Appointment of Arena Will Mark the Beginning of a New Era for U.S.

It’s a done deal.

Bruce Arena, who coached Virginia to five NCAA titles and Washington D.C. United to back-to-back Major League Soccer championships, will be named U.S. national team coach.

The decision already has been reached, but U.S. Soccer will not announce the appointment until D.C. United has either retained its MLS title or been knocked out of the playoffs, which begin this week.

Arena, who turned 47 on Monday, is believed to have agreed to a multiyear contract that would last through the 2002 World Cup, to be jointly staged by Japan and South Korea.

His first game in charge will be against Australia on Nov. 6 in San Jose.

Arena replaces Steve Sampson, whose three years in charge culminated with three losses and a first-round elimination from the France ’98 World Cup in June. Arena will be expected to do considerably better.

Other candidates for the position were Carlos Alberto Parreira, who coached Brazil to the 1994 world championship; Carlos Queiroz, former Portugal national team coach, and Bora Milutinovic.

But U.S. Soccer’s preference had always been for an American coach, and Arena’s success on the college level and in MLS made him the clear front-runner.

“An American coach gives prestige to our leagues,” Bob Contiguglia, the newly elected president of U.S. Soccer, told told the Washington Post earlier this month. “It adds to our national spirit.”

Contiguglia said last Sunday in Richmond, Va., that no announcement about a coach was immediately forthcoming. But when Milutinovic on Tuesday agreed to become coach of the New York-New Jersey MetroStars, replacing the fired Alfonso Mondelo, it signaled that the race to replace Sampson was over.

Milutinovic, the only coach to lead four nations-- Mexico, Costa Rica, the U.S. and Nigeria--into the second round of the World Cup, had widespread support but apparently will now bide his time in MLS.

He has not signed a long-term contract with the MetroStars, leading to speculation that his appointment might only be a stop-gap measure designed to give the club a boost for the MLS playoffs.

After that, he might either stay with the club, head west to the San Jose Clash, replacing the soon-to-be-fired Brian Quinn (although Sampson and Thomas Rongen are equally strong candidates) or--most intriguing of all--take the coaching position left vacant in Washington by Arena’s elevation to the national team post.

Whatever his decision, by joining MLS Milutinovic has placed himself in a position to not only closely watch Arena’s rebuilding and reshaping of the national team but also to take over from him--should he fail--when qualifying for the 2002 World Cup begins in two years.

Arena has a proven track record on the college and MLS levels but his only international experience of note came in coaching the U.S. team at the Atlanta Olympics. The Americans performed respectably, losing to Argentina, defeating Tunisia and tying Portugal, but nevertheless were knocked out in the first round.

This summer, Arena coached D.C. United to victory in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, making it the first American club to win the regional championship, traditionally dominated by teams from Mexico.

In November and December, Washington will play a two-game series against South American champion Vasco da Gama of Brazil for the mythical championship of the Americas. Arena might be allowed to coach D.C. United for that series.

The first true tests of his coaching ability, however, will come in the first two months of 1999, when the U.S. team, in need of a complete overhaul after its France ’98 debacle, will face some formidable opponents.

The Americans are scheduled to participate in the eight-nation Confederations Cup in Mexico Jan. 8-20. Also taking part are world champion France, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Egypt.

In February, the U.S. team will play Germany and possibly Argentina in Florida. U.S. Soccer-- typically--has not announced these games, but the German soccer federation, the DFB, said on Friday it would be playing the U.S. in Miami on Feb. 6 and Argentina in the same city on Feb. 9 or 10.

All of which means that Arena’s team faces the possibility of playing the last four world champions (Argentina ‘86, Germany ‘90, Brazil ’94 and France ‘98) within his first four months at the helm.

Steering a course safely through those obstacles is going to require every bit of his coaching skill. And a generous share of luck.

REBUILDING

In his college days at Cornell, Arena earned All-America honors in lacrosse. In other words, he should be used to taking some stick.

And that’s just as well because if Sampson thought the criticism he received was rough, Arena will find his honeymoon a very short one.

The World Cup fiasco opened the eyes of many to the rose-colored view U.S. Soccer has of its national team and the players’ individual and collective ability.

To put it bluntly, the team was overrated. What will be fascinating to watch is whether Arena starts from scratch and builds an entirely new team, which is unlikely in the short term, or which players he salvages from the wreckage of ’98.

His task will not be made any easier by the likely refusal of club coaches in Europe to release American players for what they see as an unnecessary series of games.

For example, neither of the U.S. team’s top two goalkeepers are likely to be available. Leicester City will fight against releasing Kasey Keller and Liverpool will be equally stubborn about Brad Friedel.

That means Arena, unless he has a surprise in store, will likely turn to the Columbus Crew’s Juergen Sommer as his starter, with the Dallas Burn’s Mark Dodd as backup.

As the Washington coach, Arena is also likely to lean heavily on D.C. United players. Chances are, therefore, that defenders Eddie Pope and Jeff Agoos will be retained and that Carlos Llamosa might be given his first international game.

More intriguing still is the possibility that Arena will recall John Harkes to the national team. Harkes was controversially dropped by Sampson mere months before the World Cup, a move that ultimately backfired.

The question such a move raises is: Will it be viewed as a slap at Sampson or a correct decision given Harkes’ fine play for D.C. United this season?

Other questions: Will Alexi Lalas, with 98 games for his country, be given the chance to play 100 times for the U.S., or will the fact that he plays for Milutinovic hurt his cause? Will another MetroStar player, Tab Ramos, be selected, given his outspoken criticism of Sampson at the World Cup?

If German clubs refuse to release Frankie Hejduk and Claudio Reyna, who will Arena turn to for speed on the flank and playmaking in the middle?

Will Ernie Stewart be on Arena’s list or is the Netherlands-based forward’s international career history?

What about Eric Wynalda? Does Arena see U.S. soccer’s all-time leading goal scorer as an experienced veteran who can carry the team to the 2002 World Cup or a has-been fit only for the San Jose Clash?

After all, Arena has had a season of seeing what striker Roy Lassiter can do and Lassiter does play for D.C. United. So does Ben Olsen, the probable MLS rookie of the year, who might earn his first U.S. call-up against Australia.

Presumably, such players as Roy Wegerle, 34, and Preki Radosavljevic, 35, are history, for reasons of age if nothing more, but what of Thomas Dooley? Does the 37-year-old team captain and unquestioned leader get the last hurrah he deserves before retiring?

Two other Columbus Crew players are more certain of keeping their national team places. Brian McBride could be paired with Lassiter in the attack and Brian Maisonneuve showed all sorts of potential in France and could be a key to Arena’s new midfield.

The Galaxy’s Cobi Jones is unlikely to be dropped, especially not after the season he has had, but will other deserving Los Angeles players such as defender Steve Jolley be given a chance?

What about the Colorado Rapids’ Marcelo Balboa, who is 31 but still has plenty to offer, especially in Dooley’s sweeper position. What about MetroStar midfielder/defender Mike Sorber, a favorite on Milutinovic’s 1994 World Cup team, discarded by Sampson but now reunited with Milutinovic?

Presumably, Arena has been pondering such questions for several months and has his answers already in mind.

The first chance the American public will have to see its hopefully new-look team is only six weeks away. It is, in a very real sense, the first step to Japan/South Korea 2002.

Arena can be thankful Australia is the opponent. It could have been worse. It will be worse.