ON TREACHEROUS GROUND U.S. COACH ARENA KNOWS HE'S GOT TO DELIVER RESULT.

Byline: Paul Oberjuerge Staff Writer

SEOUL, South Korea - Bruce Arena, it's time for your 15 minutes of fame. Or infamy.

Arena is coach of the U.S. men's national soccer team, one of the stranger jobs in sports.

For nearly four years, you labor in anonymity in a sport dismissed back home as second-tier, and try to talk up your team and your game.

Then for two weeks at the World Cup comes pitiless scrutiny from a planet of soccer experts and rash judgments from American journalists who previously ignored you. Even as you scramble to deflate expectations and explain why the U.S. isn't ready to contend for, never mind win, the globe's greatest sports championship.

And when it's over, you typically are left twisting in the wind by an overmatched team and an unsympathetic federation, your professional reputation in tatters.

``This is different than any sport in the world and the magnitude of the event is not understood by the American public,'' Arena said the day before the 2002 World Cup began. ``And if I say anything about it, it just sounds like sour grapes.''

The U.S. gets into the World Cup against powerful Portugal in the Seoul suburb of Suwon Wednesday night (2 a.m. PDT Wednesday).

Arena is a sarcastic, sometimes caustic New Yorker who has enjoyed success and bruised egos at the highest levels of American soccer. Five NCAA titles in 18 seasons at Virginia, two Major League Soccer championships, a hemispheric championship with the national team.

But he enters treacherous territory as the World Cup rolls around.

Bob Gansler could tell you. He performed a miracle by leading an American college all-star team into the 1990 World Cup, where it was promptly pulverized. He was derided as a sort of global-village idiot.

Steve Sampson could tell you. His teams defeated national sides the U.S. never dreamed of beating and qualified easily for the 1998 World Cup. The Yanks went out in three games, and now Sampson is best remembered as the man who came up with the harebrained 3-6-1 formation and who was savaged by his own players even before the World Cup was over.

Now Bruce Arena gets his shot and he is finding out just how fine a line there is between raising American soccer expectations and managing them.

``We're not going to win because we're not a good enough team,'' Arena said. ``I don't think anyone is going to be damaged by us saying that. I mean, how many countries have ever won it, seven? I mean, c'mon.''

Then, on another day, he will say, ``We didn't come here as tourists. We came to play three-plus games and I think we can do that.''

``Three-plus games'' is the key phrase here. Finishing first or second in the four-nation Group D means a spot in the second round, which stands as the working definition of success in American soccer.

Failure to survive the three games of group play means Arena can expect to be looking for work within a month or two, and in the past half-century the U.S. has survived pool play only once - when it played host to the the event in 1994 and Yugoslavia-born Bora Milutinovic rode a tie and a victory fueled by an own goal into the round of 16.

For the moment, Arena appears to have the support of his players, who, it should be noted, appear more skilled than those available to his predecessors. But the U.S. must play Portugal, one of the best teams in the world, as well as co-host South Korea and Poland. Most global analysts figure the U.S. will go home after the Poland match, June 14.

Arena, 50, is the son of Italian-Americans from New York. His father was a butcher, his mother a school-bus driver.

He played lacrosse and soccer at Nassau Community College and Cornell, and made one appearance, as a substitute goalkeeper, with the national soccer team in 1972.

By 1973, he was an assistant coach at Cornell, and by 1976 had his own program (Puget Sound). Two years later he began his run at Virginia.

A quarter-century later, he has a reputation as an indefatigable worker, a stickler for details who scouts the opposition thoroughly, and meticulously prepares his players.

Arena has a reputation as a volatile boss. But as a coach, he is known for giving players wide latitude - as long as they work hard and show results.

There is not much subtlety in Bruce Arena's regime. ``He's very direct,'' Myernick said. ``Very black and white. For me, there's no gray.''

Brad Friedel, the veteran goalkeeper, gives Arena credit for restoring confidence in the coaching staff after the debacle of '98, when the U.S. finished last in a 32-team World Cup field.

``I think the staff did a very, very good job of coming in and making sort of a cleansing process in the federation,'' Friedel said. ``There really was, as everyone knows, a bad feeling. I know when I went back to my club after '98, I was a little embarrassed about the whole thing. We did not have the players that warranted finishing in 32nd. There were a batch of factors, some of them about the coaching and some of them about the players.

``This time around, those factors aren't there and there's a reason for it.''

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(color) U.S. World Cup coach Bruce Arena has the support of U.S. Soccer and his players, but he knows he has to deliver a positive result in this year's tournament.

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press