Jeff Cunningham scored his first international goal, but three second half goals saw the United States lose to Denmark.

As you can see from the highlights, the US MNT’s 1-0 loss to Slovakia wasn’t pretty, but they hung in there, got some good chances, and only allowed a goal on a questionable penalty kick (also, good job spelling Marek Hamsik’s name wrong, USsoccer.com).

There really isn’t too much you can say about this match. It was a friendly, the roster was missing some key components, and there were only about 37 people in attendance. So, yeah, there it is.

Looking ahead to Denmark, Bob’s side will be slightly different as Cherundolo, Dempsey, and Chad Marshall have all been given back to their club teams, with Ricardo Clark, Stu Holden, and new boy Edgar Castillo taking their spots in the team. This is Castillo’s first call for the US, after FIFA’s recent rule change allowed him to switch allegiances from Mexico.

Like Jose Francisco Torres — who was excused from the squad for personal reasons — Castillo plays in the Mexican Primera division and could prove worthy of major minutes at left back. If nothing else, the Denmark match should be interesting just to see how Castillo factors in.

Marcus Hahnemann is back in the US MNT roster with his new ride (hint: it’s his bike — don’t get you hopes up for a pimped out 1970s army tank or something), but first, the best news of the week from The AP:

U.S. forward Charlie Davies was released from a Washington hospital on Tuesday nearly a month after a car accident killed a fellow passenger. [...]

In a statement, Dr. James DeBritz of Washington Hospital Center said Davies will rehabilitate with the national team staff.

DeBritz said it will take extensive physical therapy for Davies to recover from several broken bones, including two in his right leg, and a lacerated bladder.

Davies is expected to need six to 12 months to recover, essentially ruling him out of the World Cup, which begins in South Africa in June.

So Charlie is thankfully now on the long road to recovery and while he won’t be with the team for the World Cup, I’m sure the boys will use him as inspiration in South Africa and hopefully we’ll see Charlie back in uniform sooner.

And now for the full 22-man roster for the Slovakia friendly:

GOALKEEPERS (3): Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Marcus Hahnemann (Wolverhampton), Troy Perkins (Valerenga)

DEFENDERS (9): Carlos Bocanegra (Rennes), Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover), Jimmy Conrad (Kansas City Wizards), Clarence Goodson (IK Start), Frankie Hejduk (Columbus Crew), Chad Marshall (Columbus Crew), Heath Pearce (FC Dallas), Jonathan Spector (West Ham)

MIDFIELDERS (6): Michael Bradley (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Clint Dempsey (Fulham), Benny Feilhaber (AGF Aarhus), Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA), Dax McCarty (FC Dallas), Robbie Rogers (Columbus Crew)

FORWARDS (4): Jozy Altidore (Hull City), Conor Casey (Colorado Rapids), Jeff Cunningham (FC Dallas), Eddie Johnson (Fulham)

Most notably absent from that group are Tim Howard and Landon Donovan, but since this match doesn’t really count for anything other than a practice test, that makes sense.

Dax McCarty and MLS leading goalscorer Jeff Cunningham (he finished the regular season with 17 goals — one more than Conor Casey and five more than Landon) are a couple of interesting additions, with the latter perhaps auditioning for a last-chance move to Europe.

Also, hey look! The Grown Ass Man is back! Amazing what scoring a brace for the Fulham reserves can do for your career.

For the last time, it’s pronounced HUE-clees!

The Boston Breakers site just announced Angela Hucles is retiring from professional soccer. She says:

I always wanted to involve myself in things I was passionate about and give 110 percent. I feel like I’ve come to a point where I no longer can give that much and I know that there are other players who are ready to step up to the plate in order to bring the World Cup trophy back to the U.S. and carry on the growth of professional women’s soccer in the United States as well.

Sounds like there were a lot of deep thoughts happening in the Hucles household recently. And she will certainly be missed during the US Women’s upcoming friendly against Germany later this month (I’ll have the usual half-assed preview up soon). Hucles has been a rock in the midfield since 2002 who helped us win gold medals in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. And during the 2008 games, she was one of the players chosen to fill in for the injured Abby Wambach. At the end of it all, she wound up the leading scorer for the team with four goals.

Talk about going out with a bang! And her parting professional words ring true because today Pia called up “uncapped with the senior team” Ella Masar to travel to Germany instead.

(Yeah so the USMNT qualified for their World Cup but coming up it will be the women’s turn to qualify for 2011. Stay tuned… uh, just as soon as CONCACAF schedule the qualifiers.)

Two different fates for a couple of up and coming, ok the hell with it, a couple of US National Team stars ended this week of European club football. One good and one… ehh.

Let’s start with the good. Jozy Altidore.

After much speculation since pretty much the day he signed with Villarreal, Jozy has finally been loaned out to second division leaders Xerez. Jozy has been beginning to see his playing appearances wane as the season has moved on towards crunch time, and now he will be provided with more opportunities for a club in its very own serious crunch time, fighting for promotion to the primera division. While he is dropping down a division, and remains a supremely talented young player, I do have some worry that because he is coming into a first place team midway through the season, they may not want to reshuffle the striker lineup to accommodate his playing time needs. But, as it seems like Villarreal was scouting out some loan move for quite an amount of time (turning down Everton, original Recretivo talk, etc.), they probably have some agreement in there to get Jozy his minutes and keep him progressing. He’ll be back at the Submarine next year.

Now the ehh.

