Is Bruce Arena a Jackass?

I haven’t watched the interview yet but I very much appreciate when they interview the USMNT related players and coaches (versus interview of people like Dirk Nowitzki.

 

Some other interesting clips

How did Bruce Arena deal with being the manager that didn't get the US to the World Cup in 2018? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/5ILQ1MevFv

— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) June 5, 2024

"Are you looking [to get back into coaching] ASAP?"

"Tomorrow, maybe."

Bruce Arena is ready to re-enter the coaching ranks 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/TSHaIUCD1m

— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) June 5, 2024

Does the USMNT need an American coach to be successful? 👀

A new episode of Kickin’ It with former USMNT manager Bruce Arena is live in 10 MINUTES on CBS Sports Golazo Network and @paramountplus 📺 pic.twitter.com/WlTkKOOwQe

— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) June 4, 2024

"A lot of American players don't step on the field and have an attitude that you need to have against the great teams." 🗣️

Bruce Arena, former USMNT manager, is the latest guest on an all new episode of Kickin' It live RIGHT NOW on the CBS Sports Golazo Network and… pic.twitter.com/E6GutGnTe1

— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) June 5, 2024

Write up here also https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/55...s-gio-reyna-usmnt/?source=user_shared_article

 

I always find it weird when someone posts a short clip like this (under 30 seconds) and completely lies about what is in the clip. Dude, we may have short attention spans, but we can handle 26 freakin’ seconds.

why did you lie? I’m genuinely curious.

 

Skynet made him do it.

 

That's what I was going to say. He's clearly a jackass, but he's also probably the best American coach ever. That latter claim is the more debatable issue.

 

When you said he was being disrespectful. Anyone can watch the clip and see that’s a very tendentious interpretation.

A false attack on Arena doesn’t improve Berhalter’s record.

 

Arena is certainly a world class jackass, but boy do I miss him on the Revs at least, attitude and all.

I actually don't think it's unreasonable for someone to look at that clip and think it comes off as disrespectful, but that is sort of just his M.O going back to his days coaching the national team in the 90's. I used to tune in for Revs pre-and post-game press conferences, and he would basically insult every other reporter that asked him a question like he was delivering a Comedy Central roast.

For what it's worth, Dempsey seems to take that part of it at least in stride (the clip cuts off before he gamely acknowledges that he came close to flunking out of school). Oddly enough, he seems a lot more hurt/offended by Bruce's past comments that Clint is someone who tried shit, which Arena stresses was meant as a compliment and something he wishes more players had. But I think combined with a little bitterness over not starting more under him, Clint seems to view that as confirmation that Bruce didn't view him as a proper soccer player.

 

Arena still holding firm to the idea that because we lost the first two games nothing was his fault, even though those were the two games we often lose away to Costa Rica and Mexico. I don't think highly of Klinsmann as a coach and we have seen his issues come to the fore in other jobs since, but the idea those first two games were the entirety of the problem and not the ability to get a tie in the final game, where he did make glaring mistakes like starting Bobby Wood over Clint and benching Cameron is just silly. He's a big fan of throwing stones from his glass house and acting shocked if anyone questions it. I think he's mostly been a good coach and was excellent in 2002, but he's had poor moments as well and that failed qualifying campaign was one of them.

 

It was a joke, playing the dozens, it was a your mama style joke, 1000%.

Great interview, kickin it does a really great job of digging out nuggest. McBride was the most coachable player he ever had. We already knew, but Arena very much felt Donovan could have been a world class player if he had Dempsey's mentality.

The funniest bit of that trio:

Donovan: A SoCal and it shows.

Dempsey: A Texan and it shows.

Arena: A NY City guy and it shows.

 

Scorched earth? I know you have a sense of humor right?

