Juergen Klinsmann’s national team remains consistently inconsistent

Juergen Klinsmann is nearly five years into his stay as coach of the men’s national soccer team. Yet judging from last month’s two World Cup qualifiers with Guatemala, the U.S. may be no closer to developing a consistency and rhythm under Klinsmann than it was when he took over in the summer of 2011.

In the first of the recent qualifiers, on a bumpy field in Guatemala City, the Americans looked confused and uncertain while surrendering two early goals in a 2-0 loss. It was their first loss to the Central Americans in 28 years, one of the most embarrassing results for a U.S. national team in decades and one that left its World Cup campaign in peril.

Five days later, playing in Columbus, Ohio, the U.S. attacked with energy and conviction, thoroughly dominating Guatemala in a 4-0 victory that set it back on the fast track toward Russia 2018.

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Two games, same teams, wildly divergent results. But rather than being an anomaly, the swing actually continued a trend, because in the last two years the only thing that has been consistent about Klinsmann’s team is inconsistency. And that’s made it tough for some to buy into the coach’s structure and philosophy, which only fuels the roller coaster.

Last spring and summer, the U.S. reeled off six straight wins, among them victories over Mexico, the Netherlands and World Cup champion Germany. The Americans won two of their next eight, losing to Jamaica and twice drawing with Panama.

In 2013, Klinsmann’s team lost four of 23 games and set a national record with 16 wins and a .761 winning percentage. It has won fewer than half of its games since.

So which teams truly reflect Klinsmann’s leadership, the ones that rolled over opponents or the ones that can’t beat Panama, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica?

We’ll get no closer to an answer until June, when the U.S. meets Colombia in the Copa America opener. Yet some former national team members remain anxious, saying some players still haven’t embraced the coach’s vision. And that reluctance may be sabotaging the team’s chances at success.

Klinsmann shares some of the blame, because he’s done little to win them over, ruling by command rather than consensus. That, suggest people close to the team, has created an uncomfortable environment similar to the one in the spring of 2013, when an article in the Sporting News detailed growing discontentment following a loss in a World Cup qualifier in Honduras.

Some of the complaints now are similar to ones then: an unsettled lineup, the lack of a coherent strategy and an emphasis on initiatives that don’t translate to the field.

“The sense I get, and I talk to a lot of the players, is that there’s no confidence because there’s no stability,” Landon Donovan, who was cut by Klinsmann less than a month before the last World Cup, said in a recent radio interview.

Jimmy Conrad, who played six years on the national team but retired three weeks after Klinsmann took over, agrees.

“We have no identity,” Conrad said in a video blog. “We have no style of play. Which are all of the things [Klinsmann] promised when he took over.”

The 2013 mutiny fizzled when the U.S. won its next qualifier. Two months after that the team went on a U.S.-record 12-game winning streak, suggesting the rancor may have helped Klinsmann, who says he likes to make players uncomfortable as a way of challenging them.

“Maybe this is the method to his madness,” said another former national team player who requested anonymity. “I don’t see any dissension. There’s a big difference between harmony and dissension.

“I do think there’s instability, uncertainty within the team. [And] instability brings insecurity.”

There has never been a national team in which every player bought completely into the program. However, what has distinguished Klinsmann’s camps, both here and during his tenure in Germany, is the level of discontent, part of which stems from the coach’s devotion to often-unconventional methods.

There might be a lesson there for American players and fans, though, because until Klinsmann’s ideas are truly given a real chance we’ll never know if they work. Yes, his methods can be maddening and his lineups often appear to make little sense. And he has done little to help himself, frequently dismissing critics as uneducated — or worse, un-European. (His decision to drop Donovan, America’s greatest player, from the World Cup team was particularly tone deaf and cost him dearly in terms of political capital.)

But Klinsmann was similarly scorned in Germany, where he introduced unwelcome notions such as a stepped-up fitness regime and a sports psychologist. He held firm, building the foundation for Germany’s World Cup championship in 2014. Now many of his “innovations” are commonplace.

Barring a disastrous performance in the Copa America, Klinsmann isn’t going anywhere between now and the next World Cup. So it may be time to give him a break and give his approach a chance.

If he’s right, the U.S. will play in the semifinal in Russia, which Klinsmann said is his goal. If he’s wrong, we might not even get to Russia.

But at least we’d know.

Follow Kevin Baxter on Twitter @kbaxter11