U-20 Draw Set for April 5 from Luxor, Egypt

U.S. U-20 MNT head coach Thomas Rongen (along with some U.S. Soccer administrators) will be heading to Egypt one week from today for their first glimpse of the FIFA U-20 World Cup venues and of course to attend the draw which will be held on Sunday, April 5.

The 24 participating teams have all been decided by now…

Australia, Korea Republic, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan (Asian zone); Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa (African zone); Czech Republic, England, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Spain (European zone): Costa Rica, Honduras, Trinidad & Tobago and USA (North, Central America and Caribbean zone); Tahiti (Oceania); Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela (South American zone); and Egypt.

…and they will be drawn into six groups, A through F, with each group having four teams.

Of course, ussoccer.com will have the information once the draw is completed, including some reaction from Rongen and information on the USA’s group opponents, so stay tuned!

Algeria, Gambia, Niger and Burkina Faso Advance to U-17 WC

Nine teams have already earned their respective berths to the 2009 FIFA U-17 World Cup as African qualifying wraps up this week. In a setup similar to the CONCACAF U-17 Championship that kicks off in a few weeks, semifinalists from the CAF Championship are the four who book their place in the FIFA event.

Joining World Cup hosts Nigeria, Algeria has qualified for the event for the first time with a pair of 1-0 wins against Cameroon and Guinea. They joined Gambia, also winners against Guinea and Cameroon, from Group A of the confederation championship.

From Group B, Niger turned a pair of victories against Zimbabwe and Malawi to quickly seal advancement to the World Cup. Burkina Faso also earned a place in the final four - and consequently in Nigeria - with a 2-0 defeat of Malawi.

The quartet from Africa will join up with already qualified Nigeria (hosts), Iran, Japan, Korea Republic and UAE (Asia). The representatives from the other FIFA confederations will be decided later in the year.

Wrapping Up From T&T

Well.. that will do it for us from Trinidad & Tobago... or, rather, Tobago and then Trinidad.

The team did what it set out to do - qualify for a seventh-straight FIFA U-20 World Cup - and qualify they did. The U.S., Costa Rica, Honduras and Trinidad & Tobago will all represent CONCACAF in Egypt from Sept. 24-Oct. 16. They will learn their group opponents, venues and dates at the draw ceremony, which will be held on April 5.

You can check out more on Sunday night's final, including a photo gallery and some post-game and tournament thoughts from the players, by checking out ussoccer.com

I Gotta Wear Shades...

Today is travel day for the U-20 MNT and that can only mean one thing - time for Sam Garza to break out the sunglasses. This picture doesn't even do these shades justice but Sam loves them, no matter how much everyone makes fun of him.

We'll have more from T&T as soon as we find a reliable internet connection....

Starting Lineup for Tonight's Final

U.S. head coach Thomas Rongen has named eight new starters for tonight's final against Costa Rica... They'll return to the traditional 4-3-3 and here is who's playing where:

Lambo

Okugo - Maund - Davies - Flores

Arguez - Wallace - Jeffrey

Garza - Schuler - Shea

Stay tuned to ussoccer.com's MatchTracker for more as we head toward kickoff!

'Twas the Night Before the Final...

The U-20 MNT are taking it easy tonight as they prepare for tomorrow's CONCACAF championship game. The uniforms are all laid out... the massages have been had... the team had a light day with only a pool workout...

