OT: Arena Gets USMNT Job
Not a surprise to anyone, but it's now apparently a done deal.
I'm okay with it in the short term. I think he can heal a lot of these wounds and get them to qualify.
Bruce Arena has been named men's U.S. soccer coach. Arena coached the team from 1998-2006 and is the winningest coach in team history
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:30 AM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:31 AM ^
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November 22nd, 2016 at 9:33 AM ^
Now, that would be thinking outside the box. He does preach that wild offensive, free-flow stuff.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:38 AM ^
This isn't OT. This is a USMNT blog under the guise of a U of M blog to keep it afloat when they aren't playing.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:41 AM ^
Of being able to post stuff when people didn't become insane about OT v Non-OT in fear of some administrative whipping.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:52 AM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:55 AM ^
Call me old I guess.
OT: outside the boundaries of Michigan sports.
USMNT hires Bruce Arena.
I mean, I don't feel like this is solving a Carmen Sandiago.
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:11 AM ^
Spitballing, blue skying, whatever your favorite expression might be...I think he was being sarcastic. If you look at his post in that light, it opens up whole new worlds of possibilities. :)
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:11 AM ^
Where in the world was she?
November 22nd, 2016 at 12:18 PM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 1:23 PM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 12:17 PM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:16 AM ^
Hell, even my wife could figure out that headline and she's a Buckeye.
November 22nd, 2016 at 1:25 PM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 1:34 PM ^
Now, they neg every OP that starts the threads, and then casually stick around and join in the conversation...
Kindo of like....."That's the dumbest thing anybody has ever said to me!..........But here are my thoughts"
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:04 AM ^
Case in point - The "Marcus Hall Epic Double Bird of the Week" from last year's Northwestern game was the USA-Mexico game under the abbreviation of "KLINNSMAN OUT!"
That day has finally arrived.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:41 AM ^
Once an arena hits 30 years we just leave it an let it rot and build a new one. Nice to see them sticking with a 65 year old one rather than wasting tax payers money on a new one.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:46 AM ^
Done!!!
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:41 AM ^
He is a very good tactical coach.
This is where the US got it wrong. Klinsmann is the perfect Technical Director. He knows a lot about nutrition, fitness, and has the ability to recruit dual citizenship players. Where he is bad is in-game tactics and formation development.
Klinsmann as Technical Director, with Arena as the head coach, would have been a fantastic arrangement. Maybe if Claudio Reyna takes over as TD the setup will be more conducive to getting good results at the senior level.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:42 AM ^
but do you think JK would have gone for that? That'd be a pretty tough pill to swallow.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:48 AM ^
JK wouldn't have gone for that.
I think this team needs a healing in terms of psyche. All the formations in the world wouldn't have saved the wounded puppy look they had against Costa Rica.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:59 AM ^
That would have been great except JK wants to be a manager, and he'll have clubs in Europe willing to let him. Some of what he'd been pushing for has been implemented and more is coming, hopefully they don't mess with that with him gone. Because our reliance on pay-to-play club teams left out a whole lot of people from the system. Clint Dempsey's parents sacrificed money they didn't have and lots of time to get him to a club. How many Dempseys, and better, did we miss out on because their parents couldn't manage it? How many were we missing out by pretty much ignoring the Mexican and other soccer-mad ethnic communities entirely in our system? They pretty much have their own leagues and such - how do we get the talent into the US system?
MLS clubs building out their academy structure will help some. But there's still a lot of pay-to-play out there.
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:38 AM ^
They are tapping into the Mexican-American communities. Maybe they need to do more, but there are good amount of Mexican-American players in the youth system right now.
One good thing that JK did was to overhaul the entire youth system. I think we will start to see the payout in the future.
November 22nd, 2016 at 2:26 PM ^
No, no, no. Klinsmann would have been a terrible technical director for a lot of reasons, one of them being that he would have spent 80% of his time playing power games to remove anyone he felt threatened by. Eric Wynalda went through Klinsmann's m.o. yesterday on the radio (I think it was the Sirius BR channel).
And Reyna should be exiled from the US program completely. A) Just for that turnover against Ghana in 2006. Yes, I'm still better. But if you want a rational answer, B) because he doesn't understand winning is important. Seriously, go read what he says about development and winning. He totally, 100%, completely does not get that winning is what you're trying to develop.
