Arena-derci

The USSF has decided not to renew Bruce Arena's contract which expires at the end of the year. U.S. Soccer head Sunil Gulati said the decision came down primarily to "eight years being a long period." He said that "the direction Bruce has set is very, very positive," and that Bruce "didn't become a bad coach in three games with a few bad bounces of the ball."

Judged against the standard tenure of an international coach, Arena's eight year term was certainly uncharacteristically long. That makes this decision sensible. And from Gulati's words, it appears that the USSF does not feel the team is going in the wrong direction. Rather, the USSF apparently sees the need for a new presence and voice to guide the team along its current path to greater international relevance. We see this all the time in other sports where players stop responding to a certain coach after an elongated period (think Flip Saunders in Minnesota). Whoever the next coach is, he will enter a pressure-filled situation and will immediately draw comparisons to his predecessor, the most successful national team coach in U.S. Soccer history.

As for Bruce, rumor has it that the Red Bulls offered him a job. Stay tuned for Arena's next move.

Here's a list of candidates for the natioanal team job, a couple of which (Novak and Schmid) have been profiled in this blog on June 30 and July 8, respectively.