Intra-Squad Scrimmage Highlights

Highlights of the January 16th intra-squad 11v11 scrimmage have been posted on the US Soccer website.

Players were split into red and blue teams, red coached by Curt Onalfo (pictured left of Arena) and blue coached by Glenn Myernick (right) as the head honcho watched from the sidelines. Blue went 1-0 up when Eddie Pope placed a ball in the corner (very deftly for a defender) and the lead was doubled when Clint Dimpsey struck a confident volley from a Matt Heath cross.

Chris Rolfe had been complaining about lost sleep and jetlag (even though he gained three hours flying from the Mid-West to the West Coast) but looked wide awake as he robbed a red defender (possibly Bobby Boswell) before showing some real pace and a calm finish. Chris Klein pulled one back for the reds with a shot from around twenty yards out but the scrimmage finished 3-1 to the blue team.

The result didn’t matter, but most of the players involved had a lot to gain (or lose). The majority of the World Cup squad will be made up of European based players (who aren’t at the camp), so the 30 guys in California are competing for just a handful of seats on the plane to Germany.

Landon Donovan stood out as usual, and Freddy Adu showed some more nice touches and great vision with his passing, but (again) looked a little lost without the ball. Injury news from the camp is that Pablo Mastroeni will be out for 6-8 weeks with partially torn quadriceps, while Chris Albright will be out for 3-6 weeks with a torn meniscus.