Bruce Arena will have the last laugh in the latest debacle of his career having been fired by U.S. Soccer Federation by not renewing his contract.
Some bright memories of Bruce include getting credit for Lando Donovan, Beasley and Pablo Mastroeni in helping in their development and catapulting them in the highest ranks of U.S. soccer.
As Bruce leaves, the general perception is he’s done great things for U.S. soccer and leaves them a far better place than what it looked liked during his arrival in 1998.
Did he actually turn the club around?
To begin with, U.S. team so much sucked before Arena took the club that any tremor made could be considered monumental in many aspects. He inherited an old, retiring squad who cannot get their agreements and commitments straight from players, organization and the whole nation included.
His biggest achievement would be piloting his team to quarterfinals in FIFA World Cup 2002 after finishing last in France in 1998. While it can be argued that they did not play well or so much better than in 1998 to actually reach that stage; rather rely on South Korea’s fortunate Park Ji-Sung to send Portugal out the exit on a goal in the 70th minute and hand U.S. the key to advance. Their two Gold Cup titles in 2002 and 2005 against lesser teams could not be considered an achievement and as far as the world is concerned; we are still waiting for them to beat any tough opponent outside their country in the likes of Brazil, Argentina, France, Germany, and England to name a few.
Where is U.S. team right now?
The national team prior to Arena’s arrival saw 60k people in attendance while today only half can be drawn by the squad. But that is lame metrics as today we have a lot of means to get our news as if we are live on the scene from blogs, pda’s, Google Earth, and other technological innovations that enable us to be closer to these players without actually be there physically and cheer. In a bigger contribution, the nation as a whole still struggle to accept Soccer higher than other sports like basketball, baseball and the “other” football, etc. to help grow the sport into a commanding presence.
The grassroots level of Soccer has not evolved dramatically to a point of training and creating the best ballers in the world and aside from the three star players (Donovan, Beasley and Mastroeni) they currently possess, U.S. has nothing more in their arsenal to play and perform well in upcoming competitions towards FIFA World Cup 2010. Whoever will replace Bruce does not have enough talent to work around neither the system to rely on to develop a crap of talented winnable pieces to become successful.
In the end, the turn around made by Bruce from 1998 to 2002, and even their 2006 performance which ranks higher than their France’s participation will be compared to the results of the newcomer; as the newcomer inherits a losing squad which takes an act greater than human force to put U.S. high above the world, his future is all too dull. With a predicted dismal showing, Bruce will remain to be the only great coach of their team — truly a genius.
[tags]FIFA World Cup, U.S. Soccer team[/tags]
