U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati is just as eager as the next U.S. national team fan to see what the side can achieve in the Copa America Centenario.
As the person who is ultimately responsible for the US men’s program, he told media on Tuesday, before the 4-0 Group A win over Costa Rica, that competitive results will factor heavily into how he evaluates the team, its progress and potential future decisions, including regarding the head coach position.
"We will look at everything at the end of this competition [Copa America Centenario],” he told a group of reporters gathered in Chicago, where the U.S. Soccer Federation is headquartered. "I don’t get too high or too low based on one game, especially when it's in this tournament against a very good team [vs. Colombia in first match]. So we will wait and see how the next two games go [vs. Costa Rica and Paraguay] and hopefully some additional games [in knockout rounds] after that before we assess where things are again."
When it comes to official tournaments and competitions, since head coach and technical director Jurgen Klinsmann took over the squad in 2011, the US won a Gold Cup (2013) and advanced to the Round of 16 at the 2014 World Cup. More recently, the USA fell at the semifinal stage of the 2015 Gold Cup and lost the 2015 CONCACAF Cup against Mexico.
“There are things overall in his role as technical director that we think we’ve made good advances in, but we need to win games and we need to win games in competitive play," Gulati said in providing a balance of Klinsmann’s work. "The first few years, obviously we did that. In the [2013] Gold Cup we were very successful and the World Cup we could talk about all day, but last summer in particular with the Gold Cup and then the reprieve we had [CONCACAF Cup vs. Mexico], we didn’t get it done.”
“Results are what matter and everyone understands that," Gulati continued. "Results of the last 18 months overall haven’t been what we would have hoped for, especially in the official competitions. We had some good results last spring that were friendlies, we had some wins coming into this event, but it’s the official competitions that matter the most and we haven’t been up to where we would like to be.”
With all that, Gulati's comments regarding Klinsmann's job security should come as no surprise.
“We need to win a few games, whether it’s now or September, October, November. We have to win games,” he said. "Beating Bolivia is a good result [4-0, in a May 28 friendly]; it’s not as important as losing to Colombia in this tournament [2-0 on June 3]. … No one has ironclad job security. Jurgen’s already said, for coaches and players, it’s about results.”
