What's Wrong with US?: A Coach’s Blunt Take on the State of American Soccer After a Lifetime on the Touchline

I have been on a soccer book binge and just love the honest opinion that Bruce serves up. You may or may not disagree with his opinion. You may or may not like him as a coach.... but from my 40 years of playing and coaching soccer, he helped connect some of the dots of the behind the scenes meetings the general public doesn't get to see.

Bruce Arena is objectively the most successful men's soccer coach in the United States. Multiple champion at both the NCAA and professional club level with DC United and LA Galaxy, Arena led the 2002 United States Men to its best World Cup placing since 1930. In "What's Wrong with US," Arena recounts his career as well the disaster that was the USA's failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Arena points out the myriad problems within the way the Men's game is operated and proposes solutions. Of particular note is his description of how development of Latino American players has been stunted by American soccer officials. Bruce Arena provides real solutions the hierarchy don't want to hear. Bruce Arena deserves to be heard. After all, he's been there and done that.

This book's title is misleading, since it's mostly an autobiography of Bruce Arena's career with a few short essays slapped onto the end with what to do about US Soccer. The arguments that Arena has about changing US Soccer are the same ones we've heard since the NASL of the '70s, that we need to give more Americans more top-tier playing time. He also says we need technical directors in upper management in both MLS and the USSF. I cant say whether that's true or not, since I'm a spectator and never played, but these players seem to be getting pretty good technical direction somewhere.Honestly, I respect Bruce Arena for taking the United States the furthest they've been in the World Cup since the 1930s, but this book is light on information that you couldn't get from news articles, stats pages, and other books. I hate to say it but I feel like Arena wrote and published this book partly to make a quick buck off of our failure to qualify in 2018, and partly to cope with his own responsibility for the failure. On the latter subject, books like Soccer in a Football World have sung this man's praises enough to solidify his legend for history; he will be remembered for his successes far more than his setbacks.Arena states several times in this book that he is outspoken and speaking his mind has gotten him in trouble several times, but throughout this book it feels like he goes out of his way to be nice to everyone, from the president and vice president of US Soccer to all of the players he's worked with. Something definitely feels left unsaid in his opinions on others, as if he was afraid writing them down would come back to bite him. The closest thing Arena says to a negative opinion about someone is that Don Garber tried to get him fired for a petty comment, and that foreign players (including Americans abroad) are prima donnas that shouldn't be favored over homegrown players.Summary: I didnt think this book was worth the price for how little insight it provides. Its more like an expensive blog than a true book. If you're interested in buying it to find out what's actually wrong with US Soccer, you wont find any more than you would on a typical subreddit or blog post, sadly.

If you love soccer or are simply interested in learning more about American soccer history, this book is for you.

Thanks Bruce for telling it like it is. We needed to hear solutions as to how to move US soccer forward once and for all.

I write this review as we are entering the Semi-Final stage of the 2018 World Cup, a tournament in which I am still disappointed the US did not participate. Having read most of the analysis as to why the US failed to qualify, I was excited to see Bruce Arena write this book to hear from the coaches own words on what went wrong not only in qualifying but also with the US program as a whole. While I gave this book 4 stars, to me it is really 3.5. My main issue is the title since it only touches upon the issues with the US men's national team problems without a great deal of depth and while it presents ideas, Arena really could have expanded on several points. If you want an autobiography of Bruce Arena's career, it is a very interesting and compelling book, taking the reader from Bruce's early years growing up as a lacrosse player and later coach to his stint as coach of the University of Virginia soccer team to his stints with MLS' DC United, the national team's relatively successful 2002 World Cup, to his days with the David Beckham era LA Galaxy, and back to the US national team's disastrous qualifying campaign. The majority of the book details his career in all of these instances and how he dealt with the challenges each situation presented. In these chapters, Arena does provide his thoughts on leadership, coaching philosophy, and team management. In the chapters on his 2016 take over of the US team from Jurgen Klinsmann, he does provide several clues on why the US failed to qualify and beat or tie Trinidad and Tobago pointing out several factors ranging from the team's disorganization, fitness of some of the European based players, playing Costa Rica in New Jersey rather than a location with less foreign support, and finally field conditions in T & T.It’s in the final few chapters, he diagnoses problems with the US program with the main issues being lack of technical leadership in the US program and Major League Soccer’s focus on its business side more than US player development. He offers a checklist of what US soccer needs to do to move ahead and succeed on the international stage, some of which US soccer has already achieved. Its these chapters and this checklist that support the book’s title, but I felt Bruce could have expanded upon these ideas into a solid diagnosis on what is wrong with US. My feeling is he only scratched the surface on the issues and in this respect, it left me wanting more. Otherwise, it was not a bad read at all, it just did not fully accomplish what the title suggests.