By Paul Gardner

Bruce Arena's performance during Monday's phone-in will not be remembered as one of his most impressive ...  and no wonder ... in getting rid of Amado Guevara he has made a move that, if I detected the right meaning for all the pauses and hesitations and convoluted reasoning, he is not happy with ... to talk, quite correctly, of the Red Bulls' lack of success over the years ... and then tell us that he's got rid of the player least responsible for that ... the team's current MVP ... is as absurd as it is insulting to both Guevara and the New York fans ... so where did this brilliant move originate? ... evidently in Austria ... where the Red Bull businessmen reside ... they want star names ... and who in Vienna ever heard of Amado Guevara? ... I mean, a player from Honduras? . . . well, I have news for the Viennese Experts ... who in New York has ever heard of Markus Schopp? ... yet there he sits on the New York roster ... a former Red Bull Salzburg player unloaded on Bruce Arena last year ... and that is highly disturbing ... Arena can do all the denying he wants ... but at the end of the day (to use one of Arena's favorite phrases) Schopp was not a player whom Arena sought ... Schopp, in fact, is a perfect example of the sort of player that MLS does not need ... a standard, far from brilliant midfielder ... from a country that has no fan base in this country ... Arena, the Viennese contingent permitting, will no doubt use his two allocations well ... one of them presumably will be Figo ... it is no secret that the Red Bulls are after him ... more star-power than Guevara, more glamour ... but an improvement on the field? ... frankly, Arena had better sign Ronaldinho to make sense of this move.