Amazingly Graceless

Honest-to-a-fault coach Bruce Arena has D.C. United poised to win another MLS title

By Grant Wahl

Issue date: March 23, 1998

The best soccer coach in the country attributes his success to eavesdropping. Chronic eavesdropping, in fact, in one of the sports world's most sacred precincts: ACC basketball. In the 1980s, long before Bruce Arena's D.C. United won the first two MLS championships, he would repair to his office in Virginia's University Hall a half hour before each Cavaliers tip-off, and just before halftime as well. There without making a sound, he would sit and listen. What he heard wafting through the air vents was an education in coaching: Dean Smith's scholarly pep talks, Jim Valvano's comedic ramblings, Lefty Driesell's Southern plaints.

When your office adjoins the visiting basketball team's locker room, and you can hear everything that's being said, you don't waste the opportunity. "ACC basketball has been my greatest influence as a coach," says Arena. "Coaching is teaching, and for a long time I got a chance to listen to the elite coaches teaching the elite athletes of this country. Other soccer coaches were making trips to Europe, but I don't think that was half as educational as what I was doing."

The implication is clear. The 46-year-old Arena is above all a coach, an American coach. That he happens to coach soccer is a mere detail. Arena's approach is unique among his MLS counterparts; it's also why his teams win. "If Bruce had started as a football coach, he would be in the NFL right now," says United general manager Kevin Payne, "and he would be in the NHL if he were in hockey."

"Bruce reminds me of Bill Parcells," adds Arena's former assistant Bob Bradley, who coaches the Chicago Fire. "He's got the same sarcastic humor, but what's more important is that he sets a tone for the team. He never gets too caught up in X's and O's. Bruce's teams are always organized well, but he doesn't overdo it. He lets his players play."

Yet, like Parcells, Arena is a lightning rod for resentment, not only because he has succeeded -- he won five NCAA titles in a six-year span at Virginia -- but also because he never misses a chance to speak his mind. Last year, for example, Arena traded verbal jabs with MLS commissioner Doug Logan in The Washington Post. Outraged by United's overcrowded schedule, Arena said, "The way our league is operating, this is the worst coaching job in the world." (Logan replied that Arena "frequently only opens his mouth to lace his shoes.") In another memorable line, Arena said that U.S. Olympic officials were "too stupid to fix a draw" after his '96 Olympic team was matched against powerful Argentina in their opener. After his last game with the Cavaliers, a loss to Duke, Arena concluded that "what college soccer needs is more teams like Virginia."

"Let's just say his social skills are lacking," says one top college coach. "He's arrogant and self-serving, and he's not gracious in winning or losing."

Even Arena's most loyal supporters concede a few points. "Yeah, he's arrogant," says United defensive midfielder Richie Williams. "You don't want to get in an argument with him," warns Arena's wife, Phyllis. "The perception is that he's a bastard, that he's unapproachable," says D.C. assistant coach Dave Sarachan. "If you talk to almost anyone in our business, they will say that."

Arena grew up in Franklin Square, N.Y. His father, Vincent, worked as a butcher, and his mother, Adeline, drove a school bus. Bruce attended Cornell and in 1972-73 was All-Ivy League as a soccer goalkeeper and a lacrosse midfielder. Five years later he took over at Virginia. He credits his tough-mindedness to Adeline, who was discovered to have breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy when Bruce was 13. Soon after the surgery she was back at work. "When my mom passed away [in 1990], we went through her estate and giggled," Arena says. "She had managed to save $30,000 in a bank. How could this woman have saved that much on her income? She was remarkable."

As for his infamous statements, Arena has a single regret. "The one about the Olympic team draw came out wrong," he says. "Even though I know I was right."

From its inception, MLS has gone to Leninist extremes to keep one or two teams from driving the rest into bankruptcy. Beyond the salary cap, the league itself allocates each new foreign player, giving preference to the least competitive teams.

Yet by winning the first two titles, United has proved that what MLS calls "induced parity" may be a well-intentioned pipe dream. "Trying to have a league where everyone is equal in a competitive sense is an impossible venture," says Arena. "You can't take the human equation out of it. You can't create a fantasy soccer league."

D.C. is favored to three-peat this year, mainly because Arena has an uncanny aptitude for recognizing and developing young talent. Shrewd acquisitions like U.S. national team defender Eddie Pope (the second pick of the 1996 rookie draft out of North Carolina), midfielder Tony Sanneh (a minor league call-up) and goalkeeper Scott Garlick (another minor league call-up) have combined with the team's allocated stars (led by midfielders Marco Etcheverry and John Harkes and striker Jaime Moreno) to produce a brand of open, attractive soccer.

No player better exemplifies Arena's skill than the 5'5" Williams, a fourth-round draft choice in '96 and one of nine former Virginia players on D.C.'s roster. Not particularly fast, not particularly strong, Williams nevertheless has become the team's most tireless worker. "In England or Italy, if you decide your right back isn't good enough, you just go out and buy another one," Payne says. "That option isn't there in MLS. You need to help your guy become a better right back, and Bruce does that better than anyone."

In this era of D.C dominance, it's hard to believe that only two years ago there were calls in Washington for Arena's head. United lost its first four games in the league's inaugural season, a slump for which Arena, who was working simultaneously as the Olympic team coach, accepts the blame. "I didn't take an active enough role in the draft that year," he says. "It was pretty obvious we had some players on the field who didn't belong in this league." His solution came three days after a 4-0 loss to the Columbus Crew on April 13. Arena released five players, and by early June, United had climbed to second place.

At the same time Arena was learning that the adjustment from college to the pros wasn't really an adjustment at all. "I was ignoring some of the things I have always believed in, like requiring discipline from every player and a commitment to train the right way," he says. "One day I decided that if I'm going to go down, I'm going down doing things almost exactly like I did them at Virginia."

In Charlottesville, Arena always emphasized togetherness on his teams. Whenever one of his players had surgery, for example, he insisted on being in the operating room, even though he twice fainted after the first incision. That loyalty has carried over to MLS. To save on expenses, D.C. players Danny Care, Ben Olsen and Carey Talley have been living in Arena's house.

With two years left on his contract with United, Arena has started thinking about a move into management, whether with an MLS team or the league office. Though Arena says he would consider coaching the national team, he isn't expecting to be offered the post anytime soon. "There's no relationship there right now," he says of the U.S. Soccer Federation, "and there hasn't been since the end of the Olympics [in which the U.S. failed to get past the opening round]. I haven't thought about it much. I've got my own job to worry about."

That means that as the MLS season begins, Arena is already issuing complaints. He's angry that salary-cap rules forced United to trade its second-best scorer, Raul Diaz Arce, to the New England Revolution during the off-season. He's angry that the league hasn't awarded his team a new foreign player in the past year and a half. And he's angry that United lost three players last winter to expansion, which he thought came a year too early.

In other words, Arena hasn't changed. To do so would violate a tradition dating back to '76, when he saw the Cornell football coach leave the athletic director's office after being fired. "So the guy walks by me," says Arena, "and I'm saying, What a loser he is."

The coach was George Seifert, who went on to win two Super Bowls as the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. "Do you realize what that means?" Arena asks. "I'm in my third decade of sticking my foot in my mouth."

He grabs one of his sport sandals, inserts it between his teeth and laughs.

 

Related information

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video