Ye Olde Green Wave Forum

Apparently the other one vanished. Bradley announced the roster for the first post World Cup Qualifier Friendly at Slovakia on Saturday:

Goalkeepers: Brad Guzan (Aston Villa, England), Marcus Hahnemann (Wolverhampton, England), Troy Perkins (Valerenga, Norway)

Defenders: Carlos Bocanegra (Rennes, France), Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover, Germany), Jimmy Conrad (Kansas City), Clarence Goodson (IK Start, Norway), Frankie Hejduk (Columbus), Chad Marshall (Columbus), Heath Pearce (Dallas), Jonathan Spector (West Ham, England)

Midfielders: Michael Bradley (Borussia Moenchengladbach, Germany), Clint Dempsey (Fulham, England), Benny Feilhaber (Aarhus, Denmark), Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA), Dax McCarty (Dallas), Robbie Rogers (Columbus)

Forwards: Jozy Altidore (Hull, England), Conor Casey (Colorado), Jeff Cunningham (Dallas, England), Eddie Johnson (Fulham).

isn't it a little concerning that neither of our back up keepers are actually playing for their clubs?

Perkins is the #3 in my mind, not Hannemahn and he's playing. Guzan is seeing some action in Europa Cup and stuff like that. I honestly think Guzan should split time with Howard in the rest of our friendlies leading up to the World Cup. Guzan will the #1 at Villa since Freidel is finally starting show signs of his age, but unfortunately it'll likely be after the WC before Guzan takes over as #1.

One interesting thing was that Bradley said there would a considerable turnover in the roster from Slovakia to Denmark 5 days later. I guess he means some of the MLS guys will join the squad if their bumped from the playoffs but I wonder if he'll also call in some other Euros or Torres perhaps.

One of Germany's goalies committed suicide last week by jumping in from of an ICE (inter-city express) train.

Yeah, he was the national team's starter heading into the WC. I think one of his children had died last year or something. Really sad story.

Rumored to be our new kits for the World Cup. The white one is confirmed, either the blue or red will be the road jersey with the other as an "alternate."

The red one looks like it should be a Trinidad and Tobago kit.

I actually like the red one and I think we need a red jersey.

I loved these:

US loses 1-0 to Slovakia on a PK. US completely dominated the entire match on a pitch that looked like no man's land from WWI.

Congrats to New Zealand on qualifying for the WC.

if someone could arrange for the US to get drawn into a group with South Africa as the top seed and New Zealand as the bottom seed, that would make me very very happy.

Unless US gets a seed, we'll have 2 Euros in our group like we always do.

The field of 32 is set for the World Cup after these results today

Algeria 1 Egypt 0 (Algeria qualifies)
Uruguay 1 Costa Rica 1 (Uruguay qualifies on 2-1 aggregate)
Slovenia 1 Russia 0 (Slovenia qualifies on away goal rule since aggregate was 2-2 but Slovenia had scored in Russia)
Greece 1 Ukraine 0 (Greece qualifies on 1-0 aggregate)
Portugal 1 Bosnia 0 (Portugal qualifies on 2-0 aggregate)
France 1 Ireland 1 (France cheats, I mean qualifies on a blatant hand ball by Henry, I mean by 2-1 aggregate)

Nations by region

UEFA

England
Spain
Germany
France
Denmark
Greece
Portugal
Slovenia
Italy
Slovakia
Serbia
Switzerland
Netherlands

Conmebol

Brazil
Argentina
Uruguay
Chile
Paraguay

Concacaf

USA
Mexico
Honduras

Oceania

New Zealand

Asia

Australia
South Korea
North Korea
Japan

Africa

South Africa
Ghana
Cameroon
Ivory Coast
Algeria
Nigeria

Draw is going to be held live on ESPN on December 4th

Any word on what kept Torres away from the team? I would think it would have to be very serious to keep him from playing right now. Hopefully everything is ok for him.

Impressive job by the ref and linesman in Paris. I don't see how 2 guys are offsides without a whistle with the way offsides is called (anything close goes the way of the defense). Then the dude before Henry tried to handball and just missed. If he'd have made contact they almost would have had to blow the whistle since his hand was way over his head.

Also if they were using the extra assistants like the are in the Europa League, Henry gets caught too.

All I heard was "personal" reasons.

http://msn.foxsports.com/soccer/story/10400046/U.S.-Soccer-should-consider-Hiddink%27s-availability

That's an interesting idea that I'd be all for. I can't imagine any way that it happens though.

Not happening. No way we fire Bradley. There was one window to fire Bradley, and even that was a long shot. If we didn't beat Egypt in the CC there was a small chance. Beating Egypt, Spain and almost Brazil guaranteed Bradley a job (as long as we qualified, which we obviously did).

Real Salt Lake wins MLS Cup 2009 on penalties. RSL was under .500 in the regular season, knocked out defending champ Columbus, then Chicago and then LA. Donovan badly missed a PK in the shootout.

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I can't believe they didn't include the 1950 US-England match, where England was supposed to win 10-0 and the US won 1-0. It was the soccer version of the 1980 US Hockey team's win over the USSR.

http://footballfanaticos.blogspot.com/2009/09/greatest-world-cup-matches-usa-england.html

Pots and seeds announced for Friday's World Cup draw (live on ESPN 2). A lot of people are claiming it's rigged, but even if it isn't, based on the pot the US is in, we're going to be in another "Group of Death." All the seeds are in Pot 1.

Pot 1: South Africa, Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Argentina and England

Pot 2: USA, Mexico, Honduras, Australia, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic, and New Zealand

Pot 3: Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay

Pot 4: Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland

US opens World Cup against England. Very good draw for US in my opinion.

Time for the Draw folks......

Group A
South Africa
Mexico
Uruguay
France

Group B
Argentina
Nigeria
South Korea
Greece

Group C
England
United States
Algeria
Slovenia

Group D
Germany
Australia
Serbia
Ghana

Group E
Netherlands
Denmark
Japan
Cameroon

Group F
Italy
Paraguay
New Zealand
Slovakia

Group G
Brazil
North Korea
Ivory Coast
Portugal

Group H
Spain
Switzerland
Chile
Honduras

Algeria is supposedly one of the worst sides in the draw, and Slovenia I would think was one of the better options we could draw out of the Euro pot. And we didn't draw Spain or Brazil.

I think it went much better than I expected.

England doesn't have a much of a keeper, although unlike in 2006 they actually have strikers now to go along with their defenders and midfielders.

I CANT WAIT!

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Damn.....just realized it's still December and not June