Did Bruce Arena resign or was he fired as head coach of the New York Red Bulls? Four sources told Steve Goff of the Washington Post, he was fired. The official word from the Red Bulls camp is that Arena left by mutual consent
It doesn’t really matter, says Paul Gardner in his column for the New York Sun: Arena was brought in to do a job — which we thought was to make the Red Bulls a force in MLS — and he didn’t do it. Never mind that he was only given a year and a few months to do it, this is the age of instant success. Red Bulls GM Marc de Grandpre nearly says as much: “Considering the resources we’ve committed to this club, we expect results quickly” — and by “results” he means an MLS championship.
Gardner, for one, has sympathy for Arena, because he was never going to turn the Bulls into a championship-caliber team in the given time period. The question now is, who do you replace him with? Sure, it would be fantastic to get the likes of Jose Mourinho or Fabio Capello — you can be sure MLS will try — but seriously, who can you realistically replace Arena with whom you could expect to bring home the MLS championship in one season? Regardless, the decision lies solely with De Grandpre, a man who Gardner notes has little, if any, soccer pedigree to speak of.