EXCLUSIVE: After his a long-awaited USMNT return, the son the former national team coach hopes for more chances to come
HARRISON, N.J. – It was just before one of the U.S. men's national team's matches at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, and Jurgen Klinsmann had wrapped a training session. Tim Howard and Brad Guzan turned for the lockerroom, but a few players wanted to stay on the field to continue their work.
Nick Rimando was there to play in goal, but Klinsmann needed another shot-stopper. He looked around, surveyed the scene and found his 17-year-old son.
"We need help," the then-USMNT boss said. "Hop in."
That was Jonathan Klinsmann's first USMNT training session, if you can call it that. Now, more than a decade later, he can admit that it wasn't particularly great, nor had he done much to earn it. His dad needed a warm body in goal, and he was the best he had at his disposal at that moment.
"I was so young. I had no muscle on me!" Klinsmann told GOAL. "I just remember the speed of the ball. I remember it going right past my head. I ended up somehow saving one. I'm feeling confident, and then Jermaine Jones steps up and rips one right at me. I had it. I had the ball in my hands, but I couldn't hold it. He just hit it so hard. It should have been comfortable, but it was so powerful that it went right through me. Right then, I was like, 'OK, this is different.'"
Klinsmann's path back into a USMNT shirt? Yeah, that's been different, too.
The son of a legendary coach and player, Klinsmann, theoretically, could have had an easy path. Instead, he took a more circuitous route back to the USMNT. It's one that, for many, is still headlined by a tweet he sent as a teenager. Those days are long gone, of course. Much has changed, and life has since sent Klinsmann on his own unique journey through it all.
From college to the Bundesliga to Switzerland to the USL to MLS and, now, finally, after all this time, a starting job in Italy, Klinsmann's path has turned into a story of persistence. At some point at each of those stops, he was benched – if he even got the chance to play at all.
Many times, that's what led to him moving on. Klinsmann's story, generally, is one of a player chasing opportunities that never really went his way. Not until now, at least. He's seized his chance with Cesena in Italy. That earned him a opportunity with the USMNT earlier this month.
That's how he sees things now – as an opportunity. Finally, at age 28, Klinsmann is beginning develop into the player he always wanted to be. Does that result in more USMNT chances going forward? Perhaps, perhaps not. But, after rejoining the USMNT this month, it's worth dreaming.
The goalkeeper picture seems wide open, and so, fresh off his latest national team chance, it might just be worth wondering if, just maybe, those shots from Jones won't be his only World Cup memory after all.
"Going to college and then all of these different spots and just not playing, that gets at you a lot," Klinsmann says. "Over the years, it's been waiting and waiting and waiting and, finally, having a chance to get a string of games to be like, 'OK, this is me.' It was being patient for eight or nine years and now finally being told that you can play.
"I've been playing well enough to get this call, so it all just feels like the culmination of my story, of my career up until now. It's all been about building for years. Being able to put it all together now? It's the best. Coming here tops it all off."
AFPA love for goalkeeping
Klinsmann gets the question a lot. "How in the world did you become a goalkeeper?" For the uninitiated, his father, Jurgen, was one of the most dangerous attackers the game has seen. He was a World Cup winner with Germany who lit up the Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Premier League during his career. Somehow, his son chose gloves instead of goals?
He laughs about it. Klinsmann actually started as a forward, but was tossed into goal during a stint with Bayern Munich's academy. Throughout his youth, he was lucky enough to find a series of goalkeeper coaches who made the position fun. He never looked back.
"It was quick," Klinsmann recalled. "For me to change, I had to love it, right? I loved scoring goals and I loved being up top, being creative, and I still love it. For me to change positions, I knew right away. It was so much fun. I really liked it."
His father, of course, was supportive. As the years went on, he was also a valuable resource. While club coaches would help him get into the mindset of a goalkeeper, his father would get him into the mindset of a striker.
"He would shoot at me, and it was always fun," Klinsmann recalls. "He doesn't think like a goalkeeper. It's the exact opposite. A coach would say, 'Maybe do this or that' and then dad, from a striker's perspective, would tell me what he's thinking. If I move here, what does that say in his mind? Does he aim somewhere else? Does me doing this switch up his thought process?
"We'd have a game and I'd get scored on and I'd ask him 'As a striker, what do you think?' And then I could go to my goalkeeper coach and go, 'As a goalkeeper, what do you think?' It was so many different perspectives. It was a full circle, and it was all the information I could really need."
Translating that information to the field, ultimately, became a struggle. For years, Klinsmann was desperate for a club to call home and, more importantly, where he could regularly play. That process took some time.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportThe long road
After starring for the U.S. U20s and collegiately with the Califnornia Golden Bears, Klinsmann headed for Germany in 2017. He went for a trial. It worked. He signed with Hertha Berlin, and Klinsmann was seemingly on the rise.
Over the next seven years, he played precisely 26 senior soccer games. One came in Berlin, a Europa League appearance against Ostersunds FK. Two came with St. Gallen in Switzerland, both cup games. The rest? Spread across four years with the LA Galaxy, where he was almost exclusively a backup, save for a brief run in his final season.
