United States men's national soccer team head coach Jürgen Klinsmann has admitted that his team is going through hard times after USMNT lost its third straight home game, a 0-1 friendly defeat against Costa Rica on Tuesday.
The 51-year-old German bench tactician is now under fire from USMNT supporters as the team had its first three-game losing streak in mainland USA since 1997 and fifth over their last six matches.
Daily Mail Online reported that Klinsmann acknowledged his squad is "going through mud" right now, using an analogy of rainy and sunny days to explain what the team is experiencing at the moment.
"There are not only sunshine days," the former Bayern Munich boss said. "We had a lot of sunshine, 2012, 2013, 2014. Now it's raining a little bit, and you've got to go through that. Maybe you have to go through a little bit of mud as well."
Klinsmann also said that he would have wanted an "opposite record" but that he could not change what happened and had to accept it as just "part of life" and a part of his job as USMNT mentor.
Before the Costa Rica loss, Team USA dropped a 2-3 decision to Mexico in a Confederations Cup playoff game on October 11 and a lopsided 1-4 friendly meeting with top international Brazil and its captain Neymar last month, all of which on US soil.
Yahoo Sports noted that this is the first time in Klinsmann's almost five years as USMNT coach that he was put "under real pressure" by the US soccer community and he was actually handling it quite well.
"You've got to go through stretches that are not so funny, that are not so excited, when there's a lot of criticism coming from fans, from you guys (the press). And I totally understand that," Klinsmann said. "With everything that goes not my way I get even hungrier to turn it around the other way."