After what was, by all accounts, a tremendously successful trial for Gordan Strachan’s Celtic FC, the club has turned down the chance to sign Sacha Kljestan at the 3.5 million dollar price set by Major League Soccer. Putting on a hat trick show for the Nats last last week at the Home Depot Center against Sweden, Sacha will now find himself playing his club ball there once again for Chivas USA. While I am disappointed this move didn’t go down for Sacha’s chance to move to a big club, including the chance of a sick “Kljestan” Hooped kit on the market, he will go back to the steady environment he knows and probably produce even better in the coming months while continuing to earn his now regular call-ups. He should be able to put himself even more in the shop window if he continues his performances on the international stage, and probably fashion a move to a better fitting club then Celtic who ply their trade in the anti-footy league that is the SPL. Remember, other clubs such as Feyernood were reported to have interest, so he should have a multitude of options come Summer time. A few more months of MLS shouldn’t kill him.

[Sources: Goal.com , SBI]

Sacha scored his first goal for US MNT last night and liked it so much that he decided to follow it up with two more. The first was a Ronaldinho-esque free kick that should have make Celtic’s decision on whether to make an offer a little bit easier.

More later…

Personally, I’m most looking forward to seeing Kenny Cooper and Charlie Davies back in action. Both have shown flashes of becoming valuable members of this time in the little time they’ve had on the pitch and if they perform well again on Saturday that could go a long way toward proving to Captain Bob that they deserve regular spots on the squad once the matches become more meaningful.

Another guy who is back with the MNT is Sacha Kljestan, who just returned from a week’s spell training with Celtic in Glasgow. The original rumor was that the Scottish giants would make a decision by today (Friday) as to whether they would offer him a contract or not. But, as the BBC reports, they’ve set the deadline at 24 hours from today, but manager Gordon Strachan isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to add fresh blood:

“If we don’t bring anybody in between now and next week, I don’t have a problem.

“Because, although it will be hard, I feel that I can deal with the players here to win another championship.”

“It’s been shown over the years that the signings at this time have been beneficial to the club,” he said.

“But you usually find that most of the action happens in the last three or four days.”

Said Sacha:

“I had really good experience at Celtic, and now I’m excited to back and getting ready to play against Sweden.The only future I’m focusing on right now is trying to put in a good performance tomorrow night.”

Meanwhile, Landon Donovan has continued to beast it on Bayern Munich’s midseason friendly tour, scoring two more goals in his team’s 5-0 drubbing of Mainz. That gives him a total of four goals now for Bayern, which should be enough to earn him some solid playing time once the Bundesliga season resumes. Here are both his goals from that last match:

And if you want to find out the real story behind his European Adventure of Epic Broportions, check out Dirty Tackle for the inside scoop right from Carter’s Landon’s own emails to his bros back home.

Oh and one final programming note: Carter and I won’t be liveblogging the Sweden match. We need to save up all our liveblogging juices for the showdown against Mexico next month. So…prepare yourselves. And maybe buy yourself a raincoat.

-It seems Landycakes is already building a fanbase in Germany. A quick scan of YouTube turns up a number of videos welcoming him to Bayern and showing off his talents (set to techno music, of course)…

UPDATE: Oh, and he scored in another friendly today. Luca Toni scored the other goal. No word on whether that was the only time Luca scored after Landon today.

-I know a few of you have been asking about it, so here’s the full schedule via USsoccer.com:

U.S. Men’s National Team 2009 Schedule
Date Opponent Venue Time
Jan. 24 Sweden The Home Depot Center; Carson, Calif. 5:30 p.m. PT
Feb. 11 Mexico* Columbus Crew Stadium; Columbus, Ohio 7 p.m. ET
March 28 El Salvador* Away (Venue TBD) TBD
April 1 Trinidad & Tobago* Home (Venue TBD) TBD
June 3 Costa Rica* Away (Venue TBD) TBD
June 6 Honduras* Home (Venue TBD) TBD
June 15 Italy # Loftus Versfeld; Tshwane/Pretoria 8:30 p.m. / 2:30 p.m. ET
June 18 Brazil # Loftus Versfeld; Tshwane/Pretoria 4 p.m. / 10 a.m. ET
June 21 Egypt # Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace; Rustenburg 8:30 p.m. / 2:30 p.m. ET
July 3-26 CONCACAF Gold Cup TBD TBD
Aug. 12 Mexico* Away (Venue TBD) TBD
Sept. 5 El Salvador* Home (Venue TBD) TBD
Sept. 9 Trinidad & Tobago* Away (Venue TBD) TBD
Oct. 10 Honduras* Away (Venue TBD) TBD
Oct. 14 Costa Rica* Home (Venue TBD) TBD
* FIFA World Cup Qualifier
# FIFA Confederations Cup

(For a properly formatted version of the schedule that doesn’t have everything smooshed together, just click the link above.)

-From The Daily Mail: “Celtic have already worked out a framework transfer agreement for Sacha Kljestan should the American midfielder impress Gordon Strachan during his six-day trial. [...] A price tag of up to £2million has been suggested for any permanent deal, with the selling rights to the player held centrally by the Major League Soccer organisation.”

USsoccer.com named their athletes of the year last week and the winners were all deserving — goalkeeper Tim Howard took the male athlete award, while Carli Lloyd took best female and Sacha Kljestan and Kristie Mewis were given the best young athlete awards.

If you remember, I totally called the wins for both Howard and Kljestan, so this further proves how fantastic I am and that I probably deserve an award as well.

And in related news, upon hearing the announcement of the winners, Freddy Adu said, “This is bullspit! Funkin’ awards is mine! American Pele! Respect The Adu! I used to date JoJo!” He then proceeded to recite lines from the movie RV until Kristie Mewis called security and had him taken away.