U.S. men’s soccer team to start Olympic qualifying with renewed purpose

Juergen Klinsmann was only eight months into his job as coach of the national soccer team when the U.S. was eliminated in the group stage of the last Olympic qualifying tournament.

In men’s soccer, the Olympic competition is an under-23 tournament lagging so far behind the World Cup in importance that many European countries no longer take it seriously.

But for Klinsmann, who scored four goals to help West Germany win a bronze medal in the 1988 Games, the U.S. failure to qualify for the last Olympics was an embarrassment.

“I was furious,” he would say later. “It was not a lack of talent. It was a lack of understanding how important, actually, Olympic Games are. So now we want to learn [from] that mistake.”

He’ll get a chance to see Thursday how well that education process is going when the U.S. opens qualifying play for next summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The U.S. will meet Canada, Cuba and Panama in group play, beginning in Kansas City, Kan.

Mexico, the defending Olympic champion, heads the other four-team group, which starts play Friday at StubHub Center. Mexico meets Costa Rica first then will play Haiti on Sunday before the tournament moves to suburban Denver for Mexico’s group-play final against Honduras.

The top two teams in each group advance to the semifinals, where a victory will not only earn it a spot in the final, but also a berth in the Olympic tournament. The winner of the third-place game will advance to a playoff with Colombia with the final invitation to Rio at stake.

The U.S. failed to qualify for two of the last three Olympic tournaments, missing out in 2012 when a score-tying goal by El Salvador late in stoppage time dropped the U.S. to third in its group. A housecleaning began shortly afterward with Caleb Porter, who coached the U.S. in that tournament, leaving for the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer.

A few months later, Klinsmann signed a new contract with U.S. Soccer that not only extended his tenure as coach of the senior national team, but made him technical director for all U.S. men’s national team programs as well. In that role Klinsmann appointed Andi Herzog, a former teammate at Bayern Munich and an assistant on the World Cup coaching staff last year, to head the Olympic-qualifying effort.

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“For the U.S., the Olympics is always very, very special,” said Herzog, who finished his playing career with the Galaxy. “That’s a big stage for our young players to show the rest of the world that the U.S. has very talented young players.”

Among the talented players on Herzog’s 20-man roster is Gedion Zelalem, a German-born teenager who became a U.S. citizen last winter, and Stanford junior Jordan Morris, who has already made six appearances with the senior national team.

But some talent is absent, too. Forward Rubio Rubin, who led the U.S. to the quarterfinals of the U-20 World Cup in June, was not released by Dutch club Utrecht and German American midfielder Julian Green, who has dropped to the fourth tier of the German league since scoring for the U.S. in the World Cup knockout round last year, was not selected by Herzog.

The roster for Mexico, which won its first Olympic soccer title three years ago in London, includes a couple of players who are familiar with StubHub Center: Forward Erick Torres played at the stadium with Chivas USA before the MLS franchise folded and Real Salt Lake visited six times during physical defender Carlos Salcedo’s two seasons with the team. Salcedo, 22, has already made four appearances for Mexico’s senior national team, which did not give up a goal while he was on the field.

The Mexican team also includes teenage goalkeeper Raul Gudino, who plays club soccer for Portuguese power Porto, and midfielders Arturo Gonzalez (Atlas) and Marco Bueno (Leon), who were on Mexico’s U-17 World Cup championship team in 2011.

Follow Kevin Baxter on Twitter @kbaxter11

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