Columnist George Vecsey asks, now that Juergen Klinsmann is the new U.S. national team soccer coach, who plays Joachim Loew in this performance?

Loew was the assistant who was known as the tactician behind the new-wave, camp-leader energy of Klinsi in Germany’s spirited third-place finish during the 2006 World Cup. As head coach, Loew led Germany to another third place in the 2010 World Cup.

Klinsmann has the aura of the international soccer celebrity -- “sexy,” one soccer insider said, meaning attractive, in the public relations sense. But it would have been instructive, in a purely laboratory experiment, to give Bruce Arena or Bob Bradley the German squad of 2006 and see if they could achieve third place. Either one just might have done it.