Last night's 2-1 loss to Trinidad & Tobago means that the United States will miss the World Cup for the first time since 1986. This is an unacceptable result for a national team fan. This is hardly a country built on soccer, but the manner of last night's defeat displayed the difference between a fan's disappointment and anger at defeat. USA fans should be upset.
There are plenty of reasons to be upset. One of them is not because Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras, who qualified ahead of us, have about the same combined population as New York. Size does not matter in soccer. Iceland has been a top-10 team in the world over the past eighteen months - they play with spirit and emotion. Our team doesn't have either and doesn't have enough talent (like Argentina) to overcome tricky opponents when not playing well.
One of the main reasons to be upset is because there were so many mistakes made during this qualification campaign that could, and should, have been avoided. We made a criminal mistake by pulling an England - firing our foreign manager halfway through the campaign to hire someone from our home country in a vain attempt to unite the team. Pulling an England in anything soccer-related is never good (see:Iceland) and while I voiced my displeasure with Jurgen Klinsmann, the solution was obviously not Bruce Arena. Bruce did a great job to take the team to the World Cup in the 2000's - the manner of our defeat in the group stages in 2006 showed that he was not a top-quality manager. It was established at that time that he had taken us as far as he could - something I praise and commend him for. So, 8 years with the LA Galaxy took him to another level? You've got to be kidding. Analysts spoke of his "long undefeated run" prior to last month's home defeat to Costa Rica, despite the only win of merit in that entire run being a 2-0 home win in the Gold Cup against Costa Rica, which was easily cancelled out considering we drew two competitive matches with Panama. The manager doesn't have the quality required and he was only hired because he is an American. Pull an England and you're going to be out of whatever tournament you're playing in. This mistake was visible from the beginning.
The players did little to help. Our players aren't overly talented but without question are more talented than at least Panama and Honduras. They played with no focus and no discipline under Klinsmann, which was somewhat understandable given that Klinsmann was never known as much of a tactician, and the players clearly lost faith in him prior to their heavy defeat in Costa Rica. Perhaps it is more disturbing that this did not change under Arena, who was brought in to be a uniting force. That we could lose to a terrible team who had nothing to play for, a team with one win to eight losses in their previous nine matches, says quite a bit about the fight our team possesses right now. We deserved to lose as well. We have several good players but they never seem to be on the same page, and once things go against us, there doesn't seem to be much belief. We picked up only three points from a possible fifteen in our road matches. No spine whatsoever.
It shouldn't be difficult for us to qualify for the World Cup, but expectations are completely out of whack with this team. I think Americans are used to thinking they are the best at everything, or can be the best at everything eventually, while any neutral fan can see that we are nowhere close to top quality. When Arena spoke of the difficulty of qualifying from CONCACAF this week, specifically "challenging" a European team to consider how difficult it is to qualify in North America, it showed a shocking lack of perspective. He is not incorrect that CONCACAF offers a unique challenge - weather and pitch conditions in Central America are no picnic. But I can assure Bruce that Germany would much rather play in a qualification zone where they only have to finish in the top 4 (out of 6!!) to either be in or reach a playoff. UEFA requires a first-place group finish to automatically qualify, while only eight of the nine second-placed teams go to playoffs. Italy, Croatia and Switzerland are among the playoff teams in UEFA; Panama (ranked 60th in the world) has an automatic berth. Bruce, watch some soccer outside of LA. CONCACAF is little league - UEFA and CONMEBOL (South America) are the majors.
After all that, there is a lot of hope for the future. Step one will be getting an experienced manager who can handle a number of different styles. It is clear that the players have not meshed well during the campaign and I believe this to be a result of half of the team playing in Europe and the other half in the USA. Obviously European clubs are of better quality, but it is the contrasting styles that are giving our team the biggest problem. Neither Klinsmann nor Arena could find a system or starting eleven that worked. Our new coach has to be able to combine the finesse game of Europe with the physical nature of the MLS. If we can set a tactical game plan, we have the best talent we've ever had in Christian Pulisic growing into a superstar. He will be good enough to carry us to the World Cup on his own in four years, so hopefully we don't take his talent for granted. I am embarrassed for our team last night, but can see how some relatively minor changes in attitude, from management all of the way down to fans, will yield much better results. The bright side of losing last night was sparing us the further embarrassment of being pounded in the World Cup next summer - maybe our team could learn more by watching than playing.
