Juergen Klinsmann keeps smiling after ‘killer’ World Cup draw

Los Angeles: Juergen Klinsmann struggled to put a bright spin on what was clearly a black Friday for United States football. But his face told the story his words couldn’t.

On most days, the perpetually exuberant Klinsmann looks like a boy who just got a puppy. But after the US team he coaches was drawn into the most difficult four-team group for next summer’s World Cup, he looked like a boy whose puppy had just been run over.

“Well, I think we hit one of those real big killer groups,” Klinsmann said from the Brazilian beachfront resort of Costa do Sauipe after the US were grouped with Germany, Portugal and Ghana in a group from which only two countries can advance. “It is what it is.”

What it is was disappointing, depressing and disheartening for Klinsmann. But it shouldn’t have been surprising because two months ago he predicted it would happen.

The World Cup draw, he complained then, was unbalanced and capricious. With only eight of the 32 teams seeded into the selection process, a team like the US, who dominated their regional qualifying tournament, were treated no differently than any other unranked team.

As a result Mexico, twice shut out by the Americans in qualifying before winning a two-leg playoff with lowly New Zealand just to reach Brazil, could be drawn into a relatively easy group, as they were, while the US got two of the world’s top five teams in Germany and Portugal.

And Mexico’s group, which includes Croatia, Cameroon and Brazil, isn’t even the softest of the eight. The four teams in Group H (Belgium, Algeria, South Korea and Russia) combined to win only two games in the last two World Cups and Group F, headed by Argentina, features three teams (Iran, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Nigeria) that haven’t won a World Cup game this century.

Oh, and remember that 15-hour, 6,900-mile trip Mexico made to New Zealand last month as punishment for their dismal qualifying campaign? The US will cover more than 9,000 miles in 10 days in Brazil, including one trip to the Amazon city of Manaus, where the temperature and the humidity will be in the high 80s. The Americans will spend five times as many hours in the air as they will playing games; no other World Cup team will travel as far in group play.

“We’ll deal with it,” Klinsmann said, “with a smile on our face.”

Many of US players parroted Klinsmann, at least publicly.

“The hard part is getting to the World Cup, and that’s something that we have done already,” forward Eddie Johnson said. “We couldn’t have a better opportunity than to play against such amazing countries as Ghana, Portugal and Germany.

“When they say the ‘Group of Death,’ we have to look at ourselves as well. We’re the US national team and if it’s considered the ‘Group of Death’ [because we are a part of it], it shows how far the country has come.”

Added Clint Dempsey: “You can’t think about ‘Am I the favourite, am I the underdog? What’s it going to be like playing in the heat or with the travel?’ Those are factors that come into it, but at the end of the day both teams have to deal with them. You both deal with the conditions, with injuries, with yellow cards. It’s all part of the World Cup. Anything can happen and anything can happen on a given day.”

There is some cause for optimism, though. The last time the US played Portugal, in the 2002 World Cup, the Europeans were among the favourites to win the title before losing to the Americans, 3-2, in group play. But Cristiano Ronaldo, 17 then, watched that game on television.

Germany, ranked second in the world and, like Portugal 12 years ago, a World Cup favourite, lost once this year, 4-3 to the US in June. But that was a German ‘B’ team featuring only three regulars.