2024 was a season to neglect for the San Jose Earthquakes, who gained six of 34 video games and completed with the worst report in Main League Soccer.
Clearly, a major rebuild was within the playing cards for the Quakes. However the scale of the change — and the controversial route it is taking throughout the MLS offseason — has many questioning if the franchise is aware of what it is getting itself into.
The Quakes kicked off their 2025 rebuild by hiring Bruce Arena as head coach. Enviornment, an American soccer legend, has 5 MLS Cups, 4 MLS Supporters’ Shields and two U.S. Males’s Nationwide Workforce teaching gigs on his resume.
However regardless of his clear bonafides on the sector, Enviornment has an issue off it: He’s, by
many
accounts, one thing of a ache.
“Bruce would not make it simple on anyone,” said Dave Sarachan, one of Arena’s longest-tenured assistant coaches, per Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Instances. “I may rely on one hand the quantity of compliments he might need given me.
“There’s days that you do not need to be round him. And he would in all probability say the identical factor.”
In September 2023, Enviornment resigned as coach and sporting director of the New England Revolution, a group he took from the dregs of the Jap Convention to the Supporters’ Defend and an all-time season factors report. Few particulars emerged on why Enviornment parted with the Revolution after a lot success, however those that talked about his tenure associated the identical previous story: He was grumpy and difficult and fell out with the Revolution’s supporting staff (h/t: Henry Bushnell of Yahoo).
For all of the controversy he attracts, although, Enviornment apparently by no means misplaced the help of his gamers. The Revolution reportedly refused to train after hearing about his departure. David Beckham called Enviornment the most effective man managers he ever had, and former MLS MVP Mike Magee adopted Enviornment to 3 completely different groups.
“Coaches on this league will hold guys out to dry and never care. After which guess what? That sh— hits the fan within the playoffs,” Magee told the Los Angeles Times.
“You see how Bruce’s group performs? That’s purely creating an atmosphere the place guys simply need to be there. You probably have 11 guys on the sector who would fairly break their ankle than lose the sport, you’re going discover a technique to succeed.”
When groups rent Enviornment, they’re taking a calculated threat. It is laborious to say whether or not his strategies shall be a shock to the system or simply what a group wants. In New England, he was each.
However San Jose is not simply taking a threat on Enviornment in 2025. It is taking a threat on the gamers who will work below him, too. The membership spent the offseason signing a sequence of MLS legends who carry the identical repute Enviornment does: wonderful on the sector however troublesome off it.
Colombian striker Chicho Arango arrived first from Actual Salt Lake. He put up MVP-level numbers to start with of the 2024 season however flamed out in spectacular style, incomes a messy four-game suspension for violating the league’s anti-harassment coverage. Subsequent got here Josef Martinez, a one-time MLS MVP who burned bridges with CF Montréal and found himself dropped for the 2025 season. Each are stellar attackers, however each have spent a lot of their careers mired in off-field drama.
Can Enviornment — no stranger to off-field drama himself — flip these males round and take San Jose from worst to first? Can he unite this disparate squad of curmudgeons and switch them right into a world-beating outfit?
It is laborious to say, however one factor is for positive: After its woeful 2024, San Jose is relying on it.
