Back from Europe and Major League Soccer games, US players gathered on Monday to prepare for this weekend’s World Cup qualifier in El Salvador.
Fifteen of the 22 players in the squad took the field for a brief workout. Six more were due in later on Monday, with FC Midtjylland’s Danny Califf expected to arrive from Denmark yesterday.
“Today, it was about regeneration,” US coach Bob Bradley said. “Of the 15 guys that are here today, I think 10 or 11 played 90 minutes on the weekend, and that’s obviously a great thing for us.”
“It’s important with the amount of time a lot of those guys have played lately to understand what our week needs to be like, and with some of the guys who haven’t played as much we push them a little harder,” he said.
Some players will need a few days to get over jet lag. Midfielder DaMarcus Beasley traveled from Scotland after setting up Kyle Lafferty for Rangers’ first goal in Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Hearts.
“It was an hour trip to London and a nine-hour flight from London to Miami, so it was a long day, but it was well worth it coming to the sun in Miami,” Beasley said. “The sleeping pattern will take a good four days, at least for me, to fall into place.”
“These first couple days, I’ll be getting up at 5.30 or 6 in the morning just because I can’t sleep anymore,” he said.
The US team, seeking its sixth straight World Cup berth, opened the final round of the North and Central American region by defeating Mexico 2-0 on Feb. 11 at Columbus, Ohio. The Americans head to El Salvador tomorrow, then return on Sunday to prepare for a qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago on April 1 at Nashville, Tennessee.
Before last month’s match, US players had only two days to practice together.
“It’s nice to have the week before a game, especially with the double fixture dates like these,” said captain Carlos Bocanegra, who came in from Rennes in France. “The last one against Mexico, some guys got in real late Sunday night and then to have to play Wednesday, that was a difficult turnaround. These are a little bit more normal.”
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS