Did he really? Wow! I would take 100 shootouts before going back the fixed, countdown clock. That was absolutely, positively hands-down, the worst single element of the early MLS years. More worser than the Kansas City Wiz. And of course, if they ever (God forbid) did bring it back, you know he would instruct his teams to stand over the ball, time waste, feign injury, etc. in the waning seconds of a game when the other team has a FK just outside the box as time expires. How do I know, you say? I saw exactly that from DC United against Tampa in a game in 1996. The clueless ref didn't even have the huevos to stop the clock and let them take the kick as the last play of the game. Arena would be right in the overlap of the venn diagram.
My immediate thought on the whiner/prick Venn -- he's right next to Blanco who's dead square in the middle.
Yeah, Heaps complains at times, but I really have a hard time imagining him giving the kind of performance Arena did. I read Arena's comments and thought it was really lame, but then I watched a video of it and ... wow, it's even worse than the transcript (i.e., paraphrasing "it's not he reason we lost, but I'll spend more time talking about how extra time is calculated and implemented than anything else, because, though it's not the reason we lost, the way that the game time has been called all over the world for who knows how long is flawed and needs to be changed NOW, but not because this time some other team got a few extra seconds instead of my team ... AND, it's much better to be talking about that than the totally fraudulent penalty that was awarded as my team's only goal. It was just totally bogus officiating because my team only got a free pk (instead of a yellow to our star DP), while they got an extra minute added on to 2nd half extra time").
I just noticed in re-watching some highlights that on that second Dallas goal, Arena had both of the defenders who were "watching the posts" actually a full step more central than being on the actual post. Live I just thought that one guy made a mistake not being all the way over. But now I see the far post guy was positioned the same way. Assuming that kind of approach comes down from the top, he has only himself to blame.
Of course, refs generally will add time for a few things: injuries, substitutions, goals, and occasionally excessive time-wasting by the team ahead. Since there was a goal, and the Dallas players celebrated, don'tcha think it is reasonable to add a minute or so to the clock? Arena is a bombastic, egotistical fool who is always putting is own massive ego first and foremost above all else. We mere mortals should consider ourselves fortunate that he will even allow us to breathe the same air.
Don't get me started on the whole USWNT thing! The whole way it is set up breeds this sort of entitlement, and I don't think I'm the only one who was glad to see them crash out of the tournament early. Hubris will get you nowhere. The fact that the roster is set by contractual obligations means that the coach can't bring in new players for a look and gradually phase in the next generation of young players and phase out the old guard, the way it is done on every national team of either gender on planet earth. That, and the total disregard for the NWSL is a disgrace, when you consider that most of the men's Nats gave up playing in Europe (and bigger paychecks for some) to help launch MLS. But don't get me started on that...
Max salary for a non-USWNT player in NWSL is $37,000. Minimum is $7000 for 6 months of work. Players retire in their prime to go be real estate brokers. It's hard to respect a league that pays like that.
Well, the league can only pay what it can afford. Aside from Portland, most of the teams get >5,000 game. Like early MLS, a lot of players took a financial hit for the love of the game, but at least for the men, and unknown player on a cheap contract like, say, Eddie Pope can play his way up to the National Team and a much better club contract. The WNT players get comparatively huge salaries, and there are very few opportunities for an unknown to work her way up and prove she belongs based on league play. It's a closed system that benefits a small handful of stars, who, by and large, do little to promote the league as a whole. If the league gets better and more popular, there will be more revenue for all women players.
More BS in Olympic women's soccer. During the shootout victory of Brazil over the Matildas (sorry if spoiled that result for anyone), for the shootout, the Australian keeper followed the rules and stayed on or close to her line; the Brazilian keeper charged forward off her line on every kick, a clear violation that was never called and never even warned about. On the game-winning save, she's practically out to the 6. The Brazilian coach probably told his keeper to do that, knowing that the refs wouldn't have the guts to re-do a saved/missed pk in front of a huge Brazilian crowd.
I don't understand why the massive revenues from the USWNT isn't put into developing future USWNT players by having a stable women's league that pays players enough for them to make it a profession, rather than a side job.