"The fact that he hasn't chosen Landon Donovan is not a big story to me," McManaman said. "If a player's not in form, he doesn't get chosen, and that's the way it's always been for me, whether it's the greatest player in the world or whether it's an average player. ... You need to be playing well for your club, you need to be playing well week in and week out to warrant the chance to play for your country."
Darke saw it differently.
"I slightly agree with Bruce Arena that if the USA have 23 better players than Landon Donovan, they better go pretty close to winning this World Cup. He isn't the player he was, there's no question about that. ... I still think he could have done a job, even if it was only for 20 minutes from the bench."
If McManaman and Darke can't agree on Klinsmann's maneuvers, how can the rest of us? The short answer: We can't.
Almost from the time he was entrusted with the future of American soccer three years ago, Klinsmann had emerged as a polarizing figure.
A brilliant player in his prime, both for the German national team and for a series of elite soccer clubs, he sometimes acts as though he has little regard for history.
This is not a new reputation. Most Germans were thrilled when Klinsmann was hired to coach their national program in 2004, but they soon grew suspicious of his ways. His unflinching personnel moves, for example, included benching goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, beloved hero of the 2002 World Cup. He brought in a sports psychologist and a nutritionist, and he hired new assistants, including an American personal trainer to oversee the players' conditioning.
By the time the 2006 World Cup began in Germany, there were rumors that Klinsmann would be fired mid-tournament if the home team struggled early. It didn't. The Germans played with flair and cohesion, and wound up taking third place.
The German public hailed Klinsmann as a savior. Four days later, he resigned the position, citing burnout.
Two years after that, FC Bayern Munich, the club for which he had played two seasons in the mid-1990s, hired Klinsmann as coach. That, too, was soon followed by head-scratching and muttered criticism. People questioned the need for a team movie theater and "quiet room." The tipping point seemed to come when Klinsmann ordered statues of Buddha arranged around the team's training facility. Bavaria is a heavily Catholic region, and the Buddhas were not embraced.
In contrast to Klinsmann's experience with the German national team, Bayern Munich did not play well under his guidance. He was fired with five games left in his first season, the team's record at 16-7-6 — not acceptable for one of the highest-spending clubs in the world.
If there was a unifying theme to the criticism Klinsmann endured in Germany, it was that he was "too American" in his willingness to experiment with new methods. He has, in fact, lived in Southern California since he retired as a player in 1998. He has an American wife and two made-in-America children.
The irony is that many Americans are now accusing Klinsmann of being "too European." They aren't thrilled that his current World Cup roster includes seven Euro nationals, and they bristle every time Klinsmann admits that his team has no chance to win the Cup — as he repeated Wednesday, in his first news conference in Brazil. That isn't a very American thing to say.
And then there was his decision to cut the leading scorer in the history of U.S. international play. The relationship between the two had been strained ever since Donovan decided to take a sabbatical that would cause him to miss three World Cup qualifying games last year. Klinsmann never treated Donovan like a standout after that, and included him in a purge of seven players on May 22.
"I respect the decision because it was a bold move — and I definitely think there was a personal reason behind it as well," said longtime U.S. player Cobi Jones, who provides analysis for L.A. Galaxy games — that's Donovan's club team — and now for Fox Sports and BeIN Sports. "When it comes down to it, it's all personal, you know? Coaches make decisions based on their personal views of a player. I don't think Landon ever recovered from that sabbatical. I don't think Jurgen ever let that go."
Most shocking to soccer insiders wasn't that Klinsmann whacked Donovan, but that he did so a day after telling reporters he was in no hurry to pare down his roster, and without so much as a heads-up to U.S. Soccer officials or major advertisers, or to Donovan himself.
It was another clear indication that, for better or worse, this is Jurgen Klinsmann's program, and he will run it his way.
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