By Mike Woitalla in Nuremberg
When the final whistle blew, many of the U.S. players saluted the American fans who had created a home-field atmosphere for them in Nuremberg's Franken Stadium.
But Coach Bruce Arena swatted his hand through the air in three dismissive waves at referee Markus Merk and charged into the locker room.
He did not shake the hand of Ghana coach Ratomir Dujkovic at field-side, but outside the locker room congratulated the Serb for guiding his African team to the round of 16 with the 2-1 win over the Americans. The Americans exited in the first round after two losses and a tie.
Arena has been in charge of the U.S. team for eight years. He had replaced Steve Sampson, who resigned four days after the USA was eliminated from France '98 without winning a game.
Within a half hour of the loss to Ghana, Arena was asked about his future as U.S. national team coach.
''First of all, it's not my decision,'' Arena said. ''Secondly, I don't know how I feel about the whole thing. I have some other opportunities I need to examine as well.''
U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said, ''We'll sit down and analyze the situation. We'll talk internally and we'll talk with Bruce. We don't make decisions or solve issues by changing the coaches and then figuring out what went wrong.''
Arena is the first man to qualify the Americans twice for a World Cup and to coach the USA in two World Cups. In 2002, he guided them to the quarterfinals.
''As I said before tournament,'' Gulati said. ''Bruce isn't going to be evaluated solely on three games. He didn't become a bad coach in these three games. He's had an extraordinary record for us and has done extraordinary things for American soccer. And that's not in anyway a sendoff or a kiss-off comment.''
But Gulati admitted that a World Cup is, ''where the entire world is watching and this is where you measure yourself.''
''All of us feel a little bit like the 100-yard sprinters do when you work for four years and you've got 10 seconds to make it or break it,'' Gulati said.
The USA was not considered a favorite to advance from a group that included Italy and the Czech Republic, but neither was Ghana, which outplayed the Czechs in a 2-0 win after Czechs had trounced the Americans, 3-0. Italy finished on top of the group with two wins and a tie.
''The tournament did not go the way we would have liked,'' Gulati said. ''But when the balls came out of a hat in December, everyone understood we were in a very tough group.''
He said the federation's post-World Cup analysis will go beyond Arena's performance.
''We'll look at why we're not producing a few more players like Claudio Reyna,'' he said. ''We'll at why some players didn't step up in the way they should have. We'll look at the impact of the league [MLS] playing a different season [than the rest of the world]. All those things.''
In the postgame press conference, Washington Post reporter Steven Goff asked Arena, ''I know the game just ended, but do you think you'd want to go through this again?''
Arena said, ''The answer right now, probably not.''