A photo with President Obama after another Los Angeles Galaxy championship and a pine crate of Opus One, high-end red wine, from David Beckham and family.

Memorabilia from D.C. United’s early days. Team pictures and books, medals and trophies.

A closet holds additional treasures — markers on the timeline of an unmatched coaching career that, some 40 years after it began, has taken an unforeseen spin.

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In November, 10 years after Arena’s first tour as national team coach ended in disappointment, the U.S. Soccer Federation called on him to steady a teetering act.

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His mission is simple in description if not execution: qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Two defeats to start the final round of regional qualifying left the Americans in a tight spot and Jurgen Klinsmann without a job.

“There is no margin of error left,” Arena said Monday, 48 hours before he was slated to open training camp with 32 domestic-based players at StubHub Center in Carson. “We’ve got to get it pretty close to being right in March.”

March marks the next set of qualifiers on the 10-game schedule, home against Honduras and away to Panama. Half of the six teams will punch tickets to Moscow, a fourth will enter a playoff. The Americans are in last place.

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“Urgency is a word you can use,” he said. “Four points [from a victory and draw] would be good. Six would be great.”

Otherwise, the Americans would fall into jeopardy of missing the World Cup for the first time since 1986. Their perfect streak in that period is matched by only Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain and South Korea. Two of the appearances, in 2002 and ’06, came with Arena at the helm.

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What would it mean to miss out on the planet’s most popular competition?

“It would be terrible,” Arena said. “How terrible? Are there different levels of terrible?”

The idea of a World Cup without the United States is largely what motivated Arena to accept the position. We’ve taken too many steps forward, he thought, to take one back.

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He wasn’t looking to leave the Galaxy, which he had guided to three MLS Cup championships. At age 65, with five NCAA titles, five MLS crowns, a World Cup quarterfinal appearance and 2010 Hall of Fame induction, his place in U.S. soccer annals is eternal.

Life was good: a firm job, two grandchildren living down the street, the beach five blocks away, sunsets from heaven dipping over the neighborhood hill and plunging into the Pacific.

But after watching Costa Rica trounce the Americans, 4-0, in a qualifier on Nov. 15, “it would not have been hard to ask me, ‘Do you want to do this?’ ” Arena said. “The opportunity came for me to say yes.

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“I felt it was important. We need to qualify for the World Cup. This wasn’t about negotiating an extensive and detailed contract. They could’ve gotten me for free, for the most part. That wasn’t my motivation. My motivation was to take control of the program and get qualified for Russia.”

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The Galaxy gave its blessing. “Most employers would say, ‘You have a contract. We’re not doing this in 24 hours.’ I am indebted to them.”

Arena’s assistants who were still under contract were allowed to join him. The gang includes Dave Sarachan, his longtime sidekick and the victim of Galaxy budget cuts after the season.

Logistically, Arena has not had to change his routine. He wheels his Audi sedan 10 miles east to StubHub Center, home to both Galaxy and national team operations. He parks in the same lot outside the stadium. His new office is down the hall, maybe 100 steps from his Galaxy digs.

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He and his staff, which includes son Kenny, a former Oakton High School and University of Virginia standout, work full-time in Carson and travel as necessary.

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Klinsmann rarely used the office in Carson, instead opting to work from home in Newport Beach, 35 miles down the coast. None of his assistants lived in the immediate area.

To enhance the work arrangement with his staff, Arena proposed reconfiguring the office space and creating a command post of sorts. Work is underway.

The only other time he took over a distressed team in midstream was the Galaxy in late-summer 2008. The club fell short of the playoffs but began building for the long term. Three titles in a four-year window soon followed.

He has had to overcome national team adversity as well, though it was created on his watch during the 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign. The Americans lost three consecutive final-round matches, including that one in September 2001 in Washington “when we played Honduras in Honduras at RFK. We forgot to invite any American fans that day.”

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They qualified, then went deeper in the World Cup than any U.S. team since 1930.

With the current squad, Arena does not have the luxury of time and patience. He needs results. He’ll test newcomers at winter camp but, for the most part, turn to battle-tested players for the World Cup qualifiers.

To fans suggesting radical roster change, Arena said that “common sense has to prevail at some point. You can say whatever you want from the outside, but reality is, this is basically the nucleus of the team. You can’t blow it up at this point and as important as the game we’re going to encounter in March.”

So if the personnel won’t change much, what will?

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“Maybe part of the job is to make the group we have into a better team — taking what you have and making it better, make it more cohesive,” he said. “There’s a word they use for that: coaching.”

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The calendar poses challenges in building cohesion. Without any official FIFA dates until the next set of qualifiers, Arena will not be able to gather his full unit until March 20, four days before facing Honduras, probably at San Jose’s Avaya Stadium. The group will then have 72 hours to prepare for Panama.

“We have to close that gap in the next couple of months in terms of the way we communicate with them, see them, evaluate them,” Arena said of his foreign-based pros. “Because it’s not going to be done on March 23.”

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Arena traveled to Germany last month to meet with several players employed by Bundesliga clubs. He plans to head overseas again in February and March.

He’ll submit a provisional roster by March 9 — and then away they go, almost 17 years since Arena’s first qualifier at a sweltering outpost in the lowlands of Guatemala. At the time, Christian Pulisic, rising star on the current squad, had not yet turned 2.

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“I thought he would really want to do this,” his wife, Phyllis, said among visitors and her husband gathered at the kitchen island. “I had no reservations at all. I was happy for him. Look at him: He’s happier.”

“Dancing in the streets,” Arena replied, in standard gruff manner.

“You are happier,” Phyllis said.

“I wasn’t depressed.”

“You weren’t depressed. But you are happier.”

He finally conceded.