November 22nd, 2016 at 9:58 AM ^
That abbreviation always makes me think of US Mutant Ninja Turtles.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:10 AM ^
because he did so well with the TMNT
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:25 AM ^
That's a move I could get behind.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:03 AM ^
Hopefully he's able to backtrack his comments about the USMNT the way Harbaugh handled his comments about Michigan's academics. I have to think it will be difficult for someone like John Anthony Brooks or Jermaine Jones to play for a man who believes the team shouldn't include foreign-born players.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:09 AM ^
Arena's changed a bit with that. That was 10 years ago and almost a third of his current team is foreign-born. If he benches guys like Pulisic for Wondo then yeah, we have a problem. But I'm pretty confident he'll value wins over some weird fake patriotism.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:53 AM ^
I don't get your example. Pulisic was born in Pennsylvania.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:56 AM ^
Why I thought he was foreign-born.
(insert any dual-citizen striker/attacking mid on the USMNT)
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:58 AM ^
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November 22nd, 2016 at 12:17 PM ^
"I don't even know some of the players, which is odd as the former coach. Players on the national team should be -- and this is my own feeling -- they should be Americans," Arena said three years ago. "If they're all born in other countries, I don't think we can say we are making progress."
Comments by Arena in 2013 as the team was preparing for the 2014 WC. He never said that he believes his club team should be American-born, so I don't think the current makeup of the LA Galaxy roster is a good reflection of his stance on the issue.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:03 AM ^
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:05 AM ^
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November 22nd, 2016 at 10:17 AM ^
There has been no official annoucement yet from U.S. Soccer, though this is widely expected to happen today
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:34 AM ^
I once had lunch with Bruce Arena. I know, COOL STORY BRAH, right? It was, uh, YEARS ago -- probably about, oh, 18 or 19 years ago. I was a season ticket holder for DC United, we got to have lunch w/ the team, I sat next to Bruce as we ate, then got to meet Etcheverry, Pope, Harkes, Lassiter, etc. Still the greatest club team ever in US soccer history. (Harkes was a freaking riot, by the way.)
So here's the think about Arena: He makes Belichick look like the most outgoing guy on Earth. Arena answers every question (even off the record) with one-liners, with the minimum number of words, he is about the least engaging human being ever. It was with me, with the other families around the table, with other people walking up to him... Geesh.
I mean, the guy can win. He's not a bad guy, but not exactly a guy you want to root for, either.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:36 AM ^
I don't really care how he handles the media and outsiders as long as he brings some pride back to this team.
He was always pretty prickly with the media a decade plus ago. Maybe he's grown up a bit.
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:43 AM ^
I think Gulati/Garber wanted someone who wasn't so outsoken or eccentric. Maybe they had an issue with him going to hipsters cafe and driving a Mini Cooper.
Source: I saw JK once at a hipster cafe in Orange County and he drove away in a Mini Cooper.
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:50 AM ^
It's another to be just kind of a jerk. I can't remember one time where JK said "Yeah, this game is on me."
He always threw the players under the bus. And no matter how bad they screwed it up, that's a no-no in sports.
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:56 AM ^
Yeah that is a bad thing to do as a manager. I was just talking about him going against the status-quo of US Soccer system and MLS.
November 22nd, 2016 at 11:49 AM ^
I can attest to this. A few years ago I was working in private banking and Arena was one of our clients. I got to interact with him because he was buying a crib in Manhattan Beach (a real nice spot by the way) and I had to arrange the financing for it. He was far from one of our wealthiest clients yet he was a royal douche bag and total pain to deal with.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:38 AM ^
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November 22nd, 2016 at 10:46 AM ^
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November 22nd, 2016 at 10:58 AM ^
There is no time for on the job learning you need someone who has been there before. This is a two year hire not a ten year hire
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November 22nd, 2016 at 11:05 AM ^
This is a triage move, and probably a wise one - provided it's a two-year fix. Now if we see it's a ten-year deal, I'll meet you at Gulati's house, pitchfork and torch in hand.
But as a stopgap measure, Arena makes sense.
November 22nd, 2016 at 10:52 AM ^
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November 22nd, 2016 at 12:33 PM ^
I do not have words strong enough