Would you like a swift kick to the nuts?

Finding out after the fact is never good in anything. So as much as I'd like to ignore it, it's too big of a story to simply bury my head in the sand when I found out how close the U.S. men's soccer team was to hiring Juergen Klinsmann.

I was beside myself reading the German legends comments so I can only imagine Shimer's (hopefully he'll weigh in soon as well).

Juergen Klinsmann said he negotiated with the U.S. Soccer Federation for nearly a month to become coach before ending talks when the USSF wouldn't put his authority in writing.

The USSF rehired Bob Bradley for a second four-year stint after ending talks with Klinsmann, who coached Germany to a third-place finish in the 2006 World Cup.

"We had conversations, maybe about three or four weeks period of time, and very positive conversations. But we didn't get it to a positive ending because we couldn't put into writing what we agreed to verbally," Klinsmann said during an interview broadcast Sunday on the Kansas City Wizards' pregame show.

"It's obviously always about authority. When you have conversations with a club team or a national team, it's who has the last word in what issues, and that's where we couldn't get into the written terms," Klinsmann said.

"Verbally we agreed on that the technical side is my side, and I should have a 100 percent control of it. Written terms, they couldn't commit to it. At that point I said, 'Well then, I can't get the job done because I have to have the last say as a head coach for my entire staff, for all the players issues, for everything that happens with the team.' Unfortunately they couldn't commit to that, and that was basically the end of our talks, and then they agreed then to continue with Bob as the head coach, and that's totally fine."

Klinsmann also held talks with USSF president Sunil Gulati in 2006 but ended them when he wasn't guaranteed access to top Major League Soccer players for both the CONCACAF Gold Cup and Copa America the following year.

In announcing the decision to rehire Bradley last month, Gulati wouldn't discuss whether he spoke with other candidates.

We like Bob Bradley and we support him but as we've said multiple times, he's the safe choice. He's a taskmaster and he's done a fine job since he took over. Still, what is his ceiling? Does anyone else feel like we've gone as far as we can with Bradley so we might as well look for someone that can take us to another level?

There are so many questions that will be left unsaid but I guess after digesting this garbage, it's best to move on. However, this one will stick in the back of my mind for a long, long time. Particularly when I watch Bradley do anything but win every game 5-0 from here on out.