4. Arena thinks Torsten Frings deserved a penalty. "If you saw the pictures or the videotape, it's pretty obvious it was a handball," Arena says of Frings, whose forearm kept Gregg Berhalter's shot from crossing the goal line in Germany's 1-0 World Cup '02 quarterfinal win. (Referee Hugh Dallas, of course, thought otherwise.) "Frings moved his hand a little bit and prevented the ball from going in the goal. It's a penalty kick and a red card," Arena says. "The unknown is, would we have converted the penalty kick? And then would we have had the momentum to win that game?"

Which U.S. player would have taken the penalty kick? "We never designate that," Arena says. "My guess: On that day, [Brian] McBride would have wanted to take that. Landon could have taken it. I don't think Claudio [Reyna] would have. I don't think [John] O'Brien would have. Gregg Berhalter gladly would have taken it, but I probably wouldn't have allowed it. My choice probably would have been McBride or Landon."

5. Arena has regrets and satisfactions from 2002. "I regret not playing David Regis in Game 3 against Poland," Arena says. "I wanted to sit Frankie Hejduk because I didn't think Frankie would have the discipline not to get a yellow card, and naturally he didn't and sat out against Mexico. I also regret not playing Kasey Keller in a game. It's completely against the norm, which says you only play one goalkeeper. But I know Kasey, and he could easily have played in any of those games, and we would have been equally successful. I could have played him in the Poland game or the Mexico game. However, one of my most satisfying things in coaching is that Kasey came back and has accomplished what he has. Now he enters the World Cup as the U.S. Soccer player of the year."

Satisfactions? "I'm proud of the way we got our team ready for the Mexico game," Arena says. "We'd played Friday night against Poland and lost, and then we had to travel home and have the team ready to play Mexico on Monday afternoon. And we changed our system completely for that game."

6. Arena doesn't pick the best 23 players for his 23-man World Cup roster. That's something to keep in mind in the days before Arena announces his final 23 on Tuesday on SportsCenter. You'd think the U.S. Olympic basketball team would have followed the same team-building advice in years past, but it hasn't happened yet. Consider Pablo Mastroeni, who barely made the '02 roster, in part because he got along with the other players and helped team chemistry.

"Pablo was on the fence, but he's a great guy and a good player, the right guy to have around," Arena says. "And he ended up playing a lot, which was good as well."

The same thought process went into naming Tony Meola as the third goalkeeper in '02. "Basically, Tony's role was to be the in-between [Brad Friedel and Keller]," Arena says. "What happens if one of those guys said, 'I'm outta here,' or you had to send one home? What happens if the other guy gets hurt? You've got a guy who's played in World Cups before as your No. 3. Does any national team in the world have that? So we had all the bases covered. A whole lot of thinking was behind that."

Clearly, team chemistry is a huge priority when Arena builds a team. In fact, Pope (a former North Carolina player) agreed with me when I pointed out that the so-called Anson Dorrance Theory (women play better with their teammates when they like each other) applies to men, too.

"It's definitely important," Pope said. "It's your job, so you do it, but it matters if there's a group of guys in one clique and a group in another, whether it's an extra step or slide tackle. I think it can it can come down to things like that. There has to be a general feeling of, This guy's got my back and I have his. When you get that feeling as a team, you just play better."

I found Pope, who may soon start in his third straight World Cup, to be extremely insightful when it comes to team-building issues.

"The chemistry with the '98 team was awful," he explained. "A lot of people say the team was bad, but I don't think it was about guys not playing well as much as it was about team chemistry. Guys didn't agree with coaching decisions, didn't agree with people on the field, and that caused tension. So you're going through the hardest tournament in the world, and your team's not getting along? It's difficult enough, but when you have that tension within a team you're just not going to perform well."

What happened in 2002? "The team chemistry was really good, and it's even better now," Pope says. "I feel like I could pick any guy on the team and go have dinner with him or hang out with him. We genuinely like each other, and that's important."