After courting him twice without success, the U.S. Soccer Federation on Friday hired Juergen Klinsmann to coach and revive a stale men's national team.

Klinsmann, a former German star who coached Germany to third place at the 2006 World Cup, becomes the first foreign-born coach of the U.S. team since Bora Milutinovic, a Serb, guided the Americans to the second round of the 1994 World Cup.

Unlike Steve Sampson, Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley, his immediate predecessors, Klinsmann was a top player at the highest levels of international soccer. He scored 47 goals in 108 appearances with the German national team, played a key role in West Germany's victory in the 1990 World Cup, and captained the team to the 1996 European championship.

He was hired a day after Bradley was fired and will coach his first match with the United States in a friendly against Mexico on Aug. 10 in Philadelphia.

"We are excited to have Juergen as the head coach of our men's national team," Sunil Gulati, president of the soccer federation, said in a statement. "He is a highly accomplished player and coach with the experience and knowledge to advance the program. Juergen has had success in many different areas of the game, and we look forward to the leadership he will provide on and off the field."

Charismatic and media savvy, Klinsmann takes over a U.S. team that reached the second round of the 2010 World Cup but departed with a sense of missed opportunity and seemed to stagnate this summer in a 4-0 rout by Spain and a 4-2 loss to Mexico in the final of the Gold Cup after a first-round defeat to Panama.

Presumably, Klinsmann, who turns 47 today, has resolved his concerns about gaining full control in operating the national team, a matter that he has said led to stalled talks between him and the soccer federation in 2006 and 2010.

He is scheduled to speak Monday at a news conference in New York. He said in a statement Friday that he was "proud and honored" to become the U.S. coach as it begins qualifying next year for the 2014 World Cup.

The son of a baker, Klinsmann is as close to being an American as any foreign-born coach of the U.S. national team could be. He has lived in Southern California since retiring in 1998, is married to an American wife, has spent time working with the Los Angeles Galaxy and is familiar with the U.S. players and their methods.

He has also expressed a desire for helping to reshape the youth development system in this country and to assist in developing a coherent style of play that reflects the multiculturalism of the United States.

In fact, until he soothed critics by guiding a young German team to a third-place finish at the 2006 World Cup on its home soil, Klinsmann had been considered too American by some in the German soccer federation.

He hired an American fitness coach, brought in a sports psychologist, contacted players by email, gave PowerPoint presentations and lived part of the year in Southern California, which led to some suspicion in his home country that he was more of a beach bum than a serious soccer coach. Such accusations infuriated Klinsmann but melted away as Germany advanced through the rounds of the World Cup.

Still, Klinsmann's record as a coach is relatively brief and mixed. His assistant in 2006, Joachim Loew, who is now head coach of the German national team, was given much of the tactical credit as Germany moved from a defensive-minded approach to an aggressive attacking style in that World Cup. And Klinsmann did not last the full 2008-09 season with Bayern Munich in the German Bundesliga, clashing with the club's board of directors and being replaced with the league title still undecided.

It seems highly unlikely that Klinsmann or any coach could make the Americans into contenders at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Yet, his credentials bring him enormous authority.

Klinsmann will surely be looking to usher in a more assertive attack and coax more dependable scoring from the American forwards, who have not put the ball into the net during the past two World Cups.

He also has decisions to make about a back line that displayed an awkward mix of age and inexperience during the Gold Cup. His plans will become more clear shortly as the Americans face Mexico in Philadelphia in a week and a half; Costa Rica in Carson, Calif. on Sept 2, and Belgium in Brussels on Sept. 2.

"The way we know Juergen," Loew, the German coach, told The Associated Press, "he'll go into the job with power and shake up a lot of things."