Arena Fails To Bring Any Life to the Red Bulls

You have to wonder — does Bruce Arena enjoy coaching the Red Bulls? Maybe he does, but that's not the attitude that comes across. For some time now, Arena's public persona has radiated, if not boredom, certainly a lack of discernible enthusiasm.

Asked recently to sum up his first year with the club, Arena replied that the team had got better, had scored more goals, had achieved a few more points on the road, and had finished sixth out of 13 teams. All true, but hardly an inspiring list of accomplishments. There's the problem: Highlights this season have been few and far between.

The team is not a bad team. But it is, usually, a dull team. Quite similar, in fact, to the dull team assembled by former coach Bob Bradley.

This, you can be certain, was not what the Red Bull brass had in mind when they appointed Arena as coach in July last year. He appeared to be exactly what the New York/New Jersey MLS franchise needed. After 11 years of futility, the team had been taken over by billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz's Red Bull company, and its first significant move was to bring in Arena.

Triumphant at the University of Virginia, and in MLS with D.C. United, Arena had also been highly successful with the national team — until his team's poor performance at the 2006 World Cup got him fired. No matter, Arena was still, far and away, America's most successful coach. He was seen as a huge prize for the Red Bulls. Evidently a marriage arranged by the soccer gods, for Arena let it be known that only the Red Bulls and their "commitment" could have lured him back into MLS.

But something has gone badly wrong. For a start, the players that Arena has brought in simply do not add up to a team that is worth watching. Arena's very first trade was a colossal clunker. It involved bringing in Claudio Reyna — a long-time Arena cohort from UVA and the national team — and getting rid of Honduran midfielder Amado Guevara. Reyna had been playing for Manchester City in England, was nearly 34 years old, and was in the process of developing a reputation for getting injured. The injuries have continued, he has been only an intermittent presence for the Red Bulls, and consequently he has had little effect on the team.

The loss of Guevara — a feisty, flashy, temperamental player; one whom Arena had defined as "one of the best midfielders in the league" — marked the beginning of dullness. In came two more midfielders: Dema Kovalenko, a foul-prone ball-winner, and the straightforward Dutchman Dave van den Bergh. Strangest of all was the signing of a 36-year-old Dutch goalkeeper, Ronald Waterreus, another injury-prone player, who showed no detectable sign of being any better than the American Jon Conway, already a Red Bulls player.

The one undeniable success has been the Colombian Juan Pablo Angel, whose 19 goals have been a key factor in getting the Red Bulls into the playoffs. Yet last Sunday, when the Red Bulls opened the playoffs with an uninspired 0–0 tie against the defense-minded New England Revolution, Arena chose to single out Angel for criticism, claiming he did not "show" for the ball.

This was inexplicably perverse. Angel's response was that "there was nothing to show for," and he was correct. He had spent the evening chasing a succession of appallingly inaccurate long high balls and had, by my count, not received a single accurate on-the-ground pass.

The Red Bulls are still alive. They now have to win against the Revs up in New England this coming weekend. This is not an impossible task, but it is difficult to muster any joy at the thought of either the dull Red Bulls or the negative Revs trundling on toward MLS Cup.

Arena has been unable to inject any consistent liveliness into the Red Bulls' play, or to produce a team with personality. As it happens, that is a criticism that could be leveled at almost all the coaches — there were eight of them before Arena — who have tried to breathe life into this obstinately moribund franchise.

After the uptight, humorless years of Arena's predecessor Bob Bradley, it was to be hoped that Arena would lighten things up a bit. But Arena has brought not much more than his trademark semi-sardonic grin, and something rather new — this sense of personal ennui.

After the 0–0 tie with the Revs, Arena was asked if the result was good, or bad, or indifferent. "Indifferent" was not quite the right word, but Arena repeated it approvingly, and suddenly it was exactly the right word. The right word to describe what seemed to hang over the whole 2007 Red Bulls season; the right word to describe both the team's performance and Arena's attitude.

This cannot be the image required by Mateschitz, a marketing expert. The fact is that the soccer team has achieved virtually nothing in terms of getting the Red Bull name publicized and recognized locally. Any moves in that direction need help from the top — meaning Arena — and Arena has shown no enthusiasm for such a PR role.

I have immense sympathy for Arena's attitude, but in this commercial world it will work only if he produces a successful team. He has failed to do this. Not so much for the results — the team is still alive in the playoffs — but at the entertainment level.

The high expectations that Arena brought to the Red Bulls have not been realized. He may argue that building a team takes more than one season, but the promise of a bright future is severely compromised by the fact that eight of the new players signed by Arena are now over the age of 30.

But the most puzzling aspect of all remains Arena himself and the public image he conveys of a man not enjoying his work.

pgardner@nysun.com