USMNT World Cup failure: United States soccer had this coming

2. American soccer isn’t good and the U.S. doesn’t understand it

That might be because Americans simply don’t know how to play soccer in the first place. Soccer isn’t rooted in American culture, so the US hasn’t had the long-standing national conversation about the game that has dominated Europe and South America.

Americans quickly learned that their larger population and superior facilities gave them an athletic edge over the relative minnows of CONCACAF and they could out-muscle those nations on their way to World Cup qualification. American soccer has always been ugly because ugly has always been good enough against competition that doesn’t stand up well to the rest of the world. No CONCACAF nation has ever won the World Cup. Throw in some bounces and lucky results in a couple of those World Cups and you’ve got a nation that thinks it knows what it’s doing.

Jürgen Klinsmann tried to change that, and when the US wasn’t happy with the results they were getting, they fired him. Klinsmann might have been the wrong man for the job, he had his fair share of problems. However, his ideas—developing academies, encouraging European play, playing a game that was not built for the Hexagonal but was built for the Cup—were steps in the right direction. Which is why, whatever you think of Klinsmann’s tactics or player management, the hiring of Bruce Arena was a regression way beyond the mean and the death knell for American hopes going into the Cup.

Arena is a career MLS guy with zero experience coaching soccer outside the United States. In 2002, he won one game against Portugal to advance to the round of 16, where the team beat familiar opponent Mexico before being knocked out by Germany. That success carried his team to the 2006 Cup, where the team finished last in the group stage. Arena was fired shortly afterward. Arena won no other important tournaments as the manager of USMNT, failing to win a match at the Confederations Cup and winning two meaningless Gold Cups in five attempts.

Arena’s hiring is boring and unhelpful. If the USMNT is going to get better, they need to try something different. Maybe not with Klinsmann specifically, but with his ideas. Namely, that the US can demand more of itself than slogging its way through the Hex with boring physical play.

The United States keeps going to World Cups because it doesn’t play anyone good. The USMNT has historically only ever tested by Mexico, a team they know inside and out, and never see top-class teams outside of meaningless friendlies.The US consistently doesn’t do anything to make itself better and seems perfectly fine with the status quo, yet everyone seems shocked whenever they crash out of a major tournament.

The US consistently doesn’t do anything to make itself better and seems perfectly fine with the status quo, yet everyone seems shocked whenever they crash out of a major tournament. The United States would do well to recognize where it is in terms of talent and opportunity, take some stock, set some realistic expectations and learn how to play the game from nations that do it better.