By Paul Gardner
Bruce Arena‘s performance during Monday’s phone-in will not be remembered as one of his most impressive … and no wonder … in getting rid of Amado Guevara he has made a move that, if I detected the right meaning for all the pauses and hesitations and convoluted reasoning, he is not happy with … to talk, quite correctly, of the Red Bulls’ lack of success over the years … and then tell us that he’s got rid of the player least responsible for that … the team’s current MVP … is as absurd as it is insulting to both Guevara and the New York fans … so where did this brilliant move originate? … evidently in Austria … where the Red Bull businessmen reside … they want star names … and who in Vienna ever heard of Amado Guevara? … I mean, a player from Honduras? . . . well, I have news for the Viennese Experts … who in New York has ever heard of Markus Schopp? … yet there he sits on the New York roster … a former Red Bull Salzburg player unloaded on Bruce Arena last year … and that is highly disturbing … Arena can do all the denying he wants … but at the end of the day (to use one of Arena’s favorite phrases) Schopp was not a player whom Arena sought … Schopp, in fact, is a perfect example of the sort of player that MLS does not need … a standard, far from brilliant midfielder … from a country that has no fan base in this country … Arena, the Viennese contingent permitting, will no doubt use his two allocations well … one of them presumably will be Figo … it is no secret that the Red Bulls are after him … more star-power than Guevara, more glamour … but an improvement on the field? … frankly, Arena had better sign Ronaldinho to make sense of this move.