![]() Had you happened to be walking through the Puget Sound quad on some random afternoon in the autumn of 1976, you might’ve noticed a pair of young men wearing tracksuits and flagging down every male student who looked vaguely athletic. Let’s rewind just a little bit further to Arena’s first day on the job. “I told Frank: ‘You can’t do that, Frank,’” says Arena with a chuckle. That’s a story that involves Gallo rolling a joint in the Loggermobile. “Did Frank tell you about our first road trip?” Arena interjects his own question before the interview even starts. We rattle off a list of former players and coaches who we’ve spoken to, eventually arriving at Gallo. It’s to discuss his roots at University of Puget Sound. Arena’s Revolution have waited three weeks to play their first playoff game, and you can feel the eagerness as they practice taking penalty kicks.īut the purpose of this visit isn’t to talk to Arena about his current team, which is among the league’s greatest ever. Just a day before the club is set to meet NYCFC in the Eastern Conference semifinals, the mood is light. Moments earlier, he’d been leading the Revs through a spirited training session. ![]() His stature and reputation has swelled over the years, but those who were there from the beginning all seem to parrot a similar phrase when reflecting on their coach: “Bruce has always been Bruce.”īruce Arena sits at the desk in his corner office at the New England Revolution’s training facility in Foxborough, Mass. The view out the window is a nice one-a pair of lush, verdant training fields tucked neatly into the woods behind Gillette Stadium. Last November, the 70-year-old was named the 2021 MLS coach of the year, marking the fourth time he has won the award (previously winning in 1997, 2009, 2011).īut before the multiple national championships at the University of Virginia or the underdog run to the World Cup quarterfinals in Japan/South Korea, or his time leading the David Beckham-era LA Galaxy, Arena was an unpaid graduate student moonlighting as a rookie head coach.Īs origin stories go, Arena’s is humbler than most, featuring those long bus rides and a practice field with sidelines that were burned into the ground with gasoline rather than marked with chalk. Five MLS Cups, five College Cups, three Gold Cups, multiple World Cup appearances. Some 45 years later, Arena is widely regarded as the greatest coach in American soccer history. We’re hurtling down the road at 70 miles per hour. I mean it was pitch black in the back of that thing. Guys were laying up there, or rolling around all over the place. No windows, it had that little area above the cab, like some of them do. “They rented this U-Haul moving truck, I remember. “(Bruce) and his assistant, Frank Gallo, they called UPS and the school just said, ‘Get home any way you can,’” remembers former UPS goalkeeper Ken Tallquist ’78, who laughs as he paints the rest of the picture. The team’s coach-a 24-year-old, promising professional goalkeeper named Bruce Arena-jumped into action, heading over to a nearby payphone. A few older players made their way to a gas station, picking up some beers to kill the time. The entire men’s soccer team-some 18 players and coaches jammed together-emerged from this veritable clown car to wander the side of the highway in rural Washington state. ![]() Now, on the way back from playing a match at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, the Loggermobile had given up the ghost. Built sometime in the ’60s, it wasn’t really even a bus at all-it was a 15-passenger stretch Chevy Suburban, the type of ungainly behemoth typically reserved for use as an airport shuttle or an ambulance. Steam poured out from the grille of the “Loggermobile,” the University of Puget Sound’s team bus.
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