Not that you can read much into these warm up matches, but it would be interesting to keep up with some of the gossip etc.

Austria 1 Croatia 4...Yet to read the report, but impressive victory for Croatia.

Usa 0 Morocco 1...Anybody see it? Sounds like they were on top for most of the match, then got done by a sucker punch. Reyna injured. Blow, not sure how bad.

England B vs Belarus tommorow. Owen & Cole get a run out, plus Walcott.

Man Utd doctor who's overseeing Wayne Rooney's recovery has been sacked, after difference of opinion with man utd manager.

i saw us. morocco.

us should have won. so many more opportunities. donovan missed a great chance like the two that gerrard buried in the FA cup final this year, which is why the US has not made the leap to the next level of football yet. we need a player who can finish like that. mcbride does it sometimes but not consistently enough.

the goal was kind of a sham too as cherundolo (sp) just made a disgustingly bad error...should have passed back to keller but instead held the ball and it got stolen and turned into an easy goal.

we need to finish to stand a chance at the mondial, which was exactly the opposite of what we did here.

Upcoming fixtures..

Wed, 24th May

Norway v Paraguay

Thursday 25th

Australia v Greece
Ecuador v Colombia
Sweden v Finland

Friday 26th

Saudi Arabia v Czech Rep
South Korea v Bosnia
Turkey v Ghana

Who's your striker options in the squad? Mcbride i know but not sure of the rest. Is donovan midfield.

Saturday fixtures 27th May

Denmark v Paraguay
France v Mexico
Germany v Luxembourg
Holland v Cameroon
Portugal v Cape Verde Islands
Serbia & Montenegro v Uruguay
Spain v Russia
Switzerland v Ivory Coast
Trinidad and Tobago v Wales
USA v Venezuela

donovan is midfield technically i believe, although he plays kind of a quasi-hybrid position most of the time in that he cheats up too far and doesn't play enough defense.

which would be okay if he scored more, but he's just not ronaldinho or anything.

other options at striker include josh wolff and eddie ching, i believe, who are fairly good but just not good enough to get us even out of the first round.

i'm just waiting for 20 years from now. more than half of the babies born in america last year were minorities.

wait til the US team is full of black kids and people of hispanophone descent. we'll be better than brazil in 50 years.

france v. mexico is intruiging as their Under 21s just played in toulon, i believe.

the other one is swiss v. cote d'ivoire....i'll be very interested to see howthat team looks a couple of months after the african nation's cup where drogba blew the game for them.

Yeah should be interesting. I have high hopes for Ivory Coast. I'm going to watch Spain v Russia. Tough match, rate spain highly. Obviously looking for the Paraguay result. I'm starting to get a bit nervous about playing them in our first match. I smell possible upset.

Aus v Greece will be interesting not only from my Aus perspective, but to see how Greece are going after failing so badly in the qualifiers.

Should be a great game. They sold out 95,000 tix ages ago for this match, thanks in part to the huge Greek population in Melbourne.

We do have a few problems with injuries though - Tony Vidmar who is a reliable defender and played in the last 4 qualifying campaigns is out indefinitely with a heart condition, although we have Craig Moore back to cover that. More worringly, Kewell picked up another groin injury in the FA cup final and is in a race to be fit for the opening WC game. And Tim Cahill is still recovering from a knee injury and is on about the same timetable as Kewell. At least we have a really strong midfield, so it isn't quite the blow it could be

Donovan is so talented but so disappointing. It's been his MO since Germany.

I forgot all about Kewell getting injured. Thats a blow. I think Cahill is a cracking little player so i hope you have both these guys back. Give us an update on the Greece game mate.

The US strikers suck...biggest hole in the team. Reyna will be missed if the injury takes him out, but as long as everyone else is healthy, we'd be ok since midfield actually gets a bit crowded when everyone's there.

Up front, we do have a young kid, Eddie Johnson, who's big, strong, fast and has some pretty good skill and finishing ability when playing well, but he's horribly inconsistent. If he goes on a tear at the right time, our scoring problems could be over, or he could be completely invisible.

Morrocco got everyone behind the ball all game and we struggle breaking down a defense like that, but won't see anyone playing that way in the cup anyway. They got a chance at the end when we had our whole team camped in their half and the one guy who got back made a stupid play, trying to turn and dribble around the Morroccan player under heavy pressure and all alone, rather than just getting the ball out of play. Slow, ugly game really.

We've got a couple more to go before Germany, so I've got my fingers crossed.

I'm sure Eddie Johnson used to be on Man Utd's books as a kid. I think i have seen him play for the youth team once against Northampton. He looked pretty talented.

nope...different Eddie Johnson...although this Eddie did train with Man U during an off season a few years ago...

Papers have printed that Benfica offered MLS, The league in the US, like 5 Million for the kid last year, but MLS turned tham down.


How do you think Walcott's gonna fare? I'm curious since I do try to follow Arsenal as much as possible ever since I got to go see 'em play in Highbury a few years back.

This may be tongue in cheek but it's also true.

The high school I went to in North Georgia had maybe 10-15 hispanic students out of 800 in the early 90's. We have had a HUGE influx of hispanics to the area and it's now around 60% hispanic students.

We were a perennial playoff team in football then and while we still are pretty good, we play for the state title in Soccer every other year now.

Americans just like winning. If we ever field a team that can go deep into the World Cup I think most Americans will come around to Soccer here.

I really do enjoy watching football, but don't watch enough of it to have favourite teams or know who to cheer for in the WC.

I think Walcott will do fine. I don't think he will get a lot of game time if the strikers stay healthy. If Rooney doesn't make it then i think he will go with just one up front, Owen, anyway. Walcott played at Northampton for England under 19's a few months ago and looked the best player by miles. We have no depth in the striker department, Defoe & Bent are not up to scratch in my opinion so hell why not Walcott. Immense pace, unknown quantity and he can finish. I would like to have seen somebody with some physical prescence up front, but we really only have Heskey & Beattie to choose from in that department.

I bet if Scotland were in it you would on the kilt wearers side, eh :wink:

Ha! When it comes to footie, I'm all about equal opportunity, baby.

Talking of the USA dominating in years to come. Just watching China u21's in the toulon tourney. If they continue to improve at grass roots level and footie continues to increase in popularity, they are going to be a force to reckon with. Probably sooner than the US.

well that's fine. us. v. china 2056 final

It's a travesty that the Greek team did not make it to the World Cup after winning the European Championship. I don't get it.

Is Portugal in the World Cup? Didn't we beat them to win the championship?

dude that was years ago. get over it. they sucked in the euro qualifiers so theydon't getin.

Sweet, my day off and they have the aussie game on live.

You know it makes sense