The scene in the press box before, let alone after, last Saturday's match with Mexico was a fascinating study in what happens when a cult of personality like Jurgen Klinsmann's starts to falter.

The result had just come in from the U-23's Olympic qualifying match against Honduras -- a 2-0 defeat -- and the cross-section of U.S. national team press, out in full force, was in a mutinous mood.

What happens on these occasions is that you end up taking the temperature of the mood around the team. And right now, that specifically means the national team coach, Klinsmann, and a visibly mounting frustration at what's shaping up to be a long, lame run to the next World Cup. Even those who tend to stay away from the pitchforks were shaking their heads.

Klinsmann is no more vulnerable than he was at the start of the year, with his expensive multiyear deal and unconditional support from U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati. But what was fascinating about the anecdotal evidence in a room high above the Rose Bowl -- where even the best-case visions for the rest of the day were along the lines of "Let's just get through this ... did you hear the Honduras score, though?" -- is that he may have reached a tipping point in the popular and professional willingness to indulge him.

And for a man of Klinsmann's particular gifts and managerial style, that's a big problem.

Klinsmann has a big personality and approaches everything about his professional remit with a forceful optimism that can appear briskly upbeat or terse and clipped, depending on what result he's speaking about. The problem is that whether he believes it or not, those collective results now represent a large enough sample size that he can no longer ignore them with appeals to a "process."

The results aren't good enough when it matters. Klinsmann's winning record in competitive games (64.7 percent) is virtually identical to Bob Bradley's (63.4 percent), and of course they both took teams to the round of 16 at World Cups and lost regional finals to Mexico.

Klinsmann cites 2012, 2013 and 2014 as a period of success, with a degree of justification; although in truth it was a period that ran from Clint Dempsey's goal in the snow against Costa Rica in March 2013 through to the moment Cristiano Ronaldo crossed the ball in the last minute of the Portugal game in the World Cup group stage. That infamous Costa Rica snow game came to mind again on Tuesday, as those same opponents eased past another U.S. side coming into a game in crisis, but this time with little sense that their leader's aura might prevail.

More worrying with World Cup qualifying coming up, Klinsmann's win record against CONCACAF teams has slipped from 82.4 percent during that 2013-14 purple patch to an alarming 54.5 percent since the World Cup.

Klinsmann's ability, indeed his right, to affect that process in his second World Cup cycle can no longer come solely from the "Cult of Jurgen" and his big-picture vision. Instead, it has to come from the empirical results gained from his methods. And those are falling short.

I've been pretty vocal about the need to be patient with Klinsmann, especially during the buildup to the last World Cup and even during the puzzling incoherence of the long post-World Cup experimentation. Over this span, the team has cycled players through numerous lineups with little sense of how and when we could expect to see a consistent team building any familiarity with each other.

And at the time he was appointed, Klinsmann did at least look like the right archetype for the job. The U.S. needed someone with the authority and force of will to implement a wholesale overhaul of the nation's game from the grassroots on up, and it was definitely possible at the time to see why his broad-ranging dual remit as head coach and technical director made a certain sense to shape long-term policy.

Two tough defeats in a row, including the CONCACAF Cup loss to Mexico, are sapping Jurgen Klinsmann's powers.

There are the structural problems with the high school and NCAA systems, the logistics of national development over a huge territory, the need to evolve while cycling young talent into a system and style, the task of forging a working relationship with Major League Soccer and the mandate of developing individual players while still serving the collective model of excellence.

Any single one of these challenges requires an extraordinary individual who must hold the course in the face of criticism and keep an eye on the long-term prize, while juggling all of these duties. You can see why Klinsmann was so coveted: he is an extraordinary individual. But the best-case reading I can make of his reign in both jobs right now is that he is spread way too thin.

My own final loss of faith occurred the moment he substituted out Alejandro Bedoya against Brazil in September's game at Gillette Stadium. Bedoya had been asked to play against one of the best teams in the world in a position he'd never played in before, and with the team around him also well short of experience in playing together.

Bedoya was predictably tormented in a rough first half, and after being subbed out before the half by Klinsmann, was singled out by the coach for failing to find his rhythm. Watching the game, it was hard not to feel that Bedoya had been set up to fail rather than been given the opportunity to succeed. And then, his failure had been left on him by the coach.

Then came the Mexico game, and its sloppy giveaways and sluggish counterattacks, and the Costa Rica game, and its sloppy giveaways and lack of counterattacks. In between, we got the same "Remember how great 2013 was?" explanations from Klinsmann and another unnecessary scapegoating, this time involving Fabian Johnson. No individual has a divine right to a place in the team, but when Klinsmann uses a morale-sapping loss to pick out a single player, it seems less a motivational decision than a strategic one to deflect attention from himself.

Defeat to Mexico was sloppy and sluggish, prompting many to wonder if the U.S. had given up on their manager.

That last part is key. There's a difference between believing you're the best person for the job and believing you're indispensable; Klinsmann's actions of late have been suggestive of a man who sees the greater good as always being one where any crisis stops short of his own door, lest it damage his authority. With that mindset, any casualties, other than the coach himself, appear like a justifiable sacrifice.

But any authority that any coach possesses has to be in part a moral authority, and when the results aren't there, you're left with your team's belief in you and the ultimate trajectory of your methods. Whatever the result of the two-legged playoff in March, when the under-23 team must beat Colombia for a place in the Olympics after finishing third in regional qualifying, there is concrete evidence that Klinsmann's senior team has not surpassed his predecessors' teams, while the two Olympic squads under his control have also fallen short.

And so, we're left with belief. Who believes in Klinsmann right now? The core players he trusts? It's hard to say who those players are at the moment, especially with the ripples Klinsmann keeps causing with endless lineup shuffles and now finger-pointing at anyone but himself.

Optimism allowed plenty to be forgiven in Klinsmann's first World Cup cycle. If he said this was what was needed to lead the United States to the promised land, many were prepared to indulge that. There were many more prepared to argue that if not Klinsmann himself, somebody with the same force of personality was going to be necessary to steer such a cumbersome national system in the right direction.

But in the second cycle, which has devolved rapidly into self-indulgent noodling, the margin for indulging the cult of personality around Klinsmann is much narrower. And without the results to point to every time he says "trust me," it gets narrower still. And when an aura fades in sports, it fades quickly.

Graham Parker writes for ESPN FC, FourFourTwo and Howler. He covers MLS and the U.S. national teams. Follow him on Twitter @grahamparkerfc.