US U-17 World Cup Kicking Off...soon!

Well folks, you may have noticed a total lack of new content around here. My wife and I welcomed twins into the family at the end of September and sleep deprivation has ensued. So, blog is not getting a lot of attention.

But I do want to call your attention to this, the US U-17 Men kick off their World Cup in about an hour and 15 minutes, at 1 pm central time. You can catch the match on ESPNU, Galavision and ESPN360.com. They're playing Spain so it should be entertaining.

Want to learn more about the team? Read this from ESPN.com. Hopefully the attacking style discussed in the article works for the team. The US U-20 team had a poor performance in their World Cup last month, so I hope to see better from the U-17s.

Players Starting the Fall Season With Some Extra Practice...

While most of the news these days is about David Beckham's return to MLS, the US' performance in the Gold Cup and MLS' drop in attendance, I'd like to remind everyone that we still have the U-17 World Cup and U-20 World Cup coming up this summer/fall. As part of that, many college players are getting some extra credit training in this summer. While their peers are playing on club and/or PDL teams, there are many college players training and playing matches with the young nats.

Tomorrow, July 21st 2009, the US U-20 team heads to Argentina for a 10-day camp with a couple international matches as part of the Copa Cuidad de Rosario. College players making the trip: Brian Perk - GK UCLA, Gale Agbossoumonde - D UCLA, Ike Opara - D Wake Forest, Dilly Duka - M Rutgers, Brian Ownby - M University of Virginia, Dillon Powers - M Notre Dame, Michael Stephens - M UCLA, Sam Garza - F University of Denver and Tony Taylor - F Jacksonville University. Wow, UCLA is going to have some fit players when they return to NCAA action this fall.

Do you think it will help their campaign to have some many players coming in from National Team camp? There is downside, if these guys perform well and make the U-20 WC team they head to Egypt in late September and could be gone for up to one month.

At the same time the US U-17 men are down in Brazil training and playing in the Copa Macae. These guys are still on their club teams and haven't quite reached college. Most of these guys have been part of the US U-17 Bradenton Residency program but I did see one or two who haven't. It was also interesting to see a couple names from the recent Development Academy Starting XI; Riley Wolfe & Victor Chavez. Another common thread...Parade's annual All-American list.

I don't know about you but I am excited for these events later this year.