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Arena Doesn't Back Down Day After Disaster

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Changes are ahead for the U.S. soccer team.

The Americans stunk like rotting bratwurst in their opening 3-0 loss to the Czech Republic, and need a win against Italy on Saturday to revive their chances of reaching the World Cup's second round.

After reviewing video of the clunker several times, coach Bruce Arena alternated criticism of players with humor Tuesday as the Americans tried to shake off the defeat and start preparations for the Azzurri, three-time World Cup champions.

Admitting that it was "very rare" to single out players publicly for poor play, Arena repeated his negative assessment of Landon Donovan.

"Landon's lack of aggressiveness in the attack, his running off the ball, his desire to make plays and be part of the game was not on last night," Arena said. "He knows that, and I'm sure he'll pick it up on Saturday."

He also challenged DaMarcus Beasley to accept his critical comments.

"If he's any kind of a player and a man, he understands that," Arena said. "If he doesn't, then he's not going to be able to help us in games two or three, either."

Defenders Oguchi Onyewu and Eddie Pope, and midfielders Claudio Reyna and Bobby Convey were the only starters praised by Arena.

http://sports.aol.com/worldcup/story/_a/arena-doesnt-back-down-day-after/20060613144509990001
 
Convey did well, but his crosses looked so weak. Onyewu started badly and didn't exactly play his "A" game but he did decently. I thought Pope did well too.
 
What's disturbing is the blame game going on. You usually don't see this with the US. Arena basically called individual players in public out before talking to them privately (can't remember when this happened before) and one of them, Beasely, shot back saying:

"I was always defending the whole time. That's how the game went. Next time I will leave the guy and play as a striker instead of a midfielder and then we'll see what happens."

Also, you know what else Arena did? He kinda placed blame on Keller for the first goal:

"Arena blamed his veteran goalkeeper Kasey Keller for 'putting the ball upfield where we have nobody' at the start of the sequence that led to the first goal."

I mean that play by Keller was a mistake, yes, but it was only one of 3 or so mistakes that led to the goal. Also, you know, Arena in 2002 gained more power than he did in 1998 by taking over the youth program. It's telling we haven't produced any Donovans or Beaselys (the 2002 version, which was quite good) this time around. The closest is Dempsey and he really didn't go through our youth program (not like Donovan and Beasely).

Almost all our promising youth are coming through (initially undetected) MLS (Dempsey, Szetela, etc.. ) or through Euro Leagues (Spector, Cooper, etc..). So, Arena has got to take some blame for this too. Only Marvell Wynne seems to be in the mold of the previous guys from our youth program. So, if Arena doesn't pull out some miracle here, it's really time we find ourselves another manager (personally I think we should go after a Dutch coach - against very weak opponents Arena's tried to get us to play "total football").
 
smh at Bruce . . . unless the U.S. some how pulls out a miracle against a much better Italian team, he is done as the coach, thats just my opinion. THe U.S. is not satisfied with just making the World cup anymore, we are not TnT or one of these other teams just happy to be here type teams. We are ranked #5 in the world (:lol: ) and he has to get his team playing like that, not throwing around blame and calling players out. The team that played Monday would have lost to every team in the tournament and another 32 teams not in the tournament with the way they played and that falls on the coach IMO. I mean it definetly was a tuff draw, and even if they would have played a good game they probably still would not advance, but c'mon man, atleast give the effort that you are capable of. 4-1 loss to Germany, now 3-0 to the Chex, I don't even wanna think about Saturday's game.
 
I don't think its a blame game...I think it is a "Take responsibility for your play" type stuff. Arena said it himself, he never does this. Maybe he is trying to light a fire under there a$$es so they can beat Italy on Saturday.
 
I blame the coaching as much as the players for losing 3-0. The USA team just did not look ready to play, no excitement, no emotion...this is the World Cup and they played like it was an MLS game in LA. :rolleyes: Look at the enthusiasm that Brazil plays with.
 
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