U.S. men's national team lightens up thanks to Bruce Arena
PANAMA CITY – Bruce Arena sprawls in a chair in a Panama City hotel and starts talking about clowns. He quickly warms to this theme. He is going to bring in a clown at lunch, he says, to entertain his United States national team players. The performer will make balloons for the players and perform other tricks.
After a moment it becomes clear that Arena has made it all up. He’s joking. When the U.S. players sit down to eat ahead of Tuesday’s World Cup qualifying game here, at the Estadio Rommel Fernandez, there won’t be some creepy guy with a painted face jostling for a spot at the table and juggling the PB+J sandwiches.
Then again, anything is possible under Arena, whose sarcastic wit is just one way in which he is different from Jurgen Klinsmann, whom he replaced last year.
Arena is not big on rules, just big on making sure the Americans take another step towards next year's World Cup in Russia.
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“Be on time,” Arena said, when asked what behavioral stipulations he has in place. “That’s it. They are adults. Does your newspaper tell you what you are supposed to do? We are just kind of acting normal.”
Arena does not do curfews and tries to avoid team meetings. The players’ free time is typically their own, without the coach or other staff members monitoring their every move. Under Klinsmann, who was fired after a pair of qualifying defeats in November, the atmosphere was far different.
Klinsmann would call late-night meetings that players believed were an attempt to monitor their social habits. There was no extensive rulebook, yet Klinsmann wanted his troops to feel on edge. Certain soft drinks were strictly frowned upon. It was as if players were trying o avoid being admonished by their teacher.
During the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, Arena did little to monitor his players, simply insisting they turn up for training and performed at a high level. Some players, especially in 2006, made greater use of the freedom than others. In Germany in 2006, there were occasional incidents of players frequenting clubs and bars and mingling with fans late into the night.
Four years later, Arena’s successor Bob Bradley kept a much tighter ship, with the players sequestered on a farm outside Johannesburg, although much of that had to do with security concerns in South Africa.
Arena relies on veterans such as Tim Howard, DaMarcus Beasley, Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley to ensure that everybody remains professional.
“When you step across to play he wants nothing but your everything,” Howard said. “The rest of it, you kind of let your hair down and do whatever the heck you want to do.”
The vibe of the camp seems different. There is more noise when the players mingle, more smiles.
“There is not one rule on how you do anything in life,” Arena said. “There is more than one approach to things.
“I am not doing anything differently than I do. I am not taking a survey. I know it is different. Again, we lose to (Panama), there will be articles written on this (expletive) letting these guys run loose.
“The veterans lead the way. It is not my team, it is their team. They have got to take ownership in the team. I don’t think they are checking curfew, they are just being good professionals and it becomes contagious in a group, If you have a bunch of people who are (expletive) it tends to be what your team looks like.
“If it is my job to control them all day then I don’t think we have a chance. I am not interested in doing it. I would just open up a pre-school somewhere.”
Friday’s 6-0 thumping of Honduras in Arena’s first competitive game since replacing Klinsmann was a huge positive and lifted the team out of last place in the six-nation CONCACAF regional qualifying group and into fourth place. Three teams reach automatically Russia next summer, while a fourth goes into a playoff. Panama currently occupies the third spot, adding extra significance to Tuesday's match.
One of the more surprising things about the past week has been Arena’s sense of humor. He threatened to cut Alejandro Bedoya’s hair. He ribbed news media members for being “stiffs.” He made the gag about the clown.
Don’t however, suggest that his approach equates to a lack of discipline.
“I don’t have a whole lot of time to make a whole lot of changes,” Arena said. “Whether that is good or bad — who knows? (But) I don’t have a lax rule environment. What is a lax rule environment — asking people to live like normal people?"
