Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber criticized Jurgen Klinsmann, the coach of the United States men’s national team, in unusually harsh terms Wednesday for comments that Garber said were damaging to the league and to the sport in this country.
This week, Klinsmann repeated complaints he had made about the top American players Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley, who left European clubs to return to M.L.S. in the year before last summer’s World Cup in Brazil. Klinsmann said their form had suffered and implied that the quality of play in the league was to blame.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Klinsmann told reporters Monday in Florida. “I made it clear with Clint’s move back and Michael’s move back that it’s going to be very difficult to keep the same level that they experienced at the places where they were. It’s just reality. It’s just being honest.”
Klinsmann, a German, has expressed similar thoughts in the past, and some United States fans share his views. But in a hastily arranged conference call Wednesday, Garber aggressively criticized Klinsmann’s comments. He called them “patently untrue” and “personally infuriating.”
“Jurgen’s comments are very, very detrimental to the league, to the sport of soccer in North America, detrimental to everything we’re trying to do,” Garber said. “Not only that, I think they’re wrong.”
He added, “To have a national team coach saying that signing with our league is not going to be good for their careers, and not good for their prospects with the national team, is incredibly damaging to our league.”
Garber’s defense of his league and its players was surprisingly personal at times. For the first time, he declared that Klinsmann was wrong to exclude Landon Donovan from the World Cup team last summer, and he said of the coach, “I think he needs to think very hard about how he manages himself publicly.”
“I will do anything and everything to defend our league, our players and our owners,” Garber added. “I don’t believe anyone is above the sport, and I believe everyone has to be accountable for their behavior.”
Garber said that he had not spoken with Klinsmann but that he had sent him a strongly worded letter. Garber also said that he had written a very strong letter to Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, and that several M.L.S. owners had done the same.
A spokesman for U.S. Soccer said Klinsmann was traveling Wednesday and was not expected to respond to Garber’s remarks immediately.
Klinsmann has never hidden his displeasure with the return of Dempsey and Bradley to M.L.S. In August 2013, Dempsey left Tottenham in England, where he was playing in a reserve role, to join the Seattle Sounders. Last winter, Bradley left Italy’s Roma, where several high-profile signings threatened his playing time, for Toronto. Each player’s transfer came with a sizable increase in salary.
Klinsmann publicly bemoaned both moves but did not reduce either player’s role with the national team. Dempsey and Bradley started all four of the Americans’ World Cup games in Brazil. Bradley played every minute as the team advanced to the Round of 16, but since the World Cup, Klinsmann has clearly not been impressed with his play for Toronto, which will miss the M.L.S. playoffs again this season.
“He has to prove that he hasn’t lost a bit,” Klinsmann said on the eve of Bradley’s arrival in camp this week. “Obviously we will keep working and pushing, but it is down to him and his environment to see what level he is capable to play.”
Garber acknowledged that Klinsmann had the right to criticize any player but said that doing so publicly was “absolutely unacceptable.” He said the notion that playing in M.L.S. would hurt a player’s career was “patently untrue,” noting that Tottenham had recently signed one of Dempsey’s Seattle teammates, DeAndre Yedlin. Yedlin is set to join the club this winter.
By then, Garber may have had a face-to-face meeting with Klinsmann. For now, Garber said, “I’m demanding that he refrain from making comments that are critical of our players and damaging to our league.”