Arena makes impact on the world stage. Now for a future in England

Obscurity can be a constraint or a comfort. For Steve Sampson, whose American team prepared for the 1998 World Cup at an isolated chateau in France, it meant that regardless of the results, he would not have to find a sword to fall on when he came home – or duck one wielded by anguished countrymen. "In a lot of the world, the coach is held personally responsible," Sampson said just before the start of France 98. "But in America, the coach is still the coach, even if he fails."

The American team won no games, scored no goals, and came home to a vacuum of inattention. No one was harmed and Sampson's bloodless termination took place in public view without anyone noticing. For Sampson's successor, this security blanket feels more like a straitjacket. Soccer in America remains a quadrennial mystery, played by suburban kids, backed by billionaires. For all the numbers of the former, and all the money of the latter, it remains absent from even the most sophisticated sociological radar screens, jammed, as they are by the constant static of attention for the other football (gridiron), basketball, baseball and ice hockey.

Sampson's successor is that rare beast, an American sporting identity with a global perspective. Five days before their first match of the 2002 World Cup, Bruce Arena took his team by helicopter to the de-militarised zone on the border between North and South Korea. "Americans have tunnel vision, and the bottom line is to win a championship," says Arena. "So we invent baseball and call ourselves world champions. We invent basketball and call ourselves world champions. We invent football and we're world champions. They're not world champions. They're just the best team in a professional sport in the US.

"I happen to be competing in the only sport that has a true world championship. Our challenge is magnified thousands of times. Our situation is so much more complicated and difficult. This is the real one."

Arena made these remarks in an interview a month before the current proceedings in Japan and South Korea. At that point, he was merely the game's best-kept secret: a coach who had transformed every soccer team he had come in contact with. Arena was born 50 years ago in Brooklyn and grew up on nearby Long Island, the land appendage that juts out from New York like a hitchhiker's thumb. His best sport was lacrosse, in which he was an All-American selection as a midfielder, and he later played professionally for a year in Montreal.

Soccer and Arena sort of sidled up to each other. He played a year of professional soccer in Washington state, and had a stint as reserve goalkeeper on the US team. His first coaching job, as an assistant at the University of Virginia, was an afterthought; his primary task was assistant coach of the lacrosse team. This was in 1977. Between then and now – an upset 3-2 victory over Portugal last week that has given tomorrow's match against South Korea all of the international significance of disarmament talks – is one of those success stories that seem to have happened overnight only because no one saw what was happening.

Arena took over as coach of the university team in 1978. By 1995, the team had won five national collegiate championships in six years and was playing in a new $4m stadium, funded by a sponsor Arena had personally wooed. After a stint as the Olympic men's coach, Arena took DC United to two titles in three years in the fledgling Major League. He took the national team baton from Steve Sampson's unbloodied hand in late 1998.

"Once you stand beside Bruce Arena, you feel like a winner," says Jane Miller, an associate athletic director at the University of Virginia. "It's not just in the end results, or the scores of the games. He has great loyalty to his players."

That much is evident from the make-up of the US team. Two of its players, Jeff Agoos, and Claudio Reyna, have been with Arena since their college days. Inevitably, questions are being asked about Arena's post-World Cup future. A return to the American scene has all but been ruled out. But there is another, more intriguing prospect for a coach whose honesty borders on bluntness and whose impatience with questions can veer towards sarcasm. "I want to continue in pro soccer," Arena said. "Possibly I'd look overseas. I'd love to coach in England."