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Apparently, performances in international games do not matter to Jürgen Klinsmann, no matter how many times a player performs against decent to strong international competition.

Juan Agudelo, Terrence Boyd, and Mix Diskerud have demonstrated their ability to perform against strong national teams like Russia recently, not to mention their previous performances for the United States Men’s National Team. Boyd was even very effective against a full-strength Brazil and Mexico. Benny Feilhaber’s strong 2009 Confederations Cup and 2010 World Cup performances are well-known, and when he played against Canada in the United States’ most recent friendly, he displayed that he had no problems with form or fitness.

On the other hand, Brad Evans, Brad Davis, and Graham Zusi were incapable of having any impact in the recent friendly against Canada, which is a country whose national team is not nearly as skilled as Russia’s.

Selecting the players who were unable to play dynamically and effectively against Canada over the players who performed better in the same game, in addition to numerous other international games against stronger opponents, is hard to justify.

Training camps with Klinsmann would appear to be all about indoctrinating players into the Klinsmann philosophy, despite the fact that his philosophy is the type of soccer that any American soccer player can see on TV in Serie A, the Bundesliga, La Liga, the Brasileirão, Ligue 1, and to a lesser extent, the English Premier League.

The players who seem to already know that playing one-to-two touch soccer is the best way to play are dismissed by Klinsmann as players who know too much and who are too good for Klinsmann to tolerate.

Whatever is at work in Klinsmann’s roster selections, certainly a player like Terrence Boyd who put Thiago Silva on his heels, in addition to Mexican and Italian defenders, deserved a roster spot on a team where fearless attacking play with the skill to match was needed.

The evidence of Klinsmann’s inability to judge talent is all there: the omission of much needed strikers like Juan Agudelo and Terrence Boyd whose skill and ability to perform at the international level are questioned by no one, the insistence of not including any proven-playmakers who play or have played at a high level with their club and/or with the United States Men’s National Team, and the inclusion of certain Major League Soccer players who were incapable of even trying to play aggressively against Canada.

Klinsmann himself has said that moving without the ball creates space, and at halftime of the game against Canada, Klinsmann stated that the United States had dominated despite the fact that almost no one was moving without the ball and trying to open the game up. Then, Klinsmann substituted Benny Feilhaber, Josh Gatt, and Juan Agudelo into the game, and the level of play and the attacking threat immediately improved.

Looking at the probable starting defenders and defensive midfielders, Klinsmann certainly selected players who have the skill, athleticism, and proven-ability to perform internationally. It should be difficult for Honduras to break down Tim Howard, Timothy Chandler, Omar Gonzalez or Maurice Edu or Carlos Bocanegra, Geoff Cameron, Fabian Johnson, Jermaine Jones, and Michael Bradley, but international success requires some degree of balance in the roster between defensive ability and attacking ability.

It would seem that Jürgen Klinsmann is always unwilling to even use any sort of formation with proven success around the world with elite teams, whether it be using two defensive-minded midfielders with two more attack-minded midfielders or using more midfielders who are just as strong attacking as they are defensively.

Based on Klinsmann’s roster selections, it would appear that Klinsmann is going to play three defensive-minded midfielders again with either José Torres or Graham Zusi, and Torres has repeatedly been incapable of performing at the international level or using both feet, which can also be said of Brad Davis.

If previous performances with the United States Men’s National team do not matter for Klinsmann, and technical ability and athleticism do not matter, then what does matter?

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