Thank you Bruce Arena

Late last week, US Soccer announced that Bruce Arena's tenure as men's national team coach would end with this year. Arena will finish his 8-year run as the all-time winningest coach in national team history. He also led the team to a pair of continental titles (2002, 2005) as well as a World Cup quarterfinal appearance in 2002, the second best US World Cup showing ever.

I loved having Bruce as coach. I enjoyed his willingness to shake up the establishment and tell it like it is. I've read he was instrumental in demanding that US Soccer professionalize its internal operations. He criticized Major League Soccer because regular season games have such little meaning (something I've criticized too) which means domestic players face little pressure on a daily basis. He's called for more young players to challenge themselves by playing in Europe, where there is more pressure to improve. He's ruffled a lot of feathers in a US Soccer environment that demands conformity and a fake happy face but to be honest, he's had the guts to amplify a lot of the things that many fans have been saying for years.

There are many people who trashed Arena after the US team's disappointing performance at the most recent World Cup. That was understandable. He was the coach and was always going to bear the brunt of the responsibility for the shambolic performances. I was one of many who criticized Arena's overly defensive tactics during the tournament.

However some took their criticisms to the next level. Some got personal. Take notorious loudmouth Eric Wynalda. Waldo is the US' all-time leading goal scorer (for now) and perhaps that's what makes him so obnoxious and self-important. Rather than limiting his criticisms to Arena's tactics, Wynalda got gratuitously nasty as he so often does.

"He can take a team to a certain level, but he has no idea where the next level is," he said. "How much does he know about playing in Europe, other than having a hot dog and a beer in the stands? Hearsay? Does he talk to the players? That's justification to know? Has he ever coached there and have that pressure? No. Sorry, I'm just pointing out the obvious."
The view's pretty good from the cheap seats. I guess one could equally ask Whine-alda what he knows about coaching a national team.

As I explained before, Arena deserves criticism for his overly defensive tactics at the World Cup. But is it his fault that most of the players inexplicably didn't show up? Is it his fault that the best players mostly underperformed? That he can't be bothered to hold anyone to any standard of accountability other than Arena says more about Whine-alda than Bruce.

I do not subscribe to revisionism. This happened the last time the US changed coaches as well. Steve Sampson did a poor job preparing for the 1998 World Cup and the team went three and out. However, people just his reign solely on the World Cup. They forgot what it was like before. When Sampson took over, the US was a team of hard workers that hoped to luck their way to some results. Sampson made them into a regional power. But the World Cup performance is the sum of most people's judgement of him. Sampson took the US to the next level.

Arena took the team to the next level above that. Now, we have a team that EXPECTS to be competitive against big powers. During Arena's tenure, we've gotten results in competitive matches against teams like Germany ('99), Portugal ('02) and Italy ('06). The US outplayed Germany in the 2002 quarterfinal but lost 1-0 due in part to a controversial officiating decision. In years past, the team and fans would've been happy losing 'only 1-0' to a team like Germany. Now, we're disheartened. It's precisely those expectations, raised so high by Arena, that make the performances in Germany so disappointed.

And that's precisely why Bruce Arena has been a great manager for the US. He's raised expectations for everybody. 'Almost' is no longer good enough. Criticize his decisions in two of the games in Germany if you must; fans do that all the time and I'm sure Bruce's feelings aren't going to be hurt by it. But don't succomb to the cheap temptation to discard his whole legacy and his important contributions to US soccer.


Update: Columnist Jamie Trecker takes a dissenting view. I still maintain that Arena took this team to the next level. Maybe it requires someone else to take the team another level still, but I can't help but praise Arena for his contributions.


Second update: First, Trecker identifies Bruce Arena's prickly nature, arrogance and tendency to blame everyone else when things went wrong as major flaws. His solution to this state of affairs: hire Jose Mourinho, the self-described Special One, as his successor. Sorry Jamie, you lost all credibility with me there.