INDIO — Bruce Arena has little left to accomplish and absolutely nothing left to prove.
He’s won more games with the men’s national team than any coach in U.S. Soccer history, won more games and more titles than any coach in MLS history and is the only manager to take the U.S. men to a fifth game in the World Cup.
So why, at 73, is he coming back as manager and sporting director of the hapless San José Earthquakes, a team that hasn’t had a winning season since 2013 and is coming off arguably the worst year in league history?
“This is why I do,” he said. “I like to coach.”
Maybe. But that’s not the biggest reason why he’s coming back.
Arena wants the opportunity to go out on his own terms and that’s not how his last job ended. In 2019, he took over the New England Revolution and, over parts of five seasons, lifted it from last place in the Eastern Conference standings to four playoffs appearances, a Supporters’ Shield and the best single-season record in MLS history. But midway through the 2023 season, with New England second in the conference table, Arena was placed on administrative leave amid allegations he made “insensitive and inappropriate remarks.”
Five weeks later he resigned and the league suspended him from future employment in MLS.
That was 19 months ago and though neither the coach nor the league has publicly shared what was alleged to have been said — Arena told ESPN he was just joking around with his staff in private — commissioner Don Garber cleared the coach to return to MLS last year after he had several meetings with a league-appointed psychiatrist.
“Following his successful completion of a restorative practices program, Major League Soccer reinstated Bruce Arena in March 2024,” the league said in a statement. And that’s all it said.
Arena was a bit more animated.
“I’m very angry about the suspension I had and I don’t want to comment any further than that,” he said as he polished off a hamburger on the patio of the Westin Rancho Mirage, the Quakes’ home during last week’s 12-team preseason tournament in Indio. “But it’s something that I thought was extremely unfair and I didn’t want to end my career like that.”
The ordeal has obviously pained him, if not changed him. For starters, he’s lost about 30 pounds since he last coached a regular-season game. And after speaking unfiltered through most of his career, Arena is now more careful and cautious in what he says and does in public and in private.
Bruce Arena gestures on the sideline during a match between the New England Revolution and CF Montreal in April 2023.
(Mark Stockwell / Associated Press)
Winning in San José won’t make all that go away. But it will help repair the damage done to an unparalleled career in which he won five MLS Cups, four Supporters’ Shields, four MLS coach of the year awards and five NCAA titles.
“Everyone around [me] wanted me to go back to coach again. They were more supportive of the idea than I was,” said Arena, who has so embraced his new job, he showed up hours early for games at the Coachella Valley Invitational to walk between fields, talk with fans and scout teams the Quakes will soon be facing.
And if anyone can turn the Quakes around quickly it’s Arena, who has performed more makeovers than a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.
In 2008, he came out of retirement to manage a dysfunctional Galaxy team that hadn’t had a winning record in four years; he took it to two Supporters’ Shields and four MLS Cup finals in the next six seasons. Eight years later he left MLS to take over a national team that was winless two games into World Cup qualifying; Arena got it to within a goal of the 2018 tournament in Russia.
And in New England he inherited a team that had gone three years without a winning record or playoff appearance. He led it to the best regular-season in record MLS history.
“There’s an increased commitment to be better. No question about that. We’re making steps in the right direction.”
— Bruce Arena, on efforts to improve the San Jose Earthquakes
The challenge Arena faces in San José is far more difficult than any he’s tackled before. The Quakes haven’t won a playoff game in 12 seasons, losing 62 more regular-season games than it won over that span. It put an exclamation point on that string of failure last year by matching a league record with 25 losses and breaking the MLS record for goals allowed with 78.
In many ways owner John Fisher has gotten what he paid for. The Quakes ranking 28th in the 29-team league in payroll last season, the fourth season in a row it finished in the bottom eight in spending, according to the sports business website Spotrac.
“What do people believe turning around is?” Arena asked. “I think making a team more competitive, being a playoff team is a turnaround. Our club isn’t in a position like the L.A. teams or Atlanta or New York City. They have the resources and we’re not at that point yet.”
How long it will take to change those results is uncertain.
“It could be five, six, seven, eight years,” said Arena, who doesn’t plan to stick around that long. “Who knows?”
To hasten that, Fisher has begun loosening the purse strings and as a result Arena was active this winter, acquiring former MLS Cup winner Cristian Arango, signing former league scoring champion Josef Martínez as a free agent and trading for Dave Romney, Mark-Anthony Kaye, Ian Harkes and Earl Edwards Jr., who all played for Arena in New England.
“There’s an increased commitment to be better. No question about that,” said Arena, who talked with a handful of MLS clubs before settling on the San Jose job last November. “We’re making steps in the right direction.”
But perhaps the most important addition for Arena has been assistant coach Dave Sarachan, who joined Arena’s staff at the University of Virginia in 1984 and was at his side in two stints with the national team and for three MLS Cup-winning seasons with DC United and the Galaxy.
“We’re more than colleagues. You could argue that, together, we’ve won more than most pairs in American soccer,” Sarachan said. “And it works. He’s a winner and I think I complement him.
“When this opportunity came, I know Bruce so well, he knows me very well, I knew we could reunite and challenge each other in this new project.”
Sarachan, 70, has been a successful manager in his own right, winning a Supporters’ Shield and two U.S. Open Cups as manager of the Chicago Fire, then replacing Arena with the national team and helping build the World Cup team the U.S. sent to Qatar. But his greatest successes — and Arena’s greatest successes — have come when the two worked together.
And Arena’s most notable failure came in New England, where he worked without his most loyal assistant for the first time in more than a decade. That’s why the first person Arena called after interviewing for the job was Sarachan.
Dave Sarachan runs with a ball during a U.S. national team training session in 2018.
(Matt Dunham / Associated Press)
“If you’ve known somebody for this long and worked with somebody this long, I don’t think anything surprises you,” Arena said of the partnership. “The biggest thing with Dave, you can trust them. And I found out the hard way that’s a valuable characteristic to have.
“This time around I’m going with people that can provide what I need.”
That goes for players, too, which is why Arena’s first move after taking over was to trade for Romney, Kaye, Edwards and Harkes.
“I love him as a coach, love him as a person,” said Romney, who made his MLS debut under Arena with the Galaxy, then played every minute of the 2023 season for the Revolution after moving to New England. “He’s been a great mentor in my life. I’m just happy to be with him again.”
On the field, however, the reunion hasn’t exactly jelled with the Quakes, who open their regular season Feb. 22 against Real Salt Lake, going winless against MLS competition in the preseason. Sarachan, however, isn’t worried.
“I know Bruce. He’s very competitive and he likes projects,” he said. “He’s a builder and the track record speaks for itself. There’s a template and I think Bruce has proven if we can get the right pieces and we have the backing of ownership, we can push this in the right direction.
“But you need some luck.”
If Arena pulls off another turnaround in San José, it would not only be among the most spectacular achievements in a career full of them, it would also allow him to ride off into the sunset on his own terms, not those imposed by MLS. But that day isn’t close, he promised.
“People say you can retire and travel and see things,” he said. “I’ve traveled the whole world. Where am I going to travel to? I’ve been everywhere.
“I don’t have a horse so I’ve never rode in the sunset. I wouldn’t know how to get on a horse.”