Nothing earth-shattering here, but nice to read that a class player like Zenga has fond memories of the US and a positive assessment of the national team. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=356349&root=us&cc=5901
No. ...But to be honest, I have no idea what he's doing now. My only opinion of him comes from his season with the Revs. I think we've got a lot better than him here in MLS. For all my distaste of the Gals, I'd take Fat Sigi over him in a minute. At least Fat Sigi has a few trophies.
Ah. OK. Well, that's something. Which leads to a discussion as to which is better -- MLS, or the Serbia/Montenegran top division + (I would guess) Champions League. But that's probably a silly direction to take a Men's N&A thread.
My understanding is that the Serbian teams are corrupt. See Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World. Seems they used to intimidate the other teams. Perhaps it has gotten better since the war ended. Just conjecture here and I could be wrong.
WAIT A MINUTE! Zenga sends some love Baba's way..... One of the first players to get a cap from Arena was the same Baba... OOoooooohhhhhhhhh.. Hope Spiderman keeps getting better as a coach.
Baba? What about Rongen? FWIW he also gave Rongen props here http://www.goal.com/en-us/articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=-964110
Ditto....not sure that the US is the right venue for Zenga. The game isn't big enough here for him to enjoy the star status that he seemingly needed when he was here. And he WAS a very lousy coach. A great keeper and a wonderful charismatic personality, just not a coach.
can someone explain why Frank Dell'Apa refers to MLS as "the MLS"? ---------- The MLS has never had a goalkeeper, much less a player-coach, quite like Zenga. The problem was, the MLS was not ready for a superstar goalkeeper with a rock star's attitude and image. ---------- One would use "the NFL" or "the NHL" or "the NL" or "the AL" as those end with the "league", but when writing about "MLB" or "MLS", I just don't see a need for "the" and it looks wrong to say "the Major League Baseball" or "the Major League Soccer".
in the grand scheme, assigning what factor is most responsible for the usa emerging, arena is as good a selection as any.... his hubris goes a long way taking this team from where it was before him...
Zenga's "shout outs" sure are a stroll down memory lane. It's nice to see that he has positive memories about his time in "the" MLS.
"My personal opinion is that most of the improvement is from Bruce Arena," Zenga said from Cyprus, where he was conducting practice with Red Star last week. "He has built and maintained a national team at high levels. The [MLS] is not yet at the level of Europe, yet the national team can compete with the great teams and has shown this, for example, in Korea [2002]. Also, many players have gone to play outside the country, and this has certainly given them more experience." Well he may be dead on here...which when you consider it has some negatives
I think it's probably hard for a European player to imagine a nation's talent pool increasing as quickly as that of the US...so the quick answer is to credit the coach
I don't think that is right at all. Zenga makes a cogent argument that -- the results garnered by the team are more than you would expect from summing the value of its parts. When that happens, the coach rightly gets credit. If you disagree -- for instance if you think he underates MLS or something, fine then take him on on that point -- different opinions and all. But to acuse him of Euro bias without any reason to do so is poor IMHO.
I don't think I accused him of Euro bias at all. I just think when he pictures US players he thinks of the talent level at the time he was in MLS. He's been gone what? 7 years? In that time the talent level in Italy, or Serbia, has not changed dramatically, he probably underestimates the wealth in talent now available compared to 1999.