Eight months after the United States men’s national team failed to qualify for the World Cup, U.S. Soccer took its first concrete step toward rebuilding the program by hiring the former national team midfielder Earnie Stewart as the team’s general manager.
The decision ends months of inertia around the national team program, which continues to play exhibition games and test new players even as it does not have a permanent head coach. The longtime U.S. Soccer assistant Dave Sarachan has been running the team since the departure of Bruce Arena, who quit days after the team’s loss at Trinidad and Tobago on Oct.