From the 1994 World Cup through the 2010 edition, the U.S. national soccer team became increasingly American. Played by men born and bred to the game in the U.S.

By the time South Africa 2010 rolled around, every man who made the starting XI for any of the four games the Americans played — and 15 guys got at least one start — was born in the U-S-A.

Their names and hometowns sound like something straight out of a World War II buddy movie. Jay from Green Bay; Clint from Nacogdoches, Michael from Princeton … and Ricardo from Atlanta, Robbie from Phoenix, Landon from Redlands, Jonathan from Torrance, Steve from Rockford, Carlos from Alta Loma and Jozy and Tim from New Jersey.

This represented a breakthrough in America soccer.

As the U.S. won a group that included England, it demonstrated that a squad that took the traditional American path to soccer stardom — usually AYSO, club, high school, college — could compete on the global stage and advance to the last 16 … and miss the final eight by a whisper, if you remember Ghana’s hard-fought, extra-time, 2-1 victory over the Yanks.

It seemed to suggest that the American “system”, from the orange slices at halftime of kiddie games, to doing a couple of years in college soccer before joining Major League Soccer or some lower-level team outside the States, could work.

Under Jurgen Klinsmann, that is so over.

The current American coach … well, the German who coaches the American team, that is … thinks the U.S. system is ridiculous.

He hates college soccer, he is disgusted that Major League Soccer plays in the summer, at a level he believes is too low … Basically, he wants U.S. soccer to look and feel like European soccer. And if it looks and feels more like German than generically European soccer … all the better.

That was made clear in a lengthy piece that appeared in the New York Times today, by Sam Borden, entitled: “How Jurgen Klinsmann Plans to Make U.S. Soccer Better (and Less American”).

Ever have this happen to you? You look at an organization from the outside, and you strongly suspect X, Y and Z are going on there, just because you’ve been around, but you can’t be sure — and then someone writes a story that vindicates everything you suspected?

That is what this New York Times story did for me.

The current U.S. national soccer, the one going to Brazil in a few days for the 2014 World Cup,  has fewer raised-in-America players than any World Cup side in the modern era — which begins in 1990.

It is a 23-man side with no fewer than five German-American players, all of whom grew up in Germany, hold German citizenship, have played in the Bundesliga and for Germany, at some national level, whose mother tongue is German and, presumably, are here because they realized they would never play for the senior national German team.

Those five are Jermaine Jones, Fabian Johnson, Julian Green, John Brooks and Timothy Chandler.

All but Jones were recruited by Klinsmann.

The U.S. 2014 World Cup team also has an Icelandic-American (Aron Johannsson) and a Norwegian-American (Mix Diskerud).

That makes seven guys who are Something Else first, Americans second — except when it comes to soccer. And five of those seven (Jones and Diskerud being the exceptions) were recruited (think college football; the process is quite similar) by Klinsmann.

This represents a repudiation of American soccer, the mass-participation kiddie sport that spawned a generation of U.S. soccer fans, as well as World Cup teams that reached the quarter-finals (2002) and the final 16 (2010).

That is not good enough, for Jurgen Klinsmann. Even if soccer remains the country’s fourth-most-popular sport, at best, and maybe fifth, depending on where you place hockey.

As the NYT story notes: “If Klinsmann had his way, the United States roster would be made up of Americans playing their club soccer in Europe, facing the best competition in the world on a daily basis instead of only a few games every few years.”

The issue here is not the “foreignness” of the U.S. team. Every U.S. team has a whiff of semi-recent immigrants. That’s the American way.

The issue is the current coach’s lack of belief that Americans who grew up in the American soccer system can make for a competent team — and his heavy recruiting of Europeans to take American jobs, essentially.

Which presents us with an opportunity to go back and look at the U.S. World Cup teams from 1990, right after the Shot Heard Round the World in the memorable qualifier in Trinidad in 1989.

–The 1990 team was thoroughly American. Every guy who went to Italy 1990 was born in the U.S. aside from Mike Windischmann, who was born in Germany but moved to the U.S. when he was 2. In several cases, these guys (Marcelo Balboa, John Harkes, etc.) had fathers from soccer countries. But the kids learned the game in the States. This team, of course, couldn’t really play, which led to a new tack by the USSF, ahead of the next World Cup, in …

–1994. Wanting to be at least vaguely competent in a World Cup the U.S. was hosting, the USSF turned to foreign sources and, honestly, the federation can’t be blamed for that — because the U.S. had no league and most of the country’s best players were not ready to play overseas. It started with a foreign coach, the globetrotting Serb Bora Milutinovic, and continued with the addition of several key players who were by no means American — and this was back when Fifa was much less lax about players switching allegiances.

