http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/sports/soccer/don-garber-criticizes-jurgen-klinsmann-for-comments-about-mls.html 2014-10-16 00:53:26 Don Garber Criticizes Jurgen Klinsmann for Comments About M.L.S. Garber, the Major League Soccer Commissioner, criticized the United States national team coach in unusually harsh terms for comments that Garber called damaging to the league and to the sport in America. === Major League Soccer Earlier this week, Klinsmann repeated complaints he had made before 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 as a result, and implied that the quality of play in the league was to blame. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” Klinsmann The comments were not new; 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 on 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 this summer, and he said of the coach, “I think he needs to think very hard about how he manages himself publicly.” Garber said that he had not spoken with Klinsmann but that he had “sent him a note.” Garber also said he had written “a very strong letter” to Sunil Gulati, the head of U.S. Soccer, 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. “I will do anything and everything to defend our league, our players and our owners,” Garber said. “I don’t believe anyone is above the sport, and I believe everyone has to be accountable for their behavior.” Klinsmann has never hidden his displeasure with Dempsey and Bradley’s returns to M.L.S. Dempsey left Tottenham in England, where he had been playing in a reserve role, in August 2013 to join the Seattle Sounders. Bradley left Italy’s Roma, where several high-profile signings had imperiled his playing time, last winter for Toronto F.C. Each player’s transfer came with a sizable raise in salary. While Klinsmann publicly bemoaned both moves, he did not reduce either player’s role in the national team. Dempsey and Bradley both 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 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.” Klinsmann’s words carry weight with players, since he holds the dual role of national team coach and technical director for the U.S. soccer federation. Garber acknowledged Klinsmann had a right to criticize any player, but he said doing so publicly was “absolutely unacceptable.” He said the notion that playing in M.L.S. would hurt a player’s career “patently untrue,” noting that Tottenham had recently signed one of Dempsey’s Seattle teammates, DeAndre Yedlin. Yedlin will join the club this winter. By then, Garber may have had a face-to-face meeting with Klinsmann. In the meantime, Garber said, “I’m demanding that he refrain from making comments that are critical of our players and damaging to our league.”