Jurgen Klinsmann was hired to transform American football.
Not just the national team, but the nation’s entire coaching structure.
With a sunny disposition and an open, chatty manner, Klinsmann had been viewed as a future United States coach since he retired as a player in 1998 and moved to California with his American wife. After coaching Germany to the World Cup semi-finals in 2006, flirting with the US job later that year and lasting less than a season with Bayern Munich, he finally replaced Bob Bradley when the Americans struggled in the 2011 Concacaf Gold Cup.
“It also is vital I am involved in all the discussions with a lot of coaches out there, how we improve the grass-roots level,” Klinsmann said. “I’m fascinated by that approach.”
The 49-year-old Klinsmann scored 47 goals in 108 appearances for West Germany and Germany, winning the 1990 World Cup and 1996 European Championship. His club career included stretches at Stuttgart, Inter Milan, Monaco, Tottenham and Bayern Munich.
He speaks to players with the experience of playing at the highest level in Europe, and he embraces the types of statistical analysis, fitness techniques and advanced diet first employed by American coaches in other sports.
“He’s different, but good different,” United States defender DaMarcus Beasley said. “He’s always full of life. He’s always laughing. He’s always smiling. He’s very energetic, even in meetings. You can tell that he’s happy to be here, happy to be the coach of the national team. I just think his persona will kind of rub off on us and give us that fight and that passion, the same how he played when he was a player.”
Klinsmann’s temperament may be more suited to the United States than it is his native Germany. Former Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness criticised Klinsmann for buying computers to prepare PowerPoint presentations of game plans for the club during the 2008/09 season.
Klinsmann already has committed to coach the United States through the 2018 World Cup. His message to his players often is simple. Despite all the high tech, the most important factor is effort.
“They dream about Champions League and they dream about playing for a big-name club and making a lot of money. It’s all fine. But I’m telling them every time, you’re not doing that by dreaming. You can only do it by working,” Klinsmann said. “So if you think that five, six sessions a week is enough to get there, it’s not. So if you add two sessions a week on your own, it will show a certain improvement.”
For the first time since 1990, the United States head to the biggest football tournament on the planet with no central defenders with World Cup experience.
The reformed defence appears to be as shaky this year as it was in 2010, and offensive leaders Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey have struggled with their form recently.
Michael Bradley, son of former coach Bob Bradley, has become the key figure in the American player pool, which has seen an infusion of German-Americans under Bob Bradley’s successor, Jurgen Klinsmann.
Here are five players to watch:
Tim Howard – Tim Howard is having perhaps his best season for Everton.
The 35-year-old goalkeeper, preparing for his second World Cup as the No 1 choice, will be counted on to blunt the attack of talented opponents such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Mario Gomez.
Landon Donovan – Getting ready for his fourth World Cup at 32, can Landon Donovan provide the spark that helped the Americans reach the 2002 quarter-finals and the second round in 2010, especially after his lengthy sabbatical in 2012/13?
Clint Dempsey – Clint Dempsey, now 31, has struggled for goals for the past year with Tottenham and Seattle, but as United States captain provided a steady presence in qualifying.
Will coach Jurgen Klinsmann use him in midfield or as a withdrawn striker?
Michael Bradley – The son of former United States coach Bob Bradley, 26-year-old midfielder Michael Bradley has become the most influential player on the national team.
Will his January transfer from Roma to Toronto cause a drop in sharpness?
Jozy Altidore – Still only 24, Jozy Altidore seemed to have his breakout season in 2012/13 when he scored 31 goals in 41 matches for AZ Alkmaar in the Dutch league.
But Altidore had only two goals in his first 33 games this season for Sunderland, leading some to question whether he can lead the American attack.
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The Birkin bag is made by Hermès.
It is named after actress and singer Jane Birkin
Noone from Hermès will go on record to say how much a new Birkin costs, how long one would have to wait to get one, and how many bags are actually made each year.
Brief scores:
Day 2
England: 277 & 19-0
West Indies: 154
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
Third Test
Day 3, stumps
India 443-7 (d) & 54-5 (27 ov)
Australia 151
India lead by 346 runs with 5 wickets remaining
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Despacito's dominance in numbers
Released: 2017
Peak chart position: No.1 in more than 47 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Lebanon
Views: 5.3 billion on YouTube
Sales: With 10 million downloads in the US, Despacito became the first Latin single to receive Diamond sales certification
Streams: 1.3 billion combined audio and video by the end of 2017, making it the biggest digital hit of the year.
Awards: 17, including Record of the Year at last year’s prestigious Latin Grammy Awards, as well as five Billboard Music Awards
A list of the animal rescue organisations in the UAE
Brief scores:
Liverpool 3
Mane 24', Shaqiri 73', 80'
Manchester United 1
Lingard 33'
Man of the Match: Fabinho (Liverpool)
England v South Africa schedule:
- First Test: At Lord's, England won by 219 runs
- Second Test: July 14-18, Trent Bridge, Nottingham, 2pm
- Third Test: The Oval, London, July 27-31, 2pm
- Fourth Test: Old Trafford, Manchester, August 4-8
SERIE A FIXTURES
Friday Sassuolo v Torino (Kick-off 10.45pm UAE)
Saturday Atalanta v Sampdoria (5pm),
Genoa v Inter Milan (8pm),
Lazio v Bologna (10.45pm)
Sunday Cagliari v Crotone (3.30pm)
Benevento v Napoli (6pm)
Parma v Spezia (6pm)
Fiorentina v Udinese (9pm)
Juventus v Hellas Verona (11.45pm)
Monday AC Milan v AS Roma (11.45pm)
UAE jiu-jitsu squad
Men: Hamad Nawad and Khalid Al Balushi (56kg), Omar Al Fadhli and Saeed Al Mazroui (62kg), Taleb Al Kirbi and Humaid Al Kaabi (69kg), Mohammed Al Qubaisi and Saud Al Hammadi (70kg), Khalfan Belhol and Mohammad Haitham Radhi (85kg), Faisal Al Ketbi and Zayed Al Kaabi (94kg)
Women: Wadima Al Yafei and Mahra Al Hanaei (49kg), Bashayer Al Matrooshi and Hessa Al Shamsi (62kg)
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