To wit: the German-American Thomas Dooley (who in 1994 could not speak English); the Dutch-American Earnie Stewart, the Uruguayan-American Fernando Clavijo, all of whom started the final three games of that World Cup, and the South African-American Roy Wegerle, who was a sub in all four games. Those were key performers. Take them out, and the U.S. goes out in the group stage.

–1998. Major League Soccer had launched, which helped a little, but the squad again was spiced by several guys whose first language was not English. Dooley, Stewart and Wegerle were back, and they were joined by Predrag “Preki” Radosavljevic, the Serb, and the Frenchman David Regis. Preki had played indoor soccer in the U.S. long enough to gain citizenship, as I recall, and Regis took advantage of the “wife is an American” thing. Henry Kissinger may have been involved, too; I am not joking.

This represented the zenith of quasi-Americans playing for the U.S. in the World Cup, at least for 16 years — though the coach was Steve Sampson, an American.

–2002. By the time the Korea-Japan World Cup came around, the existence of MLS and some guys going overseas and just the sheer number of kids who had grown up playing the game, pushed participation back towards American natives.

The exceptions were Stewart, back again, and Regis, who didn’t play, and Pablo Mastroeni, born in Argentina but in the U.S. since age 4, and Carlos Llamosa, who left Colombia for New York at age 22, and a decade later was a sub in Korea, perhaps in large part because U.S. coach Bruce Arena had coached him at DC United.  The core, though, was AYSO kids.

2006. Bruce Arena’s second team, and thoroughly American-American. Pablo Mastroeni was as exotic as it got, and by now he had been in the States for 30 years. Unfortunately, the team managed only one point, in a tie with Italy (who went on to win the whole thing).

2010, we talked about. But let’s mention here, again. It’s not about people with ethnic names. Hercules Gomez played in South Africa, and so did Juan Francisco Torres. But they grew up in the States. They somehow were paid professionals despite not being European. (If not for Jurgen, the U.S. drift towards teams with Mexican-American players may have accelerated. For now, it looks quite stalled.)

Now, in 2014, American players are soft and not competent and the domestic league is substandard, at least, according to the German coach. And that is why the team in Brazil has five Germans, a Norwegian and an Icelander.

And where does it go from here?

What do you think the chances are that Clint Dempsey will survive in the national side past this tournament? Klinsmann already has denigrated Dempsey’s time in Europe, which included a very productive season with Premier League side Fulham in 2011-12, and now that Clint is in the MLS, in Seattle … well, see ya.

Even Michael Bradley, clearly a very good player, probably is on the Klinsmann “watch” list because he too has returned to MLS, with Toronto. Not enough competition there, Michael.

What kills me about this? Beyond the fact that I cannot root for an American team coached by Jurgen Klinsmann?

The man has a contract through the 2018 World Cup. That kills me. Apparently for $2.5 million a year, which is real money in U.S. soccer, which means even if this team falls on its face in Brazil, the federation is unlikely to dump Klinsmann, because of the salary hit.

(And, too, this is the coach that shocked the federation by dumping Landon Donovan with no warning, just as it was planning promotional bits with Landon involved.)

So, by the time Russia 2018 rolls around, will Klinsmann have driven out the last of the AYSO kids? For sure, anyone silly enough to have wasted a couple of years while going to college will not have a place in Jurgen’s world.

For a last word, we turn to Bruce Arena, often a prickly character, but a man who believes in American-made players and American-made coaches.

From Sam Borden of The Times:

“Bruce Arena, who coaches the Los Angeles Galaxy, told me recently that instead of trying to get American soccer to mimic European culture, U.S. Soccer officials should simply look inward.

“Italy’s team is coached by an Italian and has a core of players who play in Italy, Arena pointed out. Spain has a Spanish coach and players primarily based in Spain. Germany is led by a German coach and mostly features players on German teams.”

(And now Arena is quoted.)

“I believe an American should be coaching the national team,” says Arena, who led the national team for eight years. “I think the majority of the national team should come out of Major League Soccer. The people that run our governing body think we need to copy what everyone else does when, in reality, our solutions will ultimately come from our culture.

“Come on,” he says. “We can’t copy what Brazil does or Germany does or England does. When we get it right, it’s going to be because the solutions are right here. We have the best sports facilities in the world. Why can’t we trust in that?”

Meantime, non-discerning American fans will have no trouble rooting on their European adoptees. Some fans are like that.

To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, they cheer for red-white-and-blue laundry. Apparently, it doesn’t matter who wears it.