7. Guus Hiddink isn't Bruce Arena. Like a lot of other folks, I've always thought that Dutch super-coach Hiddink would be an excellent manager for the U.S. someday. Not that it's a pressing topic -- Hiddink is taking the Russia job after the World Cup -- but something DaMarcus Beasley said makes me wonder if Hiddink would be a great fit for American players after all.

Beasley, of course, plays for Hiddink at PSV Eindhoven. When I asked him to compare Arena and Hiddink, I mentioned a moment from the U.S.' 2005 behind-the-scenes DVD in which Beasley chases Arena around the locker room and sprays him with champagne after winning the Gold Cup title. Would Beasley dare do that with Hiddink?

"Definitely not," he said. "Hiddink isn't that type of coach. It's just a different way of coaching. I'm not saying one's bad or one's good. But with Bruce I can make jokes about him and he makes fun of me. With Hiddink we may go a week without saying hello."

Don't get me wrong: Hiddink's credentials are unquestioned, and he has a tie to the U.S. from his playing days with the NASL's Washington Diplomats. But this gets at an ongoing debate: Are American players different from their international counterparts? And how important is it to have an American coach who understands the U.S. soccer culture? I put both those questions to USSF prez Gulati.

Are American players different?

"There is some truth to that," he says. "We struggled with this very issue strongly when Bora first came [in the early '90s]. There was one word he hadn't heard in a number of cases with teams he'd coached before: Why? We're going to do X, Y or Z. Why? We're not going to have a water break. Why? That's partly a symptom of American society and education, and a positive symptom in most cases. Bruce has had a great understanding of that, whether from his university coaching or professional coaching or just a keen insight into the way that athletes and individuals in the U.S. think."

Is that a significant enough reason to have an American coach for the U.S. team?

"Everything else being equal, it's a plus," Gulati says. "But everything is not equal in life. I think there are certainly some advantages to having a coach who is not American necessarily but who understands the American mentality. Because we've got coaches who've been in the U.S. a long time who may understand it, and we have coaches who were born and raised in the U.S. who may not understand it."

Fair enough. I take that to mean that Gulati might not be averse to someday considering someone like, say, New England Revolution head coach Steve Nicol, a Scotsman who has been in the U.S. for years and is close to Gulati, the president of Kraft Soccer (which runs the Revs).

8. Arena and the U.S. get their props from '02 victims ... sort of. Top figures from the two teams the U.S. beat in '02 (Portugal and Mexico) had some interesting takes on those games. When I spoke to Luis Figo in Berlin in February, he had this to say about the Yanks' 3-2 opening-game upset.

"To tell you the truth, they surprised us," Figo said. "We were at fault a bit, too, but to beat the United States in that game was difficult because they were so well prepared."

I also rang Javier Aguirre, who coached Mexico in '02, and asked him if he still thinks about the 2-0 second-round loss to the U.S.

"A lot," he replied. "I believe that I made a mistake in that game. When it was 0-0, the U.S. was only defending, defending, defending, and Mexico was attacking, attacking, attacking. It wasn't in the plan that the U.S. would score the first goal. I think Bruce wanted the game to be 0-0 and go to overtime and penalty kicks. I'm quite sure of that. So when they scored the first goal the U.S. got stronger mentally."

Aguirre continued: "Me, I was very hungry because I thought we were playing better than the U.S. players, but we were down 0-1. So I made a big mistake. I changed everything. One player in the first half [subbing Luis Hernández for Ramón Morales in the 28th minute], and I changed the style of the Mexican team. It's why I think we lost. We were confused, and we had no control of our emotions. Everybody went crazy, me and the players, so we started to kick the American players and fight with the referee. We didn't play for 60 minutes of that game."

Then Aguirre adopted the same tone Arena did about Frings, citing an uncalled handball in the box by O'Brien with the U.S. nursing a 1-0 lead. "There was a very important play, a handball in the penalty box, by an American player," he said. "But the referee didn't see the handball. It doesn't matter today. It was a very hard defeat."

Notice a couple of things in the responses of Figo and Aguirre. One, Figo openly gives the U.S. some credit. Two, Aguirre is extremely honest when it comes to blaming himself for the loss, but he still can't manage to give any dap to the Americans. Fine. But if you read between the lines I think he's also saying that he got outcoached in that game. (Nor do I buy his assertion that the U.S. was playing for penalties. Counters, maybe, but not penalties.)