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Thursday, July 24, 2025

US' immigration policies are inspiring opponents - Arena

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2873 days ago
20170906

SAN PE­DRO SU­LA, Hon­duras - Unit­ed States man­ag­er Bruce Are­na says he be­lieves that cur­rent U.S. im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is be­ing used as a ral­ly­ing point by the U.S. team's World Cup qual­i­fy­ing op­po­nents, in­clud­ing Hon­duras.

Are­na was speak­ing at a re­porters' round ta­ble ahead of last night's crit­i­cal World Cup qual­i­fi­er against Hon­duras, when he com­ment­ed: "Our im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies are im­pact­ing peo­ple in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, right? And there's prob­a­bly a lit­tle bit of anger over that. Then your na­tion­al sport gets a chance to play the U.S.; I'm sure that be­comes very mean­ing­ful."

Are­na added that, even in the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal cli­mate, he has not talked pol­i­tics with his play­ers, though he ex­pects there to be near con­sen­sus on some is­sues.

"Every­one is pret­ty sup­port­ive of free speech and not be­ing re­stric­tive of peo­ple com­ing to this coun­try," he said. "We'd be al­most unan­i­mous on that. But I'm not around these guys all the time and lis­ten­ing to them talk pol­i­tics.

"I don't think pol­i­tics in­flu­ences our na­tion­al team pro­gram at all. I think we had a lit­tle bit of a dis­cus­sion when we went to Mex­i­co with the tim­ing and all of that. But I don't think it im­pacts any­body."

Are­na was asked if he thought a strong run in the World Cup could help unite the U.S. as it strug­gles through a pe­ri­od of di­vi­sive­ness.

"So you want us to win a World Cup, bring the coun­try to­geth­er, walk on wa­ter?" he joked. "What else do you want us to do?"

He added, "We'll get to that at the right time. Let's see if we can win a cou­ple of games now to close out this year and maybe go to a World Cup -- and then solve all of the world's prob­lems at that point."

Are­na point­ed to the ef­forts of Hous­ton Tex­ans de­fen­sive end J.J. Watt -- who has raised more than $17 mil­lion and helped dis­trib­ute goods to the Hous­ton area that has been rav­aged by Hur­ri­cane Har­vey -- as an ex­am­ple of what he hopes the game of foot­ball can do.

"I guess that is the beau­ty of this sport, that you can make some changes hope­ful­ly for the good. It would be nice if we could do things like that. I'm not sure [the] ex­am­ple of the World Cup is some­thing we're go­ing to ac­com­plish, but if we get there, maybe we'll try." (ES­PN)


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