By the way, how is it that Tottenham insist on central defenders made out of paper?

As far as the US hiring a foreign coach, I think they’d do it in a heartbeat if they felt it was a right fit since “foreign”=”quality” in the US soccer mindset. My theory is that it’s all Steve Sampson’s fault. From 1991-95, Bora Milutinović coached the USMNT and sort of taught them fundamentals, and they played extremely conservatively. Sampson took over when Bora left and gave the players more attacking freedom and they were awesome. Gradually though, the tactics leeched away and Sampson was left looking like a buffoon. Since that point it’s been Arena and Bradley, and the sounds coming out of US Soccer have always been the familiar “we need a coach who understands the [insert country] player” line, which almost always turns out to be false—see Fabio Capello.

From what I understand, Klinsmann was almost in the bag but USSF President Sunil Gulati would not give him full control, since Klinsmann wanted to shake up the carefully cultivated feudal system that is youth soccer in this country.

You hit on something I’ve been thinking about for a while. US soccer fans spend a lot of time hoping that our players get picked up by top-tier European teams, and/or that our domestic pro league develops into something better than ‘decent’ by international standards. But what about our coaches? Our best known coach, alas, is Bruce Arena, whose playing pedigree is as backup keeper for a single year in Tacoma (I had to look that up). Only five MLS coaches have top-flight Euro league experience–and none of them are Americans. I guess we’re simply not far along enough to have American coaches of world-class competence. And probably too xenophobic to let Johnny Foreigner coach our national team.