For 60 to 65 minutes, Jurgen Klinsmann said he was very pleased by what he was seeing from the US national team.
The Yanks head coach said they were the “better team” in the Wednesday friendly against Chile at Estadio El Teniente in Rancagua while building a 2-1 lead through the first hour. But then one of Klinsmann’s primary concerns since last summer’s World Cup reared its head: the USMNT’s fitness level.
And as Klinsmann watched his side tire down the stretch, Chile took advantage through Mark Gonzalez goals in the 66th and 75th minutes to come away with a 3-2 victory.
“Our worry was after minute 60, 65 that players make mistakes because they get tired legs,” Klinsmann told media in his postgame press conference. “You make certain mistakes because you’re getting tired. You lose the focus, you lose the vision because you’re not fresh anymore, and this kind of changed the game. And Chile did very well in keeping up the tempo, the speed.”
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Eight of Klinsmann’s starting XI and all four substitutes were MLS players, meaning they’re still in preseason mode with regards to fitness. And Klinsmann noted they’ve only had two weeks of the January camp to get up to an international fitness level.
“After the World Cup, a lot of players dropped their levels 30, 40 percent when they came back from vacation,” Klinsmann said. “It doesn’t matter if they are in Europe or the US, you can’t do that at the international level. You get exposed after minute 65 or 70 if you can’t go the speed anymore, and both ways, so there’s a lot of work ahead of us, ahead of the players first of all.”
It was also a game of experimentation, with Klinsmann trotting out a 3-5-2 formation in the first half and bringing in as starters a number of relatively inexperienced and rarely-seen faces, including Orlando City SC’s Brek Shea, who scored the opening goal in the sixth minute, D.C. United defender Steve Birnbaum, and 1860 Munich forward Bobby Wood.
But Klinsmann dismissed those factors, and a switch back to a 4-4-2 formation after halftime, as a reason for the loss.
“Maybe there was a little bit more space on the outsides then, especially on DeAndre [Yedlin]’s side,” Klinsmann said of the formation switch. “He got caught a couple times.”
Klinsmann did say there were a number of positives, especially in the early going when Shea and then Jozy Altidore in the 31st minute staked his team to a 2-1 lead. Klinsmann pointed to the performances of Yedlin, midfielder Michael Bradley, who drew woodwork with a long-distance shot in the 61st minute, and Altidore as particularly strong.
The German head coach was also very complimentary of Shea, who signed with OCSC this offseason after several years overseas.
“He’s intimidating, he can go at people, he has a pace he has a physical presence and can score,” Klinsmann said. “So I think this is great.”
But the final 30 minutes, Klinsmann said, was another story.
“If you don’t have that physical foundation, you can’t have consistency,” he said. “So after an hour we looked really like the winning team, we had more chances, we could have scored a third goal, and then the game changed because we couldn’t keep the speed up anymore.”
