Soccer coaches with local ties were devastated and angered by the United States’ 2-1 loss to Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday night that knocked Team USA out of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
It is the first time since 1986 that the U.S. will not be represented at the World Cup.
“I’m sad, disappointed, concerned,” said Maine Maritime Academy women’s soccer coach Seth Brown. “In my soccer lifetime, we’ve always had a team in the World Cup.
“We need to take a long, hard look at the process and preparation.”
The United States (population 326,766,748) needed only a tie at Trinidad and Tobago (population 1,372,598) to qualify for the World Cup. But the loss, coupled with Panama’s 2-1 win over Costa Rica and Honduras’ 3-2 victory over Mexico, left the United States in fifth place among six teams in the CONCACAF (North American-Central American-Caribbean) region.
The top three teams, Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama, earned automatic World Cup berths and fourth-place Honduras will play Australia in a home-and-home playoff series with the winner also qualifying for the World Cup.
Trinidad and Tobago finished last and the win over the United States was just its second in 10 qualifying matches.
“It’s unacceptable,” said longtime Orono High School girls soccer coach Cid Dyjak. “There’s no way we should be losing to Trinidad and Tobago. It’s stunning. They don’t have anywhere near the resources or the numbers of players we have.”
“Something is not working,” he added. “This is a slap in the face of United States soccer. We’ve got to look at (US Soccer) hard. A defeat like that isn’t good for our game.”
“It was heartbreaking. It was very, very disappointing,” added University of Maine-Fort Kent men’s soccer coach Bill Ashby. “Everything US Soccer has done the last 30 years is designed to build us up so we can compete on the world stage. This is a definite failure. Somewhere along the way, we lost our way. We’re producing good players but we’re not getting the results.”
University of Maine women’s soccer coach Scott Atherley said even though he was disappointed by the loss, “I hope people don’t get lost in the emotion of Tuesday night.”
“There are so many indicators of extensive growth and development of soccer over the last 20 years,” said Atherley, citing the growth of Major League Soccer and strong play by the U.S. Under-20 and Under-17 teams. “I hope people can take a look at how far we have really come.”
There have been precursors to the U.S. team’s failure.
The United States men’s soccer team hasn’t qualified for the past two Olympics, where rosters are comprised of players under 23 years of age with the exception of three older players.
The coaches expect some kind of overhaul of the program, which could include a new president of US Soccer and a new head coach.
Three-term president Sunil Gulati is up for re-election in February. The head coach is Bruce Arena, who took over after Jurgen Klinsmann was fired last November following CONCACAF qualifier losses to Mexico and Costa Rica.
Former Husson University men’s soccer coach Jeff Gettler, now director of coaching for the Richmond Strikers Soccer Club in Virginia, feels Gulati should be replaced and while he wasn’t as adamant about Arena he noted that Arena had said it was his job to get the team into the World Cup and took responsibility for failing to do it.
“But the bottom line is that the players failed,” said Gettler.
Atherley feels Gulati should keep his job, saying “he has done so much for our country in terms of development. We’ve come a long way.”
The coaches feel U.S. Soccer needs to expand its soccer culture.
“We don’t have a culture of street players in our country,” said Gettler, referring to inner-city players. “We need a culture of kids who are hungry (to play) and who want to go out and touch a ball every day, kids who aren’t trained by coaches all the time.”
It was mentioned that US Soccer needs to ensure that cost shouldn’t prohibit players from getting the coaching they need, and Dyjak said it is important for coaches at all levels to allow players to be creative and develop their skills instead of over-coaching them and forcing them to be too structured.
“If they’re worrying about not making mistakes and losing possession of the ball, they aren’t going to develop,” he said.
The coaches are concerned that not having Team USA in the 2018 World Cup could impact the sport negatively, especially among casual soccer fans.
They also said it could serve as a valuable wake-up call that will expose the program’s deficiencies.
“I don’t think the whole system has to be revamped because they didn’t take care of business this qualifying (cycle). But it does bring up a lot of questions,” said Brown.