NEW YORK – On Tuesday morning, as driving rain pelted the legions of commuters and tourists packed into Midtown Manhattan, the new head coach of the US national team strolled into a meeting room at the Marriott Marquis in the heart of Times Square.
With one hand, Bruce Arena gripped a three-ring binder emblazoned with the USMNT crest containing detailed plans for his first months in charge. With the other, he reached out to shake the hands of the reporters waiting to hear him map out his vision for a team shaken by two straight losses to start the Hexagonal and the subsequent dismissal of Jurgen Klinsmann.
A little more than a week before, with pressure mounting following the death of Dos a Cero and an embarrassing loss to Costa Rica in San Jose, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati had reached out to Arena, his friend of more than 30 years and the man he’d let go in 2006 following a disappointing showing at the World Cup. Might the LA Galaxy boss be interested in parachuting into the job despite recently signing a two-year contract extension, Gulati wondered.
In truth, Arena wasn’t just the first choice to take the reins of a program that found itself on shaky footing once again under Klinsmann: rather, he seemed like the only choice. The 65-year-old wouldn’t need an adjustment period, and he knew both the US soccer scene and volatility of CONCACAF qualifying like the back of his hand. Presumably, he’d hit the ground running.
A week before meeting with the press just miles from where he was born in Brooklyn, Arena had held court in another hotel lobby on the other side of the country. He arrived at The Belamar Hotel near his home in Manhattan Beach on that Tuesday morning armed with a player pool, depth chart and tentative January camp plans. US Soccer officials, meanwhile, brought with them the framework of a contract that would make him the head coach of the men’s national team.
It had taken a few days – and there was even a brief window when it appeared a deal might not get done – but Gulati, US Soccer CEO Dan Flynn and Arena hammered out an agreement. As the ink dried on the contract, Arena set up a meeting with the team administrator and booked a trip to Germany to meet with a cadre of regulars plying their trade in the Bundesliga.
A decade after his first stint as US boss ended in ignominy on a field in Nuremberg, Arena was all-in. He had a rare second chance to buff out the only real blemish on his coaching resume, and he didn’t plan on squandering it.
“When you have an opportunity to represent your country, you do it,” Arena explained in an exclusive interview with ExtraTime Radio. “When you’re called on, you do it. No second thoughts.”
“I didn’t have to do this,” he added. “I feel it’s my responsibility in the sport, given the opportunity to do it. I find it challenging and critically important for the growth of our sport.”
That responsibility carries with it the weight of a nation that’s qualified for seven straight World Cups and can’t afford for that streak to be broken.
Arena won’t usher in a tactical revolution or shuffle the player pool beyond recognition. He won’t complicate the game. He’ll communicate clearly. He’ll instill belief. He’ll give the group real purpose. He’ll keep it simple and the players will be asked to take ownership of what goes down on fields in Mexico City, San Pedro Sula, Port of Spain, Panama City and across the US.
They’ll be played in positions in which they’re most comfortable and effective, as long as that’s what’s best for the team. They’ll be held accountable, but they won’t be thrown under the bus. There will be a few who get another or a first-ever chance with national team, but not too many.
“Let’s be honest, there’s not going to be a whole lot of new faces,” Arena said. “We’re fighting for our lives starting March 24. We’re behind the eight ball, coming out of the gates with two losses. You don’t have a whole lot of time to be experimenting with players.”
No, time is not on Arena’s side. CONCACAF is deeper and more competitive than it was when he last dipped his toes in the regional waters. He won’t have an opportunity to bring the full team together until March, when the US host Honduras then travel to Panama City for a pair of must-win matches. The job won’t be easy, nobody said it would be.
Arena wasn’t just called in to right the ship. It’s his job to avert disaster in the next eight Hex matches, to seize the helm, steer away from the building CONCACAF swells and unite a crew that was disorganized, disjointed and appeared to quit on Klinsmann, who’d been piloting the ship for five-plus years.
“Two games in a 10-game schedule, we’re not in terrible shape,” Arena said. “We can close the gap real quick. We’ve got to close the gap. We get six points in the next two games, the gap is closed.
“… It’s never done until it’s done. I don’t think the task at hand is that difficult. We just have to, for lack of a better word, get our [stuff] together.”
For lack of a better phrase, that’s typical Bruce. And it’s that sort of clear-eyed determination and confidence that Gulati is counting on to guide the US to Russia.
Arena wasn’t the right man for the job because of his tactical acumen or cutting-edge approach to the game. There are others more inventive with Xs and Os and the latest analytical approach. Arena didn’t return to this country’s top soccer post because he represents the future of the program. Someone else will take over from the most accomplished American coach of all-time when the World Cup cycle comes full circle in 2018.
This is Arena’s job because he’s US soccer’s preeminent team-builder, the best this country has ever produced. Because he’s a leader and man manager with few equals – just ask David Beckham or Robbie Keane or Landon Donovan. Because he’s invested as much or more than anyone to grow the game in the US. Because he’ll get right to the point.
“Our goal should be to be the best team in CONCACAF,” Arena said. “That was our goal 10, 15 years ago, and it wasn’t the case. In the 90s, we were behind probably Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico. We jumped ahead of a bunch of countries, and now we have to do a little better.”
Arena won’t have to leave his comfort zone to get the ball rolling. His new desk at StubHub Center is mere feet from where he helped guide the Galaxy to three MLS Cups. He expects to have a coaching staff in place by the third week of December. He’s already spoken with the core of the team, more than 10 players including captain Michael Bradley. He’s even got a call out to Clint Dempsey.
Best to leave no stone unturned with a World Cup – and decades of painstaking work – on the line. From this moment forward, there will be one mission: leave the past in the past and book a place in Russia by any means necessary.
Perhaps no one is more personally invested in that mission than Arena, who played a single game for the national team as a young man in 1973, missing out on another cap because he couldn’t get out of work. He spent the next 40-plus years on the front lines growing the game in America, winning national titles at Virginia, MLS Cups with D.C. United and the Galaxy and rebuilding the US national team after the humiliation of France ‘98.
Now, with his race nearly run, Arena faces a challenge that he could not, would not turn down. There’s no guarantee it will go swimmingly. The US could yet miss the World Cup. To ignore that possibility is to ignore the urgency of the job at hand.
They could also make the sort of history that helps take soccer to another level in this country. Arena’s teams have done that before.
Leading the way will be the only man fit for the job, a veritable legend secure in his own skill set and identity, harboring no second thoughts and with unfinished business to take care of before calling time on a career in US soccer that has no peers.
“At this point in my life, if it’s not the closing chapter, it’s one of them,” Arena said. “There’s not too many more chapters left to write in my coaching history. This cannot be a better way to be at the end of my career."