Dempsey nailed the issue. Arena had him at the start and at the end, and it was in a desperate straights era in '06 when the team had hemoraghed talent: Mathis, Wolff, Eddie all went down with knee injuries, John O'Brien's career imploded, and still Arena didn't want to give up with him, he couldn't figure out how to integrate Reyna and Landon on the same field.....Dempsey comes into that mess out of nowhere: Furman, and a reserve role on the '03 U20's....

Its very easy to see where Dempsey comes from and Arena, as for Couva: Dempsey had had multiple heart procedures the winter of '16-'17 and appeared like he might be retiring. The guy was an iron man and a little crazy to even step back on the field after that, to then assume a role as a starter? That's his heart talking not his head (and he's right, but it also shows how much he was willing to risk for the game: which included dying, Arena's job was to protect him from himself to some extent, not just get the XI result).

Anyway, I can completely get this: and Dempsey is clearly a type:

He uses slights to build himself, whether they're real or not, as fuel, like MJ and other types like them. He never "got" Arena, in no small part because he didn't have him for the '10 and '14 cycles. Otherwise he would have.

 

Ehhh, look into his particulars:
#1 He says players win games, not coaches (so the reverse has to be true in that theory).
#2 He says he doesn't go back and ruminate over what mistakes were made looking at tapes of old losses.

So yeah, he's not gonna see it.

I will note he also points to the Costa Rica hosting duties as a problem, and the player pool being a mess.

To him it's clearly a combo of having only 8 games to fix things, the player pool weakness, and the fed botching things with hosting cities. Dempsey and Davies and Arena all pay credit to the idea that the home crowd and the team were highly motivated by our idiot feds social media posters stupidity of showing us clowning around in puddles post hurricane (and Arena mentions he wasn't even there when that happened) which was prime poster board material for a team that was already "out" and ready to retire that cycle.

So I'll concede that he's not big on accepting blame. Even the ghost goal is mentioned which is true. And its both fair, and not ideal "taking the bullets for the team" attitude there.

However, he's also right about every single thing he mentions. So......

 

By the way, Bruce seems to think the 2002 side is still our best team ever. He starts naming an all-time Best XI right after the OP's clip, and the majority of the players are guys who were on that '02 team: Friedel in goal; Sanneh at RB and Pope at CB; he struggles to come up with another CB and a LB to fill out the rest of the backline; McBride up top; Dempsey, Pulisic, and Donovan somewhere in the attack; Beasley might make it into the lineup somewhere; he gets cut off before he gets to the CM's, but I wouldn't be surprised if Claudio and/or JOB were his picks there too. When Kate points out that he doesn't have many players from the current generation in there, Bruce responds that he does have Christian in there, but McKennie is the only other player he names as really being in that conversation.

 

nobody believes we often lose at home to Mexico. (See what I did there?)

 

It's not particularly shocking. It's who Bruce is.

Benching Cameron was not a mistake, though. The dude was just like Bruce -- he basically lost us a game all by himself, then went off on everyone else like he wasn't the problem. He was not good that cycle.

Yes, starting Omar was a mistake both in foresight and hindsight, but Cameron deserved his benching both because he was atrocious AND because he refused to acknowledge it. There were other centerbacks.

His biggest mistake wasn't anything specific to the T&T game, though. I know it's become pretty standard fare to say we played too aggressively and played tired guys, but if we had rotated to subs and played conservative and lost, that would have been the culprit.

No, his selection of Howard over and over despite him clearly being hurt and not very good because of it probably cost us the most of the coaching decisions. Couva had plenty of mistakes, but it was also something of a fluke -- a bizarre own goal from near the top of the box and a long banger ... that should have been saved but Howard was not up to it. On a water logged field in Couva, that was enough. And it's that Howard choice -- which also hurt us earlier in the cycle -- that I'd peg as the clearest one. Tim Melia 2017 almost certainly saves that.

Also, in a cycle where we missed by one point, yes, getting ZERO points against Mexico at home is still a pretty big disaster. When was the last time that happened in WCQ outside that cycle? And for that matter, getting zero against Costa Rica at home was also a big disaster -- that's the match Cameron gave way two goals mostly all by himself.

