In 2014, Jurgen Klinsmann didn’t attempt to hide his dismay at the Olympic qualifying breakdown from two years before. Between 2012 and then, Klinsmann had added a U.S. technical director title to his resume, but his opinion on the qualifying failure for the London Olympics hadn’t cooled.
If anything, it had intensified. He termed that shortcoming a missed opportunity. He called those players - Brek Shea, Juan Agudelo, Perry Kitchen and others - a lost generation.
A year later, he redoubled on those sentiments, echoing just how important the head of the American soccer tree views the Olympics from a developmental perspective.