U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said before Saturday's game that Bob Bradley would probably call in between 5-8 European based players for the Mexico game but said Bradley would not likely call up players who had a league match on the Sunday. For travel purposes, it wouldn't make much sense to do so, Gulati said.
The only EPL game scheduled for Feb. 4 is a Manchester United-Tottenham tilt. However, Standard Liege plays on the 4th. By Gulati's line of reasoning, Oguchi Onyewu then won't be called up.
Incidentally, should Mexico choose to leave players whose clubs play on the 4th out, both Barcelona (Rafael Marquez) and Stuttgart (Pavel Pardo, Ricardo Osorio) play on Sunday.
4 comments:
During the broadcast Arena said that Gooch was on the verge of moving to Chelsea and would not be called as a result--to help him get acclimated and to avoid burning any bridges with Chelsea.
Interesting. It would have been nice to have seen Gooch play under Bradley but I guess that'll have to wait.
Mexico has already named an all domestic squad. It would make sense if we did the same.
I think Sunil should clam up about anything having to do with player selection.
I actually think that the US should call in some Euros. I think you need to see what some of the United States' best players perform under Bradley and against Mexico. I think it's so early in the whole 2010 cycle that you don't really want to throw good prospects like Jonathan Bornstein and Kenny Cooper into the fire against Mexico without some top players at their side might be detrimental to them.
I think the U.S. would do fine with an all-MLS squad if some of the players were a bit more experienced but I think they need some experience alongside them on the field.
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