Jurgen Klinsmann reprimands son's social media mocking of Landon Donovan
Jurgen Klinsmann reprimanded his son, who took to social media to mock Landon Donovan after Thursday's World Cup roster announcement. (Tony Avelar/AP)
Jurgen Klinsmann's omission of Landon Donovan from the U.S. men's national team roster emitted strong reactions from a number of players, fans, commentators and pundits. One of those was Klinsmann's own son, whose poor-taste, jovial tweet (from an account that has since been deleted) mocked Donovan and caught plenty of widespread flak.
Klinsmann addressed the incident at his first post-roster-announcement press conference on Friday, expressing his disappointment in the judgment used by Jonathan Klinsmann, a 17-year-old goalkeeper in the U.S. youth national team set-up.
Before backtracking with other explanations and more laudatory comments and ultimately deleting his account, Jonathan wrote:
The comments opened the lid on speculation for how Donovan may have been regarded in the Klinsmann household, but the elder Klinsmann maintained his dismay at what occurred.
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"Hugely disappointed," Jurgen Klinsmann said. "I called him right away, he realized just a few minutes after that what he has done. He came out of school kind of fooling around with his classmates, and they just went off on Twitter not being aware of that he's actually followed on Twitter.
"He has a huge admiration for Landon. He's actually a big fan of his since many many years, he has his jersey in his room and he realized what he's done. He was devastated yesterday. Obviously as a father you put him in line, and he owes him a huge, huge apology. That was highly disrespectful, and I think he got his biggest social media lesson he could imagine. It was very disappointing."
