Difference of World Cup opinions
Arena, Klinsmann at odds on U.S. debacle
Bruce Arena and Jurgen Klinsmann spent much of their time as successful coaches of the U.S. men’s soccer team taking thinly veiled jabs at each other.
Six months have passed since the Americans’ World Cup campaign ended in disaster, and they’re still doing it.
On Wednesday, Arena, who presided over the catastrophic end of the U.S. bid to qualify for an eighth consecutive World Cup, told The Arizona Republic in a lengthy interview that missing out on soccer’s greatest competition was a disappointment but not a tragedy.
“We are not the first country not to qualify for a World Cup,” Arena said. “There’s going to be days when England doesn’t qualify, as Italy didn’t this time around, or Chile or Holland. Those are countries well ahead of us. That’s all a part of it. And it allows you to reflect a little bit. You re-examine what you’re doing and you try to make things better. So it’s not a crisis, but it’s a wake-up call.”
It is no coincidence that Arena’s remarks came just days after Klinsmann, in an interview with German soccer publication Kicker, gave a far gloomier prognosis. “It’s been set back by several years,” Klinsmann said, when asked about the state of soccer in the USA. “That was a huge disappointment. The qualification really was never in doubt, but then the lads had a blackout versus Trinidad and Tobago. They only needed a point, were too sure of that and under- estimated that final match.”
There are differing opinions on who should shoulder most of the blame for the qualifying debacle. Klinsmann was fired after appearing to have lost the trust of the players and suffering a home defeat to Mexico and a 4-0 drubbing in Costa Rica to begin the final phase of the CONCACAF regional qualification process.
Arena took over and sparked an initial revival, before four points from the final four games — capped off by that defeat in Trinidad — ended the team’s hopes of going to Russia this summer.
“When I took over the program, we weren’t fooled by the fact it was going to be a long road,” Arena added. “We really knew it was going to come down to the last game. On another day, perhaps we win (against T+T) but we didn’t.
“Would we do many things a whole lot differently? No, in all honesty. We got ourselves back into the thick of things and had everything in our hands on the last day, and we fell short. As we look around, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
“On the day nothing went right, and we fell short. We had the control of things. If we got a result, we would not have to depend on anything else.”
Overall coaching standards, from grass roots to elite level, are often blamed for the USA’s inability to become a major world power in soccer. Arena has a different take.
“Our system needs to get better,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be changed radically. Typically, people look at (soccer in America) as lacking in coaching, lacking in player development. I disagree with that. I think the administration and management of the sport has to improve greatly.”