- Defeat at hands of Trinidad & Tobago knocked USA out of World Cup qualifying
- The States will miss the World Cup finals for the first time since 1986
- Claudio Reyna unleashed stinging criticism at his country’s football structure
Former captain Claudio Reyna has blasted his country’s football programme, a week after the USA failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia.
The United States finished just outside of qualifying in their CONCACAF final group and will miss the tournament for the first time since 1986.
‘Our approach and our behaviour to the sport here – to coaching, to everything, is just wrong,’ Reyna told Goal.
Matt Besler contemplates the USA’s elimination from World Cup qualifying
‘We’re far too arrogant. We’re far too obnoxious. We are egotistical having never won anything or done anything, and that’s not the case around the world.
‘When you have a disappointment like last week, and we’ve had past disappointments as well, and we’ll have disappointments in the future, but what we need to understand that it’s for me behavioural.’
Many US pundits have sounded off on the disappointment but none pinpointed behaviour quite like Reyna.
Coach Bruce Arena was brought on a year ago to rebuild the programme but now his future and that of US Soccer is up in the air.
Christian Pulisic wanders off following defeat at the hands of Trinidad & Tobago
Reyna, who has represented teams in England, Germany and Scotland, sees characteristics in international teams that the U.S. had yet to adopt.
‘We have coaches who think they’re better than they are. Across the board, we just think we do things better than we really do,’ he said.
‘Until we realise that we’re not as good as we think we are at all levels then I think we’re going to continue being what we are, which is mediocre.’