A few things to note ahead of tonight’s match:
-Jay DeMerit is back in England due to his groin strain, but Gooch will be available tonight. [Yahoo!]
-Edgar Castillo has been cleared to play for the US MNT and is now available for selection (though obviously not for tonight). Jermaine Jones’ clearance is being held up because [...]

Bob Bradley has announced his 24-man roster for the two upcoming World Cup Qualifiers against El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago. Here it is:
GOALKEEPERS (2): Brad Guzan (Aston Villa: 5/3 SO), Tim Howard (Everton FC: 12/7 SO)
DEFENDERS (8): Carlos Bocanegra (Rennes: 22/3), Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA, 2/0), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover: 19/0), Jay DeMerit (Watford: 3/0), [...]

-Kenny Cooper is officially on his way to the 2.Bundesliga’s 1860 Munich. While it’s nice to see him giving Europe another try, you have to wonder whether this will help/hurt his US MNT prospects. Given Bob and Sunil’s MLS bias, this could just strengthen Conor Casey’s spot (*shudders*). [SI (warning: written by Greg Lalas)]
-DaMarcus Beasley [...]

-After just two games in the Gold Cup, Freddy Adu has left the US MNT to join Benfica’s preseason training. Hopefully Benfica realize he’s there. [AP]
-Jozy Altidore being loaned to Greek league champions Olympiakos? I think I like that. [New York Times]
-Hey, remember Grown Ass Man Eddie Johnson? Apparently he’s not only back to playing [...]

I said before that I was going to offer more thoughts on the Brazil match, but after reading all of your fantastic comments I realized we all know what the problems are and there’s no use in rehashing events that were so terrible and redundant and terribly redundant. So — let’s move on to some [...]

-Sounds like Landycakes won’t be staying with Bayern Munich after all. Says their chairman:
“Donovan is an interesting player. But when you have Klose, Toni and Olic already under contract, we think the fourth player [striker] should really be a young player with perspective.”
Awesome. So why’d you bring him over in the first place? [Soccernet]
-And yeah, [...]

-Coincidentally, it took 90 minutes to sell out. [USsoccer.com]
-The United States bids for 2018 or 2022 World Cup. Steve Davis says we’re going to get it, too. [Soccernet]
-Landycakes added to Bayern Munich’s Champions League roster. Could this mean he’s staying? [Goal]
-Maurice Edu set up a DaMarcus Beasley goal in Rangers’ friendly against AC Milan. [Soccer [...]

New year, new nuggets…
-Freddy Adu actually played in a match for Monaco! Believe it! Granted, it was just a friendly and Monaco was playing their reserves/youngsters, but it was against a nearly full strength Juventus side with Buffon, Amauri, and Del Piero all in action. Adu played the full 90 minutes 72 minutes and even [...]

I just had a #9 from Wendy’s so I figured it was appropriate…
-French website Mercato365.com is reporting that Oguchi Onyewu has already agreed to a three and a half year deal with Marseille worth about $4 million. Marseille currently sits second in the Ligue 1 table. So…Gooch in the Champion’s League? Thoughts? [SI.com]
-Celtic have apparently [...]

We haven’t done one of these in a while, so I figured we should break out the assortment of dipping sauces (including fancy sauce) and go nuts.
-Freddy Adu says his dream is to play in the Premier League (or just play anywhere at all…I think he forgets what the pitch looks like at this point) [...]