Juergen Klinsmann’s stint with US Soccer is at crossroads – Los Angeles Times

Apart from his role as president of U.S. Soccer, Sunil Gulati keeps a day job lecturing on economics at Columbia University. So he’s pretty good at math.

And what he has seen from Juergen Klinsmann’s national team lately doesn’t add up.

The loss to Costa Rica on Tuesday was the third in as many games for the U.S., something that hadn’t happened at home since 1997. It was also the fourth consecutive winless game against a CONCACAF team on U.S. soil. That hadn’t happened in 50 years.

Along the way, the U.S. finished outside the top three in the CONCACAF Gold Cup for the first time in 15 years and failed to qualify for the 2017 Confederations Cup and 2016 Olympics. It’s a stunning slide for a national team that, under Klinsmann, won a record 16 games two years ago.

It has won only 15 times since.

With the start of World Cup qualifying less than a month away, there is little time left to turn things around, leaving Gulati with a tough decision: Four years after finally landing the coach he pursued with the fervor Ahab once used to chase a whale, should U.S. Soccer’s chief fish or cut bait?

As for which way he’s leaning, Gulati won’t say. In fact, he won’t say much of anything.

After publicly backing Klinsmann following the Gold Cup debacle, Gulati has apparently taken a vow of silence. He didn’t speak after the U.S. was embarrassed in a 4-1 loss to Brazil last month nor after the loss to Mexico in the CONCACAF Cup on Oct. 10, the same day Andi Herzog, who Klinsmann hand-picked to lead the under-23 team, was ejected during the waning moments of a loss to Honduras that cost the U.S. an automatic berth in next summer’s Olympics.

Then came the loss to Costa Rica, in which the U.S. was outshot nearly three to one.