U.S. Hopes Depth Takes It Upward
Don’t tell Bruce Arena that Ben Olsen isn’t good enough, that John Harkes can’t cut it or that Jovan Kirovski is overrated.
Arena has been coach of the U.S. men’s national soccer team for 15 months and he knows all too well the shortcomings of every American player.
But he’s not worried about them. He has an answer.
“It’s not about having special players, it’s about having 11 guys working together,” he said this week in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where the U.S. team has been training for tonight’s Gold Cup opener against Haiti here at the Orange Bowl.
For the next two weeks, the fourth biennial Gold Cup tournament will be the focus of attention for Arena and his players. It is the first of two tournaments they will use to prepare for World Cup 2002 qualifying this fall.
The 12-nation event will be played in Miami, San Diego and Los Angeles from today through the championship game Feb. 27 at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
The last time the final was played there, in 1998, the U.S. lost to Mexico, 1-0, in front of 91,255. It’s about 50-50 that the same teams will wind up in this year’s championship match.
To even reach the West Coast, however, the U.S. team first has to get past Haiti, then Peru on Wednesday night, and then, if itadvances to the quarterfinals, probably either Colombia or Jamaica on Feb. 19.
It’s not an easy road, and when asked how he views the prospect of a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday schedule, Arena quipped:
“I look at it as hopefully I’m playing on the following Saturday.”
The U.S. is 8-4-3 under Arena, who became coach after the 1998 World Cup. So far this year, the national team is 1-0-1 after tying Iran, 1-1, at the Rose Bowl and defeating Chile, 2-1, in Coquimbo, Chile.
As always, freeing players from their European clubs has proved troublesome. Arena decided not to call in No. 1 goalkeeper Kasey Keller, whose team, Rayo Vallecano, is ninth in the Spanish League, or forward Joe-Max Moore, the former UCLA player from Irvine now playing for Everton in England’s Premier League.
The only foreign-based players on his 18-player Gold Cup active roster--seven players are in reserve--are former Bruin goalkeeper Brad Friedel (Liverpool, England), midfielder Claudio Reyna (Rangers, Scotland) and Escondido-born forward Kirovski (Borussia Dortmund, Germany).
The Iran and Chile games, a one-week camp in California and another week’s training here have helped the U.S. team to gel.
“That’s generally the issue with national teams,” Arena said. “They’re a collection of individuals. The challenge is, can you make your collection of players into a team faster than others.
“That’s what we’ve got to believe is going to be our strength. Because if you put our guys up on the transfer market, we’re going to lose every time in terms of the total sum [the international value of the players]. So we’re about being a good team.”
The American squad is deep enough that Arena believes he has two potential starters at all 11 positions.
“I think we can probably bring in another 10 or 15 players to this camp and they’d fit in well,” Arena said. “One thing we have is, we’ve got a good, solid base of players. So whoever we choose to go with, I think, does a good job.
“We showed that in the Confederations Cup [last summer, when the U.S. finished third, behind Mexico and Brazil]. It’s not always about who has the best players but [about their] understanding of how to play with each other and their spirit as a team.
“That’s one of our pluses. We might have that a little bit more on our side in CONCACAF than other teams, with the exception of Mexico. We go a little deeper. . . . We can’t afford to rely on only 11 players, and we’re not. So there’s no panic if Claudio didn’t get on the plane. We get on with life.”
Reyna is the playmaker, the creative force behind the U.S. attack, but as Arena was quick to point out, even he is not indispensable.
“When Claudio’s here, we get a little bit more of a special quality,” he said. “[But] we never worry about one player in particular. We can’t. Today, [because of] the issues with European [-based] players in particular, you’ve got to kind of plan your national team without them.
“If you tracked our team over the past 15 months, Claudio has only been part of how many games? Think about it, maybe three games? So it’s not like our team hinges on any particular player.
“You could argue that Reyna and Keller are our best two players, but they’ve not been part of us [that often].”
One area the U.S. lacks depth is the forward line. Arena hopes the partnership of Brian McBride and Eric Wynalda will carry the team through the Gold Cup.
“This is probably the first time they’ve had this much time together,” he said. “Eric’s starting to look more like a forward, which is progress. If you’d seen him in January, it wasn’t good. He’s gotten better every camp, which is a positive.”
Wynalda, the national team’s all-time leading goal scorer, likes Arena’s coaching approach.
“Bruce is very adamant about letting guys do what they do best, their strengths,” he said. “I think with the growth of the sport in the last couple of years, we’ve seen a lot of coaching, maybe even over-coaching. We have ourselves to blame because I think we’ve created players who are average in everything.
“If you’ve got a guy who does one thing well and is dangerous, you have to allow him to do that. Bruce is very good about that. His attitude toward that has allowed guys to really come out of their shells a little bit more.”
Behind McBride and Wynalda, Arena probably will start Kirovski as a withdrawn striker, Reyna as the playmaker and Chris Armas as the defensive midfielder. Two former UCLA players, the Galaxy’s Cobi Jones and Eddie Lewis, will be wide right and wide left, respectively.
Another former Bruin, Friedel, will be in goal, with a three-man defense of Jeff Agoos, Eddie Pope and C.J. Brown in front of him. Agoos could easily be replaced by the Galaxy’s Greg Vanney, however; Galaxy captain Robin Fraser could start in place of Pope, and Carlos Llamosa could edge Brown out of his spot.
For once, the U.S. is deep enough to actually have some options. Whether it is deep enough to oust defending Gold Cup champion Mexico, however, is another matter.
Soccer Note
The Galaxy defeated the Miami Fusion, 1-0, on a second-half goal by Mauricio Cienfuegos in an exhibition at Fort Lauderdale.
