This past week, the U.S. men's national team played its first meaningful games since Bruce Arena took over for his second stint as its coach. The Americans destroyed Honduras 6-0 on March 24 in San Jose, Calif., then earned a scrappy 1-1 draw with Panama on the road Tuesday despite being outplayed.
It wasn't the six-point sweep that many American fans hoped for, but it put the team one point back of third place, the final spot for automatic World Cup qualification, with six games to play.
The play was competent and straightforward, like Arena himself. After the eccentricities and constant drama of the Jurgen Klinsmann years, it felt refreshing.
Arena was his usual cantankerous self. Asked before the Panama game whether he'd like his players to have more fun, he cracked, "We're bringing a clown in for lunch today to make balloons and stuff for the players." He took much of the nonsense out of the American lineup, including dispensing with Klinsmann's quixotic quest to (apparently) select his fullbacks via random draw. Arena, on Jorge Villafana: "He's a left back, which is one of the criteria I think you should have for playing a left back."
Unlike Klinsmann, Arena didn't turn the rest of his lineup into a grand experiment, either. With the Americans' first-choice center backs out injured, Arena didn't suddenly try to turn midfielder Jermaine Jones into a center back, as Klinsmann once did. He just selected Omar Gonzalez and Tim Ream, the next two most experienced players at the position. He went with veteran, trustworthy players and put them in situations they have experienced before. It seems simple, but the choices paid off.
It helps that Arena is taking over at the dawning of the Christian Pulisic era of American soccer. The 18-year-old midfielder has gotten more hype at this point than any American player in history and, so far, he's living up to the plaudits. Playing as the organizer and creator of the American attack, free to roam where he needed to create offense behind the two American forwards, Pulisic drew raves for his calm, assured, controlling performance.
It matched Pulisic's performances for his German club team, Borussia Dortmund, one of the best teams in Europe. In the two World Cup qualifiers, he proved that he is both talented enough and calm enough to take the physical pounding in CONCACAF and still create goals.
It's impossible not to look at Pulisic and think that the U.S. squad will go as far as he can take it. He and the team might have the perfect coach, someone smart enough to build a solid team around the youngster, one that plays to his strengths.
