Now that we US fans have had a chance to sleep, hopefully the sting of yesterday’s loss is a little less intense. Mmmmmmmm Nope. Bruce really tore into the team and specific players yesterday in his frustration. Can’t say it was undeserved. But I’ve yet to read a single comment from him related to his game plan, which clearly didn’t work, and any mistakes he felt he made. 4-5-1?!?!?! Nobody thought that was smart. If Arena feels that his gameplan was sound, but the players just didn’t execute, we’re doomed. We’ve got nothing to lose against Italy so lets not stick with the status quo.
[Hat Tip The News Blog for this excellent picture]
I can understand Arena being frustrated. I just hope the players don’t take his comments to heart going into the Italy match. Keller told a reporter after hearing Arena’s comment about the kick to nowhere: "It wasn’t like I rolled the ball in front of the goal and let them volley it in." I think a little introspection by Coach Arena would be a good thing. The players know they didn’t play well, but hearing their coach take part of the blame would go a LONG way. There is enough blame to go around.
UPDATE: WorldCupBlog has the day after press conference from Coach Arena.
-Responsibility for defeat…
“I take all the blame. All. You can check all the boxes, you can blame it all on me.â€
(he says this, but it’s not too convincing)
Good for him – it had to be said. Now on to Saturday!
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June 13th, 2006 at 10:25 am
I’m happy you had the guts to call out Arena. In my post this morning, I had a whole paragraph about how silly his strategy/attitude is. I took it out before publishing.
You, sir, are an inspiration.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Well, Arena has forgotten more about soccer than I will ever know 🙂 He did change things up in the second half going 3-5-2, though why he felt 5 in the middle was necessary when we never seemed to have the ball there… But regardless of that, if you’re going to call out your players, you damn well need to take some of the blame. Maybe he did – but I haven’t seen it. At the very least I hope he told them privately.
If the players aren’t playign – the best setup in the world won’t help you. But for team dynamics, taking one for the team can be a good thing.
Its a risky move on his part – either it pisses off the players and gets them fired up, or they get resentful and do even worse on Saturday.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Spot on.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I don’t question Arena’s strategy (I agree that a 4-5-1 seemed a reasonable approach to both our strengths in midfield and slowing down Nedved and Rosicky). The problem is it didn’t work mainly because we made a few defensive mistakes and got punished by an expert side that took their chances well, not because it was a bad strategy.
Where I do fault Arena is not instilling more confidence in his team. They played tentative, not aggressively. I have to think that he could have drilled more aggression into their game play and urged them to play more positively in the game.
Listening to his press conference this morning, you could really sense his disappointment at how the team came out. But he did try to highlight the positive play (there was some to be seen, if you looked). In the conference he did take a good share of the blame for the match, but did point out that even if you have a brilliant strategy, that in the end it comes down to the player’s execution and yesterday our team lacked enthusiasm.
Yesterday’s outburst by Arena was very uncharacteristic but perhaps it was what the team needed. His forte has always been motivation and extracting the best from players. That didn’t happen yesterday, but his quality as a coach rests on his ability to motivate this team to 6 points in the next two matches.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:15 am
I think you hit it dead on Jarrett – the lack of confidence showed everywhere. The constant passes back to Kasey instead of driving/passing up field were probably the most obvious. But as you watched you saw a clear difference in what the Czech’s did when they settled a pass vs what we did. The Czech’s would settle and pass or take off like shots. When we settled a pass, we’d usually end up passing back to safety because of the coverage. It seemed like the Czech’s would ball handle around us often where we seemed to shy away from it and hope all passes would work, they didn’t.
I think it was clear the players did not want to deviate from their game plan. How many times can you pass to Kasey only to lose the ball. How many times can you send the ball deep into the corner, only to lose it instead of getting a cross off? A team is run by it’s manager – but the players also have to think for themselves a bit. If somethign isn’t working, well hell try something else.
I felt like I was in a scene from GroundHog Day yesterday. Settle, tentative probe, retreat to Kasey. Pass wide, pass to deep corner, lose ball. Lather Rinse Repeat.
The only time that seemed to change a bit was when Eddie Johnson came in with O’Brien. But it just happened less often.
I laughed as a youth coach because I saw our players doing one thing my more skilled kids do – they get the ball and jog upfield as the defense settles back, only to get sandwiched. By then it’s too late to get up to full speed and execute your moves. They need to settle and take off – don’t give the opponent time to reset. I didnt’ see the US do that much.