Burning Man has been plagued this year with torrential rains, turning Nevada’s Black Rock Desert – where the event has been held every year since 1990 – into a gigantic mud pit, severely hampering the anarchic festivities. Numerous attendees have reported a lack of food, potable water, and sanitary facilities as the result of severe flooding at the site, and ad hoc rescue attempts have been initiated to move the approximately 20,000 Burning Man participants to safer locations in Reno and other nearby cities.
As part of these rescue efforts, BLM rescuers had to use ropes, winches and hoists to extract several attendees who were said to be “neck deep” in a vast mud pit located adjacent to the event’s “No Man’s Land.” It was during this rescue that Arena, 71, who has been the Revolution’s head coach since 2019 after stints with L.A. Galaxy, New York Red Bulls, D.C. United and the U.S. National team, was located.
According to a BLM spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, Arena was winched out of the mud pit around 5:00 pm Pacific time. The spokesperson said that Arena was dressed in “a buffalo hide loincloth and a rainbow-hued ballcap with a propeller on top,” but little else. Arena is said to be “resting comfortably” in a nearby hospital, recovering from “severe dehydration” that led him to “rant incoherently” at the time of the rescue. Hospital officials said that Arena was not available for comment at this time.
When reached for comment, Revolution management stated that Arena continued to be on suspension and would not further comment on the reasons for the suspension, or why Arena was nearly 3,000 miles away on the day of the Revolution’s matchup with Austin FC in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Nevertheless, one Revolution official – also speaking on condition of anonymity to The Nutmeg News – indicated that Arena’s suspension was precipitated in part on a “bizarre” training session speech during the Revolution’s Leagues Cup run in which Arena urged the team “to explore the inner recesses of their minds” and indicated that future training sessions and line-up decisions would be co-led by Arena and his new “Ayahuasca shaman” Carlos Tupac Amaru Jones.
The Nutmeg News will have further on this story when it is able to induce a comment from former Portland Timbers coach Gio Savarese, once he comes down from a 48-hour ecstasy trip he is currently undergoing in a semi-flooded wooden lean-to at Burning Man.
