Jermaine Jones thinks Bruce Arena’s experience will help U.S. team , Bruce Arena (born September 21, 1951) an American soccer coach currently serving as head coach of the United States men’s national soccer team.
He is a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. Arena has had a long and distinguished coaching career and is considered to be one of the most successful coaches in North American soccer history, having won five College Cup titles and five MLS Cup titles. He was head coach of the U.S. at the 1996 Summer Olympics, the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 2006 FIFA World Cup, head coach of the New York Red Bulls, D.C. United, and LA Galaxy in Major League Soccer, and coached the University of Virginia to several college soccer championships.
Arena was born in Brooklyn, New York to Italian immigrant parents, and grew up in the Long Island town of Franklin Square, New York, where he attended Carey High School. He was too small for American football. He also played a single season with local club Hota S.C. of New York City’s Cosmopolitan Soccer League.
After graduating from Cornell, New York Cosmos drafted Arena in the fifth round of the North American Soccer League college draft. The Cosmos released him before the season. Arena then signed to play professional lacrosse for the Montreal Quebecois, spending a single season with the team in 1975. The National Lacrosse League folded at the end of the 1975 season, leaving Arena unemployed. At the same time, Dan Wood, who had recruited Arena to play for the Cornell soccer team, had been named the new head coach of the expansion Tacoma Tides which played in the American Soccer League. Wood contacted Arena and convinced him to move to the Pacific Northwest to play for him. While Arena was the second string goalkeeper behind starter Jamil Canal, the move to Tacoma was significant in that it introduced Arena to coaching. That year, in addition to playing for the Tides, Arena coached the men’s soccer team at the University of Puget Sound.
In 1973, he earned his only national team cap as a second-half substitute for Bob Rigby in a 2–0 loss to Israel. National team coach, Gordon Bradley, had called Arena into the national team for an earlier game against Haiti, but Arena could not get time off from his job teaching at a local junior high school.[8] In addition to his single cap with the U.S. soccer team, Arena also played for the national lacrosse team which won the 1974 World Lacrosse Championship and finished runner up in 1978.
While he was there, the University of Virginia (UVA) advertised for two open coaching positions – head soccer coach and assistant lacrosse coach beginning the 1978 season. He coached and developed many players at Virginia who would go on to play significant roles in the United States national team, including Claudio Reyna, Jeff Agoos, Ben Olsen, John Harkes and Tony Meola.To make his position even more difficult, he had agreed to coach the U.S. U-23 national team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where it went a disappointing 1-1-1. Despite the distraction of the Olympics, Arena managed to form his team and lead United to an improbable comeback victory in the first MLS Cup at Foxboro Stadium.The heavily favored team won its second MLS Cup at RFK Stadium defeating the surprise Western Conference champion Colorado Rapids 2-1. Arena’s success led to his selection as the 1997 MLS Coach of the Year.Arena took United to the semifinals of the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup.
On 22 November 2016, Arena was appointed as coach of the United States national team for the second time.
