Thoughts on the road to South Africa (friendly)

November 17, we are almost there.

It is kind of sad that we look upon these single friendly matches with so much anticipation, but it is the international soccer down season for the United States, so we can’t help it.

A few roster changes to make note of after the latest round of MLS Playoffs…

Bye-bye for now Eddie Lewis, please say hello to my good friends Jonathan Spector and Heath Pearce. Thanks to the official US Soccer Blog.

This means there is going to be a lot of good competition for those left and right back positions in camp. I have considered our backs one of the weaknesses, partly due to inconsistency, of the current US squad so it will be interesting to see who earns the playing time on the 17th.

By the way, Bob is handling the player call ups and rosters as close to perfect as possible. It dawned on me today that he is structuring this world cup cycle phenomenally. He is not always focused on putting proven guys he knows will get results against weaker opponents, he has explored a plethora of youth options, and don’t forget he led the United States to victory in the Gold Cup. What more could you truthfully ask of him?

His son ain’t bad either. In what has become a pretty regular occurrence, Michael Bradley scored again for Heerenven this past weekend against Vitesse Arnhem to give his side the 1-0 victory after team superstar Alfonso Alves got red carded. A couple posts ago I posed the question, “Can you argue against Clint Dempsey being the best American abroad?”, and to answer myself about a week later, I think you can. Although in a less prominent league, Michael Bradley’s goal scoring tear and overall play have been tremendous, and don’t expect him to be at Heerenven too much longer if this continues. I can think of a few Champions League squads who could use his composure on the ball and selective attacking prowess right now.

I am thinking of doing a sort of running US Soccer Player Power Rankings to see who’s hot and who’s not at their respective club sides and also to see when it comes time who should be making the cut on these rosters.

I will have more stuff up on the road to the South Africa friendly later.