Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Arena quits as U.S. men’s coach after missing World Cup
NEW YORK » Bruce Arena resigned as U.S. men’s national team coach on Friday, three days after the Americans failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986.
The U.S. Soccer Federation said within 10 days it will announce an interim coach for planned exhibition games next month.
“There’s no point in me being around,” Arena said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I’m not going to be around for the next cycle. The only thing I regret, obviously, is not having a cycle with the team, because you need more time than 10 months with a team. But I knew that in advance of it, so I’m responsible for it.”
USSF President Sunil Gulati, speaking during a telephone news conference, said he did not plan to resign. He said it was not the right time to talk about whether he will seek a fourth four-year term during the federation’s annual meeting from Feb. 8-11 but did say it recent weeks he had sent letters to people seeking to be nominated.
“This is a big shock to the system. We understand that. We understand how much frustration, anger, disappointment, hurt there is,” he said.
Gulati said the federation held a board meeting Thursday night and will seek “outside expertise” as it evaluates what went wrong.
“We’ll look at everything, from our player development programs to our coaching to our refereeing to our facilities to the payto-play model to the role of education and universities,” he said. “Where we need to make major changes, we’ll do that. Where we need to make incremental changes, we’ll do that. We’ll take our time with that and unfortunately we have the luxury of time before we have competitive games again with the senior team.”
A 66-year-old member of the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame, Arena coached the U.S. from 19982006, including a trip to the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals in 2002, the best American finish since the first tournament in 1930.
He was fired by Gulati after group-stage elimination in 2006, then brought back last November after a 0-2 start in the final round of qualifying in the North and Central American region under Jurgen Klinsmann. The Americans were unbeaten in their first 14 games under Arena, winning their third CONCACAF Gold Cup under him, but they lost a home qualifier to Costa Rica 2-0 last month, putting a berth in danger.
A 4-0 home win over Panama last week put the U.S. back in position for an eighth straight World Cup trip and the Americans needed only a draw at Trinidad and Tobago, the world’s 99th-ranked team. After months of constant lineup changes, Arena kept the same 11 starters, and the Americans fell behind by two goals in the first half and lost 2-1.
With three wins, four losses and three ties, the U.S. finished fifth among six teams in the hexagonal. Panama climbed to third and qualified, and fourthplace Honduras will meet Australia in a playoff next month for a berth.
“I don’t know how anyone could ever say lack of desire. I think that’s a terrible statement. It really is,” Arena said. “This is a group of guys with a lot of character. They came into 2017 with not the odds in their favor to qualify. It took a lot of hard work to get to where the program got at the end where we could have qualified. So to say a lack of desire I think is insane. You hear that. You hear all the stupid stuff days after, but for whatever reason we played very poorly in the first half against Trinidad, and it cost us.”
Arena was 10-2-6 in his second term, leaving him with an 81-32-35 record and the most wins among U.S. coaches. At the club level, he won Major League Soccer titles with D.C. United in 1996 and ‘97, and with the LA Galaxy in 2011, ‘12 and ‘14.
“Oddly enough, I’ve had some inquiries, already,” he said. “There’s options for me that I have to sort out and see what makes sense.”
Gulati ruled out his own resignation after the qualifying failure.