ARENA ARRIVAL REVIVES CAMPAIGN
With three assured berths for CONCACAF teams, plus a fourth available through a play-off, the USA ought to be home and dry before qualification even starts. And when Gianni Infantino’s inflated 48-team monster World Cup gets going, the region will have five berths, giving the US, along with Mexico, a lifetime pass to the finals.
However, there has been a slight hiccup in proceedings this time around. After losing their opening two games – a 2-1 defeat at home to Mexico and a 4-0 thrashing in Costa Rica – the US currently sit third in the six-team group.
Those losses in November cost Jurgen Klinsmann his job, with Bruce Arena – who led the national team for eight years, between 1998 and 2006 – taking charge once more. Under Arena the USA quickly re-asserted itself, beating Honduras 6-0 and Trinidad & Tobago 2-0, and drawing 1-1 in Panama and Mexico. And of their remaining four games, three are against teams below them in the standings.
The standout result for Arena was the point earned at a jam-packed Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. The visitors went ahead after six minutes when skipper Michael Bradley caught Mexican keeper Guillermo Ochoa too far out of his goal and beat him from 40 yards. It was a stunning strike and helped squash any notion that the United States were a struggling team, low on confidence. The performance was well worth a point and banished all talk of a crisis.
After taking over, Arena had made an immediate change to the team’s starting line-up.
In his final two games, Klinsmann had relied heavily on a contingent of players who had been born and grown up in Germany but had some American parentage, with Tim Chandler, John Brooks, Fabian Johnson, Jermaine Jones and Bobby Woods starting both games.
For Arena’s first game, the 6-0 win at home to Honduras, only Brooks remained. Another significant move was to bring in left-back Jorge Villafana, the most promising of the USA’s growing Hispanic talent pool and a player who never got a look-in under Klinsmann.
Something Klinsmann and Arena did agree on, however, is the outstanding talent of 18-year-old midfielder Christian Pulisic, a totally American product who is already playing first-team football for Borussia Dortmund. As a player with fine creative skills and a proven goalscorer, Pulisic fills the role that the US have been lacking ever since the retirement of Landon Donovan.
Arena has also chosen DeAndre Yedlin
at right-back who, along with Villafana, offers attacking pace down the flanks. In between them, veteran Omar Gonzalez, who is a hold-over from Klinsmann’s teams, anchors the back four, with his usual centre-back partner being Geoff Cameron.
In addition to Bradley and Pulisic in midfield, Arena likes Alejandro Bedoya of Philadelphia Union as a defensive presence, alongside Portland Timbers’ Darlington Nagbe. Up front, Clint Dempsey partners Jozy Altidore, though Altidore’s place is far from secure. He is under threat from 22-year old Jordan Morris of Seattle Sounders and Sporting
Of the USA’s four remaining games, three are against teams below them in the standings
Kansas City’s Dom Dwyer, an Englishborn 26-year-old who is now a naturalised American after living in the States for the past eight years.
Oddly enough, and perhaps for the first time in recent memory, if the USA does have a problem position it is in goal.
Tim Howard is 38 and clearly not as sharp as he once was, while his long-time back-up, Nick Rimando, is also 38. At 32, Brad Guzan has always been prone to erratic displays, and while Bill Hamid is a younger alternative at 26, he is short on international experience.
Even though the experienced goalkeepers are too old and the promising attacking players are too young, it is unthinkable that the USA will not qualify for Russia.
However, the prospects of a team taking shape under Arena that can pull off some surprises once the tournament starts don’t look great at present. Paul Gardner