United States men play key World Cup qualifying match at Panama tonight

— Alejandro Bedoya missed a goal in training, and Bruce Arena wanted to make sure the midfielder knew he noticed.

"He threatened to chop my man bun off," Bedoya said, smiling. "That's the kind of grief I get around here."

Humor has returned to the U.S. national team since Arena replaced Jurgen Klinsmann as coach in November, following losses in the first two games in the final round of World Cup qualifying. In the first competitive match of Arena 2.0, the U.S. responded with a 6-0 rout of Honduras on Friday, and the Americans could even their record quickly with a win at Panama on Tuesday night.

A member of the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame who coached the national team from 1998-2006, Arena wanted to quickly put aside worries the Americans would fail to qualify for an eighth straight World Cup. He turned over staff, tore up rules and defined players' roles during his first four months. He discarded Klinsmann's curfew, eliminated the prohibition on meetings with agents at the team hotel, limited training sessions to one per day and allowed the support staff to sit in on video analysis sessions with players.

"Be on time and be respectful. Those are the rules," he said Monday. "If it's my job to control them all day, then I don't think we have a chance, and I'm basically not interested in doing it. I'd just open up a preschool somewhere."

If not quite chaos under Klinsmann, there was constant uncertainty. Arena brought his own brand of Brooklyn bluntness back to the job, a self-confidence boosted by five NCAA titles at Virginia and five Major League Soccer championships with D.C. United and the LA Galaxy.

"If I was coaching college today I'd be fired, because there's too many rules," he said. "In my days there was nothing wrong with having a beer with one of your players."

Veteran players say Arena is a steady presence, unchanged through the years.

"I think we're all surprised by the sarcasm. That's Bruce. It's great. It keeps you on your toes. He's very tough to impress, and all of that hasn't changed," goalkeeper Tim Howard said. "If you get a 'pretty good' from Bruce, you should feel like you're on top of the world, because that's all you get."

U.S. captain Bob Bradley said, "We had lost our way in some ways. I think Bruce has just done a very good job of coming in and being very clear with how we're going to do things . ... and I think the group has responded in a really good way."