I called this, not that it took particularly keen powers of observation or lots of inside sources. When Sunil Gulati of the US Soccer Federation suddenly dumped Bob Bradley yesterday, it was fair to assume he had someone in mind as a replacement, and today the USSF announced that Juergen Klinsmann is the new national coach.

I like this move. For several reasons which I will enumerate.

1. The U.S. is ready for a foreign coach. Twenty years ago, even 10, the style and development of U.S. soccer was quirky. Weird, even. Most of the top players had come through U.S. colleges, and that made them a different sort of player from the ones you see in there rest of the world, who began playing tons of matches in professional settings from an early age. The U.S. players tended to be cerebral, as soccer players go, and willing to work hard, but technically limited and tactically naive. It frustrated foreign coaches to deal with this, and after Bora Milutinovic’s limited success (round of 16, 1994 World Cup), the USSF shifted to Steve Sampson, followed by Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley, all of them Americans, and the team actually got gradually better under them, right through the 2010 World Cup. Now, however, the U.S. player pool is similar to the rest of the world, with the bulk of players having been professionals for years. A Yank coaching them … no longer necessary.

2. Klinsmann, however, is a “foreigner lite.” He lives part of the year in Southern California, is fluent in English, has spent some time around Major League Soccer.  So he doesn’t approach U.S. soccer as an outsider trying to catch up.

3. Klinsmann was an outstanding attacking player. I saw him at the 1990 World Cup, when West Germany won it, and again in 1994 and 1998, when his late goal clinched Germany’s 2-0 defeat of the Yanks in Paris. This is a guy who understands attacking soccer and certainly must know a potential scorer when he sees one, and the U.S. has always, always struggled to score.

4. Klinsmann was the coach of the 2006 Germany team that reached the semifinals of the World Cup. That team was fun to watch, and played attacking football. So he’s not just a guy who knows what it is to play at the highest level, he knows how to coach there, too. Here is a BBC link on Klinsmann talking about remaking German football.

5. He’s a modern, vibrant, energetic guy. He’s 47 but seems younger.

As soon as I saw that Bradley had been fired, I tweeted within 60 seconds that “maybe it’s time for a foreigner, like Juergen Klinsmann,” and a day later it was the case. Gulati, the boss of the USSF,  twice tried to hire him before. This time he succeeded.

Bob Bradley was not a bad coach. The victory over Spain in the 2009 Confederations Cup is one of the top 2-3 victories in U.S. history, and he did that. He got that same team to a 2-0 halftime lead against Brazil in the championships game … and a year later his team reached the round of 16 in South Africa and could have advanced.

But we all had this sense of him running out of ideas for the current World Cup cycle, and the 4-2 loss to Mexico in the Gold Cup final was one massive red flag.

I like this move. It’s good for U.S. soccer. I think the chances of surviving group stage play in 2014 Brazil just got better.