 

Well in Bruce’s mind we had our best coach ever in 2002, so….

 

Meh, all Native English-speaking managers kinda suck.

If you can't fvkcing figure out how to get a fvkcing draw vs (checks notes) Trinidad & Tobago, you kinda suck at management.

And yeah, pretty much all DCU fans still get triggered over anyone criticizing Arena, for some reason.

 

Actually, starting Howard against T&T is the only decision that I've ever heard him say (in prior interviews) that he would have done differently in that game. And of course, even for that, he avoids responsibility by saying he didn't want to start him in the first place but was outvoted by his staff on that call.

 

I didn't know that. But yeah, outvoted by your staff is a copout. Especially his staff.

 

Must be an NYC thing. Just like an orange whale who denies responsibility for everything he does, so too does Arena.

When his teams win, he wants to bask in glory, but when his teams lose, well:

"Players win or lose games, not me!"
"I was out voted by my staff!"
"We didn't get anything from Beasley."

And so on.


Dude has turd-like behavior, and so what if he's "the best American coach evar?" He still kinda sucks like all Native English-speaking managers, and he hides from responsibility like a b!tch.

I'd be more likely to go easier on him if he ever manned up to his own shortcomings, but like another geezing geezer of a whale from NYC who got convicted 34 times, here we are.

 

sanneh aside (he played out of his mind, like a one month version of reams last year), do you disagree?

i may have dempsey on the bench (of an all time team, depending on how i set it up) but friedel, pope, puli and donovan are no brainers to me. job would absolutely be on my bench at the very least.

im not sure about mcbride just in the sense that the current guys are so young, and sanneh would only be in with that notable "02 world cup sanneh" qualifier...

sorry, i dont want to completely derail things- but do you think hes way off base? i think hes really interesting in that- i do think, in general, he relies too heavily on the guys he knew and trusted but hes also the guy who took donovan and beasley. i think people brush off the after-the-fact comments he "would have" brought in mckennie and others had they qualified too easily. that said, his instincts got us the one brilliant world cup job had in him...and then 08.

i think he really stagnated after his first nt tenure- he sort of settled into a 2-3 top players surrounded by worker bees mentality (ie his donovan/beckham galaxy teams), and that showed in 17. he never followed that instinct to throw in a stick of dynamite, or maybe he lost it.

i think arena is a fascinating figure in american soccer history. hes absolutely a jackass- thats not even a question. his selections in 17 were too safe, but also troubling with the dual nat stuff. i think his in game instincts were phenomenal, in addition to his willingness to make decidedly not safe choices at the highest level- but that can go both ways. i would say hes the best american manager of all time while recognizing he was also the guy for our lowest (modern history) moment.

klinsman was an outlier (in so many ways), but i dont know why anyone thinks bradley, or berhalter, or even sampson would have done much differently. none of them ever took big chances. they would have rode the same players.

again, i get that big risk/big reward/even bigger disaster dichotomy and understand anyone who thinks the low cancels out the high. but in practice i dont think anyone has remotely advanced us soccer as much as he did. we are still at that "get out of the group stage- mission accomplished!" mean to this day.

 

I should probably quote him directly, since that's the implication I got out of his answer but maybe others would interpret it differently. On Benny Feilhaber's old podcast, he was asked about whether in hindsight he would have done anything differently there. After some throat clearing, this is the first substantive thing he says in response:

"I had a real question about whether to play Tim. Tim had come back from an injury...and I had this gut feeling that maybe we play Guzan. I asked the staff, and we had a vote, and an interesting conversation. And without divulging any names, it was decided we would stick with Tim in the goal. That was one of the changes I thought of making."

He also mentions that he considered switching out Pulisic and Jozy due to injury concerns, but he says they were cleared to play and he doesn't mention anything about a staff vote being the deciding factor for those two.