Injury to Armas Leaves a Hole
The loss of Chris Armas to injury has left United States Coach Bruce Arena with a difficult puzzle to solve: Who to play in Armas’ crucial defensive midfield position?
Arena had no time to experiment Monday, first because the truck carrying all the U.S. team’s equipment broke down on the New Jersey Turnpike en route from Washington, and second because a thunderstorm blanketed the area with heavy rain.
That left Arena and assistants Dave Sarachan, Glenn Myernick and Milutin Soskic with time to discuss the problem.
Armas has been a fixture on the national team for the last three years and started 14 of the 16 qualifying games that earned the team its place in Korea/Japan ’02. Sunday’s 2-1 warmup victory over Uruguay at RFK Stadium was his 46th appearance for the U.S. but lasted only 24 minutes before he crumpled to the ground in pain.
The injury was first believed to be a twisted right knee and Armas played on for another eight minutes before being replaced by Pablo Mastroeni. An MRI exam Sunday night, however, showed that he had torn a ligament, thus ending his chances of playing in the World Cup.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” he said. “It was a very odd play, a movement I’ve made a thousand times. I had planted on my right foot and I felt the knee go. In life, these things happen.”
The 29-year-old Chicago Fire and former Galaxy player also missed the 2000 Olympics in Sydney because of an injury to the same knee.
Armas, from the Bronx, returned home to New York on Monday, but Arena made no immediate decision about calling in a replacement. Among the options on his list of 10 standby players are midfielders Brian Maisonneuve, Brian West and Richie Williams.
Arena was surprised by the severity of the injury.
“There was not even contact,” he said Sunday. “There was no one around him. It could have happened walking off a curb, in training, whatever.”
Asked his immediate options in defensive midfield for Thursday night’s game against Jamaica at Giants Stadium, Arena offered four names.
“There are a number of guys who can play there,” he said. “[John] O’Brien, [Claudio] Reyna, [Tony] Sanneh and Pablo [Mastroeni].”
Playing any of the first three there in the World Cup, however, would mean having to replace them in their respective positions. Using Mastroeni would solve that problem, but he has little international experience. Sunday’s game was only his ninth for the U.S.
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The U.S. team’s final warmup game before leaving for South Korea is against the Netherlands on Sunday in Foxboro, Mass. That game became marginally easier Monday when Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy withdrew because of a groin injury. Van Nistelrooy scored 35 goals for Manchester United this season in the English Premier League.
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The United States was drawn to play England, Chinese Taipei and Australia in the first round of the inaugural FIFA under-19 Women’s World Championship in Canada Aug. 17-Sept. 1. All three U.S. games will be played in Vancouver.
Europe
Portugal Coach Antonio Oliveira named the 23 players he will take to the World Cup to play the U.S., Poland and South Korea in the tournament’s first round. Only three forwards--Pedro Pauleta, Nuno Gomes and Joao Pinto--are included on the squad, the heart of the Portuguese team being its midfield, which features Luis Figo of Real Madrid, the reigning world player of the year.
Portugal will conduct a training camp from Saturday to May 29 in Macau and will play its last warm-up game against China in Macau on May 25 before opening against the U.S. on June 5.
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Valery Lobanovsky, one of the game’s premier coaches over the last quarter-century, died Monday at 63 of complications after brain surgery in his home city of Kiev, Ukraine. He had been in poor health for several years.
Lobanovsky coached the national teams of the Soviet Union, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Ukraine in a career that spanned 44 years as player and coach. He coached the USSR to the bronze medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and into the second round of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. He was best known as coach of Dynamo Kiev, which he led to numerous Soviet and later Ukrainian national championships and European Cup Winners’ Cup victories in 1975 and 1986.
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Turkey is imposing limits on foreign media and has banished four Chinese journalists, representing the Beijing Youth News and Chinese state radio, from its training camp because they were asking too many questions.
“They were asking repetitive questions about the team’s tactics or players’ conditions, as if they were trying to double-check things,” said Can Cobanoglu, the Turkish squad’s manager.
Latin America
Four-time world champion Brazil left from Sao Paulo for the World Cup in a chartered airliner that will follow a roundabout route. Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari’s team will stop off to train and play warm-up games in Barcelona, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before reaching South Korea on May 27.
Costa Rica left on Saturday and became the first foreign team to arrive for the May 31-June 30 tournament, landing at Kansai International Airport, near Osaka, Japan.
