The tipping point of Jurgen Klinsmann's tenure as USMNT head coach

Jurgen Klinsmann hasn't gotten over it yet.

"Obviously it happened what happened in the Gold Cup," the United States men's national team head coach told reporters on Wednesday. "We don't want to get deeper into that topic. There's still a little bit of anger in me."

And rightly so. The United States men's national team's failure to at least reach the final of that tournament, instead crashing out of the semifinals in a 2-1 loss to Jamaica, can reasonably be designated as the biggest American failure at a major tournament since the 2006 World Cup.

It was the first time the USA didn't reach the final of the Gold Cup since 2003, six editions prior. And back then, the Americans lost the semifinal to mighty Brazil on an 89th-minute equalizer and an extra-time goal. Brazil had won the World Cup just the summer before. And back then, the U.S. at least won the admittedly pointless third-place game, which it failed to do this time around.

"I think it left something in our stomach, the way it happened there, the decisions of referees," Klinsmann said. "A lot of controversial stuff that happened in that Gold Cup left something bitter, something sour with us."

In truth, Klinsmann's men were a tad unfortunate to lose to Jamaica, going behind on a flukey goal and then losing on the free kick that ensued from a most unusual call on goalkeeper Brad Guzan for carrying the ball a few inches out of his penalty area. But then, apart from a 6-0 beatdown laid on lowly Cuba in the quarterfinals, the U.S. had convinced nobody of its title credentials all tournament long. So for Klinsmann to blame the tournament's famous unpredictability and problematic officiating is something of a red herring.

Because he too must know that the last time an American team showed so poorly at the Gold Cup, back in 2011, when the final was lost 4-2 to archrivals Mexico in humiliating fashion, the head coach, Bob Bradley, was fired.

Klinsmann wasn't. There was no serious talk of axing the man appointed the very day after Bradley was relieved of his duties. Probably because he is Klinsmann. Probably because so much hope and so many reputations have been staked to his presumed success.

Upon his appointment more than four years ago, a large swath of the American soccer community convinced itself that he was just the man to lift the program to some perceived "next level." And while Klinsmann's ideas have indeed been grand, their deployment in practice has yielded little more than pedestrian results. There have been a few friendly wins over major powers, but no tangible progress when the results have mattered.

The entirety of Klinsmann's tenure has resided somewhere between failure to live up to the hype and outright failure. He won the off-year Gold Cup, as he was supposed to, and he reached the round of 16 at the World Cup, as he was supposed to. (Well, the Americans had a very difficult group, so Klinsmann deserves credit for surviving it. But then his team was badly outplayed in three of four games, so that sort of offsets the accomplishment.) He has always done just well enough for his job to be secure and for the illusion that better days were surely ahead to stay alive. But he's never done so well as to suggest that such a next level was within short reach.

Until this summer and that fateful Gold Cup, that is. In reality, there were few excuses for Klinsmann to hide behind, even if he managed to conjure some. Even though the summer following a World Cup can be written off as a rebuilding period, he had brought a veteran team into the tournament with the stated objective of winning the thing. And then he didn't.

Which brings us to the present, and the friendlies with Peru and Brazil in the offing on Friday in Washington, D.C. and Tuesday outside of Boston, respectively – followed by an October winner-take-all game against Mexico in Los Angeles for a spot in the 2017 Confederations Cup.

Now we have arrived at something of a tipping point in Klinsmann's tenure. Perform well against these South American powers – and if Peru doesn't strike you as a juggernaut, consider that it placed third at this summer's Copa America, ahead of record five-time world champions Brazil – and get some kind of positive result versus Mexico, and the loss to Jamaica might well be remembered merely as a one-off blip. Sink further into the mire of mediocrity, however, and patience with Klinsmann's beautiful dreams and austere reality could finally wear thin.

Whether it's fair that the course of a four-year body of work will be judged against a pair of friendlies and another one-game playoff can be debated. But it is sort of fitting, considering that whatever credibility Klinsmann has managed to gain on the field has been won in friendlies – the famous victories in Italy and Mexico, and more recently in the Netherlands and Germany.

And while winner-take-all games come coupled with the cruelty of chance, they are nevertheless the dominant mechanism for deciding who wins the glory and who doesn't in international soccer. After the group stage, the World Cup – and every other major tournament – becomes a succession of one-game playoffs, and at some point the Americans will have to get comfortable with them if they're ever going to get anywhere. Pointing out that historically the USA is 1-6 in knockout games at the World Cup might be belaboring the argument here, but it nevertheless underpins the failure to join the sport's elite.

Looked at that way, these three games will make for a fitting litmus test for a head coach who has been given many benefits of many doubts, considering that his teams have looked and played nothing like he said they would.

To be fair, Klinsmann will be hamstrung in some ways. An injury rash among his outside backs meant he had to call in eight central defenders to plug the holes. Only Greg Garza is regularly employed as a back, but he has been glued to the bench for Atlas, his team in Mexico.

The Americans also will be without midfielder Michael Bradley and forward Clint Dempsey until their second game against Brazil next week. Those two playmakers, who are inarguably the most influential members of the team on the field, are being spared in order to accommodate their Major League Soccer seasons with Toronto FC and the Seattle Sounders, respectively (who face each other on Saturday, by the way).

All the same, the Yanks will be expected to demonstrate against the Peruvians and the Brazilians that the Gold Cup elimination was something of an aberration. Or at the very least, that lessons have been learned and that meaningful progress will at last be made in the near future.

Their manager would thank them to.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.