No Candidate List Complete Without Bora

Within the next three weeks, the United States could have a new national team coach, but the question is: Will he come from Brazil, Colombia, Portugal, the United States or Yugoslavia?

The search for someone to replace Steve Sampson apparently has narrowed to five candidates. In alphabetical order by nationality they are:

* Carlos Alberto Parreira, the coach who guided Brazil to its 1994 World Cup victory but who struggled in trying to make the New York-New Jersey MetroStars anything more than mediocre.

* Francisco “Paco” Maturana, the coach who led Colombia in the 1994 World Cup and who most recently has been in charge of Ecuador’s national team.

* Carlos Queiroz, former world championship-winning coach with Portugal’s youth national teams and, briefly, coach of the Metro Stars before moving to Japan’s J-League.

* Bruce Arena, winner of five NCAA championships at Virginia and the coach of two-time Major League Soccer champion Washington D.C. United. He is the only American in the running.

* Bora Milutinovic, the only coach in history to have led four countries--Mexico, Costa Rica, the United States and Nigeria--into the second round of the World Cup.

If there are other candidates, or if there are contingency plans should none of the five accept an offer, no one is saying.

“At this point, the people who are under one kind of consideration or another are Bora, Parreira, Queiroz and Bruce,” said Alan Rothenberg, the president of U.S. Soccer who wants the new coach in place before his term in office expires Aug. 22. “We haven’t heard from Maturana, so I don’t know whether he’s under consideration or not.

“Those are the only active names that are being kicked around among us.”

The only criteria that has figured prominently is fluency in Spanish, which hurts Arena’s chances.

In an interview with Soccer America magazine columnist Paul Gardner last week, Sunil Gulati, the MLS deputy commissioner and a candidate to become U.S. Soccer’s executive vice president when elections are held in Maui, Hawaii, later this month, said more has to be done to bring Hispanic players into the USSF fold.

“I think it was extraordinarily positive that Steve Sampson spoke Spanish--both for its practical and its symbolic value,” Gulati said.

“I’m not going to say it’s a prerequisite, but for me it’s pretty damn important that the next national team coach has to be able to speak Spanish--if he doesn’t now, he’s got to learn it.”

Rothenberg believes that if the U.S. is to erase the memory of France ‘98, when the American team lost all three games and was ousted in the first round, it has to start at the grass roots.

“I think we have to be realistic,” he said. “To really get there [to be competitive in the World Cup], we have to grow a generation of players who can compete at that level.

“Everybody took apart Steve [Sampson] and everything else, but I think our players gave it their all and, other than the first half against Germany, they played hard, they played well.

“Frankly, we’re not as good as the best teams in the world--I don’t care who the coach is.

“So at one level we’ve got to develop a whole generation of players who can compete at that level. But until we get there, we still want to maximize results and that takes a savvy guy who’s been there.

“Just the feeling in the [World Cup] stadiums and the level and intensity of competition is so different than anywhere else, I don’t know if anyone who hasn’t either played it or coached it and been there can understand that.

“I’m not second-guessing Steve, because if I second-guess Steve I’m second-guessing me. But I have to believe that somebody who had been there [before] would have done something different and we’d have stolen a point or a game.

“And that’s what we need along the way. We need to have the confidence built and, frankly, we need to have the public, who loves winners, not sit there and turn its back on us.

“It’s easy for us from a planning standpoint to know that it’s going to take a dozen or more years to really get there [and be competitive], but the public expects results sooner.”

Arena’s experience is limited to domestic soccer, except for his stint as 1996 U.S. Olympic coach. That lack of international savvy and his limited Spanish would seem to count against him.

The Catch-22 for all American coaches is that they need the job to get the international experience but they can’t get the job without the international experience.

In addition to sending players overseas, perhaps U.S. Soccer should try sending coaches to foreign clubs as well.

Parreira said in Paris last month that he wanted a break from soccer after coaching Saudi Arabia in World Cup ’98. He said he wanted to return to Brazil and not take up any new post until the new year.

That does not necessarily rule him out, since he could be selected and simply take up the post in January. But that seems unlikely given that the United States has to play in the Confederations Cup in Mexico in January and also has a game against Australia this fall.

Parreira certainly has the World Cup credentials, but is not seen as a strong developer of talent. His struggles with the MetroStars could count against him.

Queiroz recently completed a report on player development in the United States for U.S. Soccer, a fat volume that has yet to be digested by federation officials, although Rothenberg said it contained nothing startling. Queiroz also recently accepted a coaching position with the United Arab Emirates, which would seem to hamper his chances.

Maturana, who failed to qualify Ecuador for World Cup ‘98, was said to be seeking a club coaching position in Spain, but that was before the U.S. post became vacant. Still, he seems a very long shot, especially since it was his Colombia team that was beaten by the U.S. in ’94.

All of which leaves Milutinovic, the man who was cast aside by U.S. Soccer after leading the American team into the second round in 1994. He and Rothenberg are close friends. Although it would be impolitic for Rothenberg to say so publicly, Milutinovic probably is his first choice.

Assuming the U.S. moves fast enough to land him.

Asked whether any other countries were pursuing the wandering Yugoslav now that Nigeria has cut him adrift, Rothenberg replied:

“Bora’s never without offers.”

Whether one of them will be from the U.S. will be determined in the next few weeks.