March 7, 2007
The USMNT will face Guatemala, Trinidad & Tobago, and El Salvador in Group B of the 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament. The US will play their opening round matches in LA and Boston.
The US will open the tournament on June 7th versus Guatemala at 9pm ET from the Home Depot Center. They will stay in LA and face T&T on June 9th at 5pm ET. They will then travel to Gillette Stadium to close out group play versus El Salvador at 7pm on June 12th. All of the matches will be broadcast live on Fox Soccer Channel.
The US will stay in the Boston area for their first match of the knockout phase as long as they finish first or second in their group.
The semifinal and final of the tournament will be held at Soldier Field in Chicago.
Rochester native Casey Zimny re-signs with the Washington Freedom of the W-League
Casey Zimny, the 2nd pick in the 2002 WUSA Draft by the Washington Freedom, has re-signed with the W-League team for the 2007 season.
Last season Zimny not only played for the Freedom, but she also played in a couple matches as a guest player for the Rhinos women's team. It will be interesting to see if the Rhinos can pull that off again this season.
DC United close to signing Fred
DC United is close to signing Brazilian midfielder/forward Helbert Frederico Carreiro da Silva aka Fred.
And no, it's not the Fred that is a Brazilian International and plays for Lyon in France.
This Fred joins DC from Australian champion Melbourne Victory. DC has already added one impact Brazilian this offseason in the form of forward Luciano Emilio who scored 3 goals in two CONCACAF Champions Cup matches recently. And they have a third Brazilian in camp in the form of Welton Silva.
First it was DC going after Argentines such as Christian Gomez, Facundo Erpen, Matias Donnet, and Luciano Filomeno and now it's Brazilians. I wonder what the next trend will be with regards to DC imports?
Class warfare, MLS style
In a spin on the debate of whether it's good for MLS to lose young prospects to Europe comes the discussion about whether MLS should invest more in the middle class American players that in general have moved abroad not to play for Fulham or Manchester United, but instead are playing for clubs like Heerenveen in Holland (Michael Bradley), TuS Koblenz in Germany (Josh Grenier), and second tier English clubs such as Millwall (Zak Whitbread), Sheffield Wednesday (Frankie Simek), and most notably Jay DeMerit with Watford.
Personally, it's a tough debate as players move to Europe not only because of the fact that they can earn more than in MLS from the start, but also for the potential reward should they show well enough to hook up with a team in a top league, like DeMerit has by helping get Watford to the Premiership.
Although, when you look at what a player like Jimmy Conrad means to MLS and look at potential European moves by guys like Pablo Mastroeni, I can certainly see that side of this debate as well.
Another very interesting debate about whether it's better to play in Europe or not
Tim Vickery has a very interesting article about how the Brazilian National Team may be hurt by the fact that the bulk of their players have moved from playing domestically to starring for the big money clubs in Europe.
Another interesting tid bit was the influence that Nike supposedly renders over playing decisions, such as suposedly demanding that Ronaldo play in the 1998 World Cup Final.
Perhaps having your best players playing in Europe isn't all that it's cracked up to be?
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Rochester Rhinos or SoccerSam.com. Feel free to send any comments or complaints to news@soccersam.com. James promises to read (but not to respond) to all of them.
