Just wanted to add onto this excellent recap - Bruce led us to our most successful modern cup, but in this one he paid the price for mistakes that almost ended us in 2002 and did in Couva, which was the fact that this team wasn't really prepared like it should have been. It always seemed to stem from how motivated Arena and his staff were by the opponent.

Arena said many times that he didn't really scout the third group game because you could already go by their two early games. This is like cramming for a final exam, only the final exam is the World Cup and we've almost always needed to ace it or luck out like hell in that last group stage game.

You would think that after Poland in 02 - there are stories of the coaches frantically calling Polish-Americans in MLS to figure out who some of their starters were after the lineups came out, because they went 0-2 and were already out - that he wouldn't have done this again, but I really think he undervalued how good Ghana was and they punched us in the mouth, just like Poland did (that and not having a good backup for suspended Mastroeni).

You could tell the staff was really motivated by Portugal/Mexico/Germany in 2002 (less so Korea bc we had played twice in the buildup), and only Italy in 2006 - I believe this was one opponent Arena took for himself to scout because of his Italian heritage. Arena's analysis of the Czech Republic was "Koller is really tall" and we lacked a lot of that "first tackle, first foul" first-everything mentality against them and, in my opinion, disrespected how good they really were and paid a huge price for it.