Rather Incredible Soccer Fact

[Blade6119]

In a sport in which the mortality of National Team coaches has reached a crisis point, U.S. coach Bruce Arena is an aberration.

To appreciate what Arena has accomplished during his six-year tenure, you have to remember that he is only one of two coaches who has retained his job on a continuous basis since the 2002 World Cup. England's Sven-Goran Eriksson is the other and he'll become history after the competition in June or July, thanks to his attraction to controversy and scandal.

So basically, as eriksson is being fired, Arena is the only one of the 32 coaches from the 02 World Cup to have held his job since that tournament. Thats stunning to me that basically 31 of the best 35 or so nations have changed head coaches at least once in the last 4 years

[cartman]

Well, in South America and Europe, they take the continental championships very seriously, so if you don't win that, many times you lose your job, regardless of your team qualifying for the World Cup or not.

[Easy Mac]

And if you win, there's really no reason to stay on. The media pressure in the nations that care is too much to handle for more than 4 or 5 years. And in the smaller nations, its normally a rent-a-coach for a World Cup cycle (Bora baby!). I think the US finally found a born and bred guy who can help us win (Steve Sampson the Bruce is not). Of course, he's gone after this WC, so...

[AlexB]

A lot of national coaches over here miss the day to day involvement with a team, so I'm not overly surprised at this fact tbh.

South American football teams often change coaches 2-3 times in a single season, and the Asian and African coaches are often European guys on short-term deals, there for the money (look at Phillipe Troussier - he has coached four or five emerging countries in the last few years).

While it may seen startling, when tournaments are run on two year cycles, contracts generally follow this, while I maybe would have expected maybe another couple, if you had told me there were 7 or 8 coaches still there from 2002 I would have been more shocked.