Jurgen Klinsmann needs to go.
He's had his fair share of critics for a long time, but up until tonight I wasn't really among them. But the utter embarrassment the United States suffered tonight in Costa Rica has pushed me over the edge. He has clearly lost this team.
He's never been a particularly strong manager from a tactical standpoint, but tonight took that to an extreme. His repeated insistence on playing Michael Bradley and Jermaine Jones in a double pivot central midfield, something that has never worked, causes us to be completely overrun in the midfield. Jones doesn't have the legs to play 90 minutes anymore, and it's leaving Bradley on an island, asked to provide cover for the entire midfield, basically destroying his ability to do what he does best.
He took out one of the few players who were actually looking good when we were down two and needed all the attacking help we could get. He never had Christian Pulisic and Sacha Kljestan on the field at the same time, despite them having instant incredible chemistry when put together in the qualifiers earlier in the fall. He left Jermaine Jones, who was showing signs of fatigue as early as the first half, in to play the whole damn thing.
Jurgen has done some good things for this team in terms of recruiting dual nationality players, and he was a huge part of Bobby Wood becoming the player he is now, but the product on the field is just too much of a mess right now to overlook. This team has clearly quit on him.
Rumor has it that the USSF had already reached out to Bruce Arena as a possible replacement for the remainder of this cycle. He's a bit past it as a manager, but he'd certainly be an on-field improvement. Other names floating around include FC Dallas manager Oscar Pareja and New York Red Bulls manager Jesse Marsch, but I think it's too late in the qualifying process to bring in someone who's never coached a national team before and expect them to learn on the fly. I'd love to see either of them take over after Russia, though.