FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – At his introductory press conference two weeks ago, Bruce Arena made it clear that he would take a gradual approach to his duties as New England Revolution head coach.
Arena felt that first he needed to focus on his role as sporting director. That included high-level conversations with club executives, meetings with staff members whom he’d be working with on a daily basis, and an opportunity to generally evaluate the inner workings of the organization.
The past two weeks, then, have been something of a crash course on the club and its operations, and while Arena now feels he has a better sense of the task ahead, he also admits that there will still be plenty to learn in the weeks and months to come.
“I’m about one percent of the way there in this project,” said Arena. “It’s a lot to learn, a lot of things to evaluate. I’ve patiently tried to get a better feel for things here. I’m getting there, but it’s going to take some time.
“I’ve said this a million times – you never know a team unless you got inside it. It’s hard for me to even assess what happened before this. Now I’m here, now I have a better understanding what’s going on every day, so that’s what I’m evaluating.”
There is – and will be – plenty more to take on board, but Arena was confident he’d learned enough to add coaching duties to his plate earlier this week, joining the Revolution on the training ground for the first time on Tuesday afternoon. He ran the players through a session they described as “short and sharp,” and Arena was careful not to introduce too much new information too soon.
Arena is focused on a gradual approach, in part, because he’s been more than satisfied with the job that interim head coach Mike Lapper has done in his stead, leading the team to an unbeaten record of 1-0-2 while conceding just two goals in those three games.
“Obviously things turned over real quick when the change was made, and it was important that I had an opportunity to evaluate the situation properly,” Arena said of his early days with the Revs. “I thought Mike was doing a real good job, which he has done, and that made it a lot easier for me to step in today.
“I think a lot of credit to the coaching staff and Mike Lapper in particular, and the players, that they’ve – over the last two weeks – they’ve done a very good job.”
Arena said he couldn’t yet speak to whether Lapper would remain on his staff in a full-time role, although the possibility exists that Lapper could lead the Revs for a fourth straight game on Sunday night when they visit the LA Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park. That’s because Arena hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll make his debut on the sidelines in LA, where he coached the Galaxy from 2008 to 2016.
“Will I be on the field (Sunday in LA)? I don’t know yet,” Arena said on Tuesday. “If I think I’m going to be a distraction to the team, I won’t do it.”
Following this weekend’s trip to LA the Revs will break from league play for three-and-a-half-weeks during the Concacaf Gold Cup, and while they’ll enter the U.S. Open Cup during that period, it’s a perfect opportunity for both Arena and the players to continue the ongoing transition.
When the Revs return from that break they’ll still have 18 games remaining in the regular season – a little more than half the schedule – and plenty of time to get themselves back into the mix in the Eastern Conference, where they currently sit four points back of the playoff places.
That’s a process, however, that Arena knows will take more than a few sharp training sessions.
“They can get better,” Arena said. “They can only do that by being a better team, so we have to work on that process, and that process is both on and off the field.”
