CARSON, Calif. – Jurgen Klinsmann this week said his experiments with a 3-5-2 alignment during the US national team's current season-opening camp and in the first half of last week's loss in Chile was to create “a card that we should have in our back pocket.”
He provided another reason Friday afternoon, citing the makeup of his team.
“This is an MLS-based camp. It is the players that are here that we see have the potential to play on an international stage, and what we lack in maybe some positions, we have to balance it out in other positions,” the US coach said following the Yanks' training session at StubHub Center, where Sunday afternoon they'll take on Panama (4 pm ET; ESPN, UniMas, UDN). “That's why we played a 3-5-2 in Chile because we don't have pretty much any fullbacks coming out of MLS on the level that we expect them to be.”
Klinsmann has only two outside backs on his roster for these friendlies, with DeAndre Yedlin joining camp late from Tottenham and the Colorado Rapids’ Olympic hopeful Shane O'Neill, who has played right back at times in his MLS career.
D.C. United's uncapped midfielder Perry Kitchen is listed as a defender. Seattle Sounders midfielder/defender Brad Evans pulled out in mid-January with knee tendinitis. And LA Galaxy youngster Oscar Sorto was released from camp with most of the other potential Olympians when the team traveled to Chile two weeks ago.
Orlando City's Brek Shea, generally a wide midfielder, played at left back in the second half against Chile, and Klinsmann said he could develop into an outside back.
“As a left back, obviously, he needs to learn a lot,” Klinsmann said. “How to defend, how to approach [opposing] wingers, how to close the gap to the center back, [and learning this] is a process.”
Klinsmann said early in camp that he would have invited in Galaxy left back Robbie Rogers but instead brought in nearly a dozen U-23 pool players ahead of the Olympic qualifiers.
Klinsmann nonetheless reiterated that he wants the US to learn how to play in a 3-5-2.
“As we said down in Chile, we want to have different variations in our approach,” he said. “For whatever reason. Maybe the reason is the players you have available, or the reason is based on what the opponent brings to the table. ... We just want to have this card in our pocket when we need to play it.
“So the defenders have to deal with it. It's a different set-up and a different approach ... so for them it's important that they know how to play different systems without changing our general approach, [which is] that we want to take the game to our opponent, that we want to play out of the back, we want to keep the tempo high – which I think we did very, very well for 60 minutes in Chile. And they were very impressed by the way we played that game.”
Chile rallied with two second-half goals for a 3-2 victory.
Klinsmann said the US switched to a 4-4-2 in the second half in Chile “because they were one man up in midfield, we didn't control that anymore, and too many balls were coming in by crosses, which is why we made that decision. Which was still the right decision to do, but, obviously, the results at the end of the day didn't give you the arguments.”
