About that Geoff Cameron comment...

USMNT defender Geoff Cameron has recently said in a statement that coach Bruce Arena was key in the team’s poor qualifying campaign, and ultimate failure to miss out on the World Cup.

Whilst there is a lot of truth around this statement, many fans have created a toxic aurora around the incident, stating that Cameron and his teammates, not the coach, were to blame for the disaster that occurred a few months ago. To be fair, this is a fair point. With the exception of teenager Christian Pulisic, not a single player in any qualification game looked like they cared whether they left the game with a win, despite the fact that the USMNT were vastly superior, on paper, to their opponents in most of their games. Both Tim Howard and Brad Guzan made errors in goal at key times. Captain, or rather “captain” Michael Bradley had a frankly dismal campaign, however he will likely avoid a lot of criticism due to his poster boy status. He and other senior players should be ashamed of some of their performances. Frankly, when a teenager, with no experience at the international level, is showing more grit and guile than players who have been in the first team for longer than Pulisic has been alive, something is very wrong. Granted, the Dortmund man tailed off towards the end of qualification, perhaps through exhaustion if nothing else, however he was undoubtedly a shining light in what was a very dull, boring, and predictable team. 

Despite this barrage of criticism of the players, deserved criticism I might add, to ignore some of the blatant mistakes made by Arena and his staff only highlights how much of a disaster soccer in this country is currently in. Arena stuck with experience, despite seeing results from inexperienced players such as Pulisic and Jordan Morris, on top of witnessing massive mistakes from veteran players like Omar Gonzalez. Moreover, Arena’s inability to take criticism grinded the gears of fans, pundits and professionals to no end. Granted, the man did have some highlights; he handled the Mexico game well, despite making substitutions way too late, and he allowed his best player to live up, somewhat, to his potential by giving him a free role in the team. However, there is no excuse to mismanage and misinterpret games in the way Bruce Arena did. He knew the crowd would be hostile in both New York, and in Honduras. He knew the field would be poor in Trinidad. Yet he made zero changes to his game plan. You can’t play young, inexperienced players in games where the occasion is greater than them, especially when speed at the back isn’t as necessary with a striker like Marco Urena. Similarly, you shouldn’t play someone like Darlington Nagbe on a field that is akin to a cow pasture and expect his dribbling game to thrive. Arena knew one way of playing, with one group of players, and if that wasn’t enough to win on the night, only he can be to blame.

Cameron need not have come out and attacked his former coach in such a hostile way, particularly when he himself had poor performances during the campaign. However his outrage raises the question, did he along with his teammates feel this way during the entire process? And if so, why not try and enact change then? Arena and his players were arguably equally to blame for the calamity that occurred a few months ago, and hopefully over the next few years, the US can change their ways enough to become a powerhouse in soccer like they have the potential to be.