’t know Osborne, so I hate to be harsh – it’s a naïve response that simply does not convey the serious weight of this stuff. Again, it’s inconvenient. But that’s life. We can plan and we can hope, but in the end we cannot fully arrange convenience.

The U.S. Women’s soccer program has long made attempts to operate in some sort of world of perfect Pollyanna, which is understandable. Young boys have plenty of athletic heroes to emulate; young girls have fewer of them, so there has always been a commendable effort to paint these ladies as pillars of virtue, hard work and achievement. Some of them are.

But you cannot have it both ways. You cannot get the swell TV contract – FOX Sports’ coverage, beyond this part, has been outstanding – and take your turn in the A-list publicity churn, but then want everyone to play dumb when the inevitable human failures happen.

A lot of U.S. soccer players, men and women, past and present, embody everything you’d want in world class athletes, caring of the people and the world around them, strong in the right places and nothing less than fierce when they need to be.

Plenty of members of Ellis’ squad deserve that framing – but not all of them. These are humans after all, fallen and imperfect, as we know, inconvenient as it is when we just want to enjoy some patriotism and some good soccer.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk.