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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; Martin V\u00E1squez (right) has been Jurgen Klinsmann's assistant dating back to his days at Bayern Munich. (Matt West/BPI/Icon SMI)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;TEMPE, Ariz. \u2014 U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann and Mart\u00EDn V\u00E1squez go back a long way, to the time in 2008-09 when V\u00E1squez was Klinsmann\u2019s top assistant at Bayern Munich. When Klinsmann took the U.S. job in 2011, along came V\u00E1squez as his No. 2 again, and there he stayed, through a successful World Cup qualifying campaign and last year\u2019s Gold Cup triumph, until Sunday night.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And then, just 74 days before the World Cup and in the fifth paragraph of a press release, Klinsmann\u2019s right-hand man was cast aside from day-to-day duties with the senior men\u2019s national team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Former Germany coach Berti Vogts is in as a new adviser to the U.S. team, furthering the Germanification of the U.S. team at coach and player levels in a week when the debut of German-American Julian Green is the big new story on the field ahead of USA-Mexico on Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But the forced departure of V\u00E1squez is a fascinating and unexpected development. It\u2019s fair to say that Klinsmann stuck with V\u00E1squez at Bayern and with the U.S. for years despite many players\u2019 unwillingness to accept V\u00E1squez (who\u2019s a very nice man) as a figure of gravitas on the coaching staff. So why drop him now so close to the World Cup?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CWith Mart\u00EDn it\u2019s simply a professional shift,\u201D Klinsmann said here on Monday. \u201CI have to make decisions with my staff to put them in the spots where I think they are the best in order to hopefully do well this summer in Brazil. And sometimes it\u2019s a shift that doesn\u2019t please everybody. But this is part of the coach\u2019s role. You\u2019re not there to please everybody. You are there to put people hopefully in the best positions to get a job done. And the job is getting out of the group stage this summer.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO RELEASE: Klinsmann steamed over Puebla's block of Beasley, Orozco&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;V\u00E1squez will continue working for U.S. Soccer under his contract, but his new role has not been specified.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asked about the timing of the move so close to the World Cup, Klinsmann said it wasn\u2019t a concern. \u201CIt\u2019s not about the timing,\u201D he said. \u201CIt\u2019s about doing what is best for us as an entire group moving forward. So if this comes a half-year before [the World Cup], a year before or two days before the first game, if you have to do something you have to do it, and it\u2019s my job.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vogts (who was present on Monday but did not meet the media) coached Klinsmann\u2019s Germany teams at the World Cups in 1994 and \u201998, when the Germans went out in the quarterfinals both times. He is currently the coach of Azerbaijan, which meets the U.S. in a pre-World Cup friendly in late May. Vogts won\u2019t leave his job with the Azeris.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI had discussed [joining the U.S. staff] with Berti, so that\u2019s not a decision made overnight,\u201D said Klinsmann. \u201CIt goes almost 10 years back because I wanted him as a technical director in Germany when I coached Germany to the 2006 World Cup.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions remain, though. Who will be Klinsmann\u2019s No. 2 now? Vogts or Andi Herzog, the assistant who has been with Klinsmann for the past two years? How will the role of Tab Ramos change (if at all) inside the coaching staff? And what exactly caused Klinsmann to drop his old right-hand man so close to the World Cup?\nPerhaps we\u2019ll learn all those answers soon. Perhaps not. But don\u2019t let anyone ever say that Klinsmann isn\u2019t afraid to make a ruthless decision. That\u2019s exactly what happened here on Sunday.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/soccer/planet-futbol/2014/03/31/jurgen-klinsmann-martin-vasquez-departure-usmnt?eref=sircrc>