By ANDREW MERRITT

Like so many things these days, I learned about Bob Bradley being fired through Twitter. The trouble with getting your news that way is that unless you’re looking at your feed at the right moment, you end up seeing something like, “OMG, Bob Bradley?” and then have to figure out what happened to cause that. And when you see the name of a celebrity (especially an older one or, well, Amy Winehouse) start popping up in people’s Tweets, you immediately assume they’ve died.

With Bradley, I knew what was up when I caught a tweet mentioning him even though it was probably an hour after the news broke, because the American soccer universe has been standing in the waiting room, drinking bad coffee and staring at our feet while waiting to see if Bob’s tenure was going to survive since our boys crashed out of the Gold Cup – one of those things, for the record, that doesn’t even get mentioned on SportsCenter unless we lose.

Thursday, the doctor came out of the operating room, took off his mask, and shook his head. Bradley’s tenure, which has seen the U.S. men’s national team ascend to great heights and fall to stupefying lows within months of each other, was done.

A funny thing happened on Twitter in the hours after Bradley’s dismissal was announced, and I think it’s telling of where Bob Bradley’s place is in the American soccer pantheon. Most of the tweets I saw brought some variation on this theme: Be careful what you wish for, Bob Bradley haters, because his replacement may not actually be an improvement.

The only thing clear about the reaction to Bradley’s firing is that there is no clarity. While I think most people felt it was time for U.S. Soccer to look for a different manager, some see Bradley as the cause of the USMNT’s problems, while others see him as the shepherd who guided the team to a place of prominence we all thought it would reach at least 10 years ago. The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle.

Bradley did some important things during his nearly five-year reign. Chief among them is the run in the 2009 Confederations Cup, a de facto World Cup warmup tournament, which gave the USMNT credibility both home and abroad that it hadn’t had since reaching the World Cup quarterfinals in 2002. The win over eventual World Cup champion Spain was a watershed moment, for sure, and, as it turns out, the zenith of Bradley’s time at the helm.

A year later, the U.S. men thrilled at the 2010 World Cup, and the heart-stopping last-minute victory over Algeria was probably bigger for the team than the Confederations Cup win over Spain in terms of sheer visibility. The team ended up winning its group, edging an England squad some thought might have been finally primed for a deep run in the tournament (of course, we say that every four years about England).

However, with Bradley, it seemed there was always a “but.” Yes, the USMNT shocked FIFA No. 1 Spain in the ’09 Confed Cup, but it just barely got out of group stage play and then surrendered a 2-0 lead to Brazil in the final, losing 3-2 in a game that felt like a message from the South American giant: “Welcome to the big leagues.” Yes, the USMNT captivated the country with its stunning results in the 2010 World Cup group stage, but the squad looked lost and overmatched by Ghana – hardly a world power – in the Round of 16, and all the good will from Landon Donovan’s “Go Go USA!” goal against Algeria evaporated in the South African air.

And then there was the Gold Cup. Trouble reared its head early in the tournament, when the U.S. lost to Panama for the first time ever, also making the wrong kind of history with its first-ever loss in the Gold Cup group stage. The Americans rebounded to reach the final, and took a 2-0 lead over hated rival Mexico after 23 minutes at the Rose Bowl. At that point, it would have been reasonable to assume Bob Bradley would coach the team at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Then the Mexicans woke up and scored four unanswered goals against a U.S. team that looked stagnant and out of place.

To lose to Mexico in an important match – the winner earned a berth in the next Confederations Cup – to do it on home soil in Pasadena, and to do it in such embarrassing, emasculating fashion was the three strikes all in one on Bradley’s tenure. If U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati had announced Bradley was done on the field that night, most wouldn’t have batted an eye. Instead, the U.S. federation went through the motions of having Bradley coach a few more matches – including a belittling 2-0 loss to Brazil in a friendly – before pulling the plug on his tenure.

Here’s the thing with national team managers: They’re polarizing, almost by definition. They generally have short tenures, and even the most beloved are ultimately on a short leash with one bad performance. We tend to be a little gentler on our national team coach in the U.S., due in large part, of course, to soccer’s stature (or lack thereof) in the American sporting landscape. In other words, a national team coach can crash to the ground in a forest, and with so few people around to hear, he might be able to get back up. But the national team manager is still the ever-present face of the team, which drags in various lineups depending on the competition, and through it all, Bob’s bald head was the common denominator.

With Bradley, there wasn’t a clear crescendo to the Confederations Cup win and subsequent thrills in the World Cup group stage. There were stumbles along the way, and there was a foundation of problems that finally cracked in the months following South Africa. If there were people streaming out of the Rose Bowl after the loss to Mexico chanting, “Fire Bradley,” I can’t really blame them. Bob’s time had come.

That said, American soccer has made big leaps under Bradley’s tenure – leaps that didn’t happen under Bruce Arena or, God help me, Steve Sampson. The development of the national team as a regular player internationally goes to Bradley’s credit, even if he failed to push the team further along once he stabilized it. And he did that with a development/feeder program that, while improving, still doesn’t come close to the systems employed by the best teams in the world. The American youth system is only starting to receive the scrutiny it earned long ago for not giving young Americans the opportunity to improve and become creative soccer players. And MLS, well, that’s another blog unto itself, but suffice to say the top American soccer league still has a long way to go before it can legitimately produce talent befitting the international stage.

So it’s farewell to Bob Bradley and “wilkommen” to Jurgen Klinsmann, who was probably the most popular option for U.S. Soccer. Klinsmann has a history in America, having long been on the lips of U.S. Soccer fans and officials as a potential manager, and has lived in America since his retirement from playing in 1998. He managed the German national team to a third-place finish at the 2006 World Cup, and had a brief stint at Bayern Munich, arguably Germany’s most famous club team, before a spat with management led to his dismissal. Since then, he’s been a consultant with Toronto FC of MLS and a commentator on American soccer broadcasts.

What Klinsmann brings to the U.S. is an international flair it hasn’t had in some time – the inimitable Ives Galarcep noted on Twitter that the USMNT was managed by an American for 16 years and four months until Klinsmann was hired.

To be brief (for once), I love this move.

The one knock on Bradley that even the biggest apologist would be hard-pressed to argue is that his teams weren’t very creative or exciting. A product of the American college system (having coached at Ohio, Virginia and Princeton before a 10-year stint in MLS), Bradley instilled a hard-working ethos in the USMNT that made the Americans one of the toughest teams on the field, but also one of the easiest to beat if you were an elite squad full of top-class players. The systems were slow and the tactics were rudimentary. The Americans under Bradley won on brawn, not brains, and the thought with Klinsmann is that ratio will be reversed somewhat.

He delivered a scathing appraisal of the American team after its loss to Ghana, saying he felt the Americans never recovered from the euphoria of the Algeria win, mentally and physically. It was an important point then, and if we’re being optimistic, it’s a harbinger of great things to come now. Bradley’s U.S. teams were thrilled to make waves internationally and provide some surprising results. Klinsmann thinks the U.S. team should win more. It’s a fine line, but if Klinsmann can implement his more sophisticated tactics, his German sense of order spiked with creativity, and the sense that the only satisfying result is a title, then there are some very sunny skies ahead for the United States.

Andrew Merritt is a contributing writer for the Everything Else Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @A_Merritt.