"It was a lot of cup games where it was like, even if you play well, you probably won't play again. But if you don't play well, you definitely won't play again," he says. "So you go out there and try and have a couple of good games and you feel like, 'Oh man, I can really build on this.' But then you can't. Maybe next year. I had one bad cup game in Switzerland and they were like, 'Well, your year's done.' You'd have to wait until the next season to even have a chance to maybe go in. That happened every single year of my career until Italy."
It was a battle between frustration an perseverance. In the end, patience indeed turned out to be a virtue.
"At the end of the day, I felt like I deserved to play, but all you can do is keep showing up, right?" he said. "From Berlin on, I didn't have any other thought process other than, 'Can I play?' I just wanted to get onto the field. Finally, going to Italy, it's all come together, and I've been able to show what I can do. I've been waiting a decent amount of time to do that."
Enter Cesena, the little club on the Eastern side of Italy that made all of that worth the wait.
Getty ImagesLife in Italy
Klinsmann is no stranger to getting recognized. His last name is usually a dead giveaway. That's not why he gets spotted in Cesena, though.
"It's not the largest of cities," he says, "and I'm the only six-foot-something American guy."
Klinsmann arrived at Cesena in February 2024. They were in Serie C. The club made it clear upon his arrival that Klinsmann wouldn't play right away, which, in Klinsmann's life, was nothing new. Coming off an MLS offseason, he wasn't ready physically.
The second half of the season, then, was largely an extended preseason to prepare him to compete the following campaign. In the midst of that, the club got promoted, giving Klinsmann the opportunity to compete in Serie B.
"The whole risk was that this wasn't, per se, a normal way to do it," he says, "but I saw an opportunity, especially to start playing in Serie B. You can get exposure, experience, all of the different benefits of living in Italy as well."
That off-field life, Klinsmann says, is fantastic. He rarely spends time in his apartment. The food is great. Some of the biggest, best cities in the country are just a drive away. The beach is 30 minutes away and, in the summer, he says, there's no place better.
The big moments, though, come on the field. After taking over as the starter early last season, Klinsmann made 28 league appearances for Cesena as the club finished seventh in the league. This season has started well, and the club is even thinking about promotion.
"When they told me they wanted to make a switch, they said that I had these next few games and not to think about it as a one-and-done," he says. "They said, 'Your teammates and coaches trust you, so trust yourself.' I build on that. From the first game, I just did that."
Those consistent minutes also had Klinsmann dreaming of a potential USMNT return. He'd attended national team camp just once, as an injury replacement in 2018. With a new coach, Mauricio Pochettino, in place and experimentation ongoing ahead of the World Cup, he began to wonder what he could do to take that next step.
"You obviously know that you have to be playing and, going to Italy, it's every week now," he says. "It's a good level, a good league with a good team in front of you and not letting up many goals? You feel like, at a certain point, maybe it could happen. But it's not up to you. You just have to wait and hope and keep focused. You have to keep going if it's ever going to happen."
Then the email hit his in-box.
Getty Images SportMore chances on the way?
The original message indicated that Klinsmann had been selected for the provisional squad. It was a sign that he was being seen. A good step, he thought. He was clearly doing the right thing. The real breakthrough came soon after, and the message came from Cesena.
"We played our first game against Pescara away and won 3-1, great result," he recalls. "My team manager pulled me aside while everyone was celebrating in the lockerroom and showed me the official email. It was emotional. The whole team, the coaches, are celebrating because of the result, which was fantastic. But I didn't tell anyone. I called my parents and my girlfriend and those were the only people.
"I just sat on the bus back that night, because it was a decent drive, and I just sat there thinking about it. The whole team was celebrating the win, and I went along with it. I was celebrating something cool, too."
Ultimately, Klinsmann didn't play in the USMNT camp. Pochettino used Matt Freese, the presumptive No. 1, in both games against South Korea and Japan – Freese, in fact, has started eight straight games for USMNT, and previous starter Matt Turner was not in this month's camp. At 28, Klinsmann did not get his first cap.
He hopes there will be a next time, but knows it isn't guaranteed. Either way, it was good to be back, good to know that, finally, after everything, he might just be on the right track.
"It was about giving everything that you possibly have in training every day with the goal of maybe getting called back in," Klinsmann says. "For me, that isn't a guarantee. With the World Cup coming up, you obviously want to get called back in. You don't want to be in a camp or two camps – you want to be in that last camp. It's just knowing that, even if you give it your all, it's still not up to you. But the least you can do is make sure you have no regrets about it."
One thing is clear about Klinsmann – he doesn't give up.
"There are just so many things that I can bring back to my club, that I can work on and that I can now share, too," he says. "It's not only just myself, right? It's these ideas that can change the way you think about goalkeeping a little bit while also staying within yourself and staying the guy that was called up. I had no expectation coming in. I just wanted to be open-minded. This was always a goal of mine, and I didn't give up on it. I always had an eye on it."