Olympics Bound...

Not too long ago the US Olympic team was made up of exclusively college players. 1996 was the first year of MLS and MLS players did make that team. Since 1996 the Olympics have been a goal of American MLS based players looking to move up to the first team if they haven't already made a spot for themselves. Last Thursday coach Nowak named his roster for the upcoming games. The roster is exclusively professional players and features some of the bigger names in American soccer. Freddy Adu, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore lead the European contingent while Sacha Kljestan, Maurice Edu and Michael Parkhurst represent some of the bigger names in MLS.

The US will face Japan, The Netherlands and Nigeria in what could be called a group of death. The first match kicks off August 7th and by August 13th we'll know if the team has made it out of the group stage. Cross your fingers.

On paper this is probably the strongest team every taken to the Olympics by the US. Meanwhile other countries are having players retracted because clubs don't want to over play their best players and open them to possible injury. Put that together and we could be in for a pleasant surprise this summer. Last year Freddy Adu showed why he's been so hyped during the U-20 World Cup. This summer I hope to see him listed amongst the best players in the tournament.

Set your DVR folks, the Olympics are just a couple weeks away!