MLS Schedule Limits Bradley’s Ability to Gel US Squad

Chalk this up to MLS’ uncon­scionable deci­sion to con­tinue play right through FIFA inter­na­tional black­out dates. Bob Bradley today named the squad for next Wednesday’s match at Wem­b­ley Sta­dium in Lon­don (A match I will be attend­ing) and the team is miss­ing sev­eral stan­dards of the US setup includ­ing Pablo Mas­troeni, Mau­rice Edu, Frankie Hed­juk and Jozy Alti­dore. Each of the afore­men­tioned play­ers was named to Bradley’s pro­vi­sional 33 man squad last week but was dropped this week pre­sum­ably because of the MLS sched­ule. While I am pleased that Jozy Alti­dore, due to this sched­ul­ing con­flict will miss the match and we will see some other for­ward options (includ­ing the often for­got­ten Josh Wolff) we will not see a the team that will fea­ture in qual­i­fy­ing play­ing together, using these friend­lies to gel as a unit.

Thus the US team, already vastly infe­rior in tal­ent and skill when com­pared to their Eng­lish coun­ter­parts is enter­ing the match short­handed. Part of the US’ strength through the past few sea­son has been the famil­iar­ity each player has with one another due to the Jan­u­ary train­ing camp, even when fac­ing supe­rior sides. How­ever, only five play­ers who par­tic­i­pated in the Jan­u­ary 2008 Home Depot Cen­ter train­ing camp is on this squad. Only three MLS based play­ers have been included on the US squad: Lan­don Dono­van, Rico Clark and Brad Guzan.

Here is the US Squad:

GOALKEEPERS — Dominic Cervi (Out of Con­tract), Brad Guzan (Chivas USA), Tim Howard (Ever­ton FC)

DEFENDERS — Car­los Bocane­gra (Ful­ham FC), Dan Califf (FC Midtjyl­land), Steve Cherun­dolo (Han­nover 96), Jay DeMerit (Wat­ford FC), Oguchi Onyewu (Stan­dard de Liege), Michael Orozco (San Luis), Heath Pearce (Hansa Ros­tock), Jonathan Spec­tor (West Ham United)

MIDFIELDERS — Freddy Adu (SL Ben­fica), DaMar­cus Beasley (Glas­gow Rangers), Michael Bradley (SC Heeren­veen), Ricardo Clark (Hous­ton Dynamo), Benny Feil­haber (Derby County), Eddie Lewis (Derby County)

FORWARDS — Clint Dempsey (Ful­ham FC), Lan­don Dono­van (Los Ange­les Galaxy), Nate Jaqua (Out of Con­tract), Eddie John­son (Ful­ham FC), Josh Wolff (1860 Munich)

So it appears in the United States club has won out over coun­try. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters fur­ther for MLS is the league’s new found love for arti­fi­cial turf as evi­denced by the sit­u­a­tions in Toronto and Seat­tle. With turf once again prov­ing to be unsuit­able for the game and the prob­lems of lay­ing a new nat­ural grass sur­face in short order in Moscow, MLS has a poten­tial image and cred­i­bil­ity prob­lem emerg­ing. It’s best MLS solve both its sched­ul­ing issues and it’s con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of arti­fi­cial sur­faces in the near future. I will have much more on the debate about fake grass in the near future.