It's been the same routine for the team before every game and it has been a winning formula so far! Stay tuned to MatchTracker to see if the U.S. can go the entire length of the tournament without conceding a goal and whether a sixth player can score a sixth goal

Here are a few other fun facts about tomorrow's game:

• While never winning a regional championship, the U.S. still stands alone by qualifying for a CONCACAF-best 12 FIFA U-20 World Cups. Heading into the 2009 qualifying tournament, the U.S. and Mexico had both qualified for 11 times, but the U.S. now holds the title after qualifying for Egypt, while Mexico was knocked out of contention in Group B after just two games.
• The United States has not lost in 10 games in CONCACAF U-20 play, with their last defeat coming at the hands of Canada in 2002 (a 3-2 loss). The U.S. has also not allowed a goal in its last six matches, dating back to a 4-1 victory over Haiti in its opening match of Group B in 2007.
• The U.S. and Costa Rica have met nine times in CONCACAF Qualifying, with the U.S. holding a slight advantage with three wins and two losses to go along with four draws. The last time Costa Rica beat the U.S. was on April 20, 1988, in Guatemala. The two teams were in separate groups in the last round of qualifying in 2007, but met in 2005, with the U.S. earning a 2-0 victory in Group B.
• All 20 players will be available for selection on Sunday, with Brek Shea and Jorge Flores returning from red card suspensions they served during Friday’s semifinal.

The U-20 MNT got a break from training today, instead going through a regeneration session at the hotel's fitness center and pool. In the afternoon, to keep everyone from going stir crazy, Sheanon William's family invited us over to their house... Suffice to say, there were plenty of things to do in their amazing house, but even if there were only monkeys they guys would have been perfectly content for a few hours to play with them....

...that's right, monkey cages! The two small monkeys were highly entertaining, and that was even before we stepped in the house. The huge backyard was a menagerie of dogs, rabbits and birds by the pool. The inside included a nice game room with pool tables, air hockey and foosball. It was hard to peel the guys away, but alas, it was time for a team dinner and meetings. Thanks again to Sheanon and his huge extended family for making us feel welcome so far from home (well, far from home for most of us)!

That Was a Close One...

After our bus used a police escort fit for a President to get TO the stadium yesterday, the ride home didn't go as smoothly. A few miles into our 25 minute ride back to the hotel, the power on the bus went out.... seconds later, the engine stopped running and everything shut completely off!

Seconds later, our driver got the engine running again to loud cheers... but they were quickly quieted after the engine failed to engage. As our driver and security guard started to come up with a Plan B, the engine finally turned over and we were back on our way.

The whole event took just minutes, but we were all starting to think what would happen if we were stuck on a bus with a USA sign minutes away from the stadium, right after we beat the host country....

Trial Run for Obama!

The big news in T&T that we have been hearing about, really since we got here, is the upcoming Summit of the Americas that is coming to Port of Spain in May. Dignitaries from all over the region will be descending on Trinidad - including President Obama - and local officials decided that it would be a good idea to practice.

With President Obama's arrival scheduled for a Friday evening, what better way to test the travel routes than to use another Friday evening event for practice?

Yep, that's right... streets all over Trinidad were closed yesterday and the police used their hours of police escort training on the four team buses that were used for yesterday's semifinals. Traffic here tends to be pretty bad, as we noticed on our hour long drive to training on Thursday. How long did it take on closed roads surrounded by a motorcade? 14 minutes.

We are staying right across the street from where the U.S. delegation will be staying for the summit and Marvin Lee Stadium is in the direction of the airport so we think it was a pretty accurate assessment.

DD, JJ and TT

We realized while reading this interview that we have three players on the U-20s whose first and last name start with the same letter: Dilly Duka, Jared Jeffrey and Tony Taylor (okay, Tony is kind of cheating because Antonio is his middle name – his first name is Alejandro, but it’s our blog). We wondered... is this something that's fairly common? Do a lot of people use this alliteration when naming their children? Do other people notice these things?


We found 32 current and former senior MNT Players who share this trait (caps in parenthesis):

Amr Aly (8), Andy Auld (5), Boris Bandov (33), Barry Barto 16), Barney Battles (1), Brian Benedict (4), Brian Bliss (33), Bobby Boswell (3), Ben Brewster (1), Carmen Capurro (2), Conor Casey (9), Cornelius Casey (4), Cecil Correa (1), David D’Errrico (19), Don Droegre (8), Eric Eichmann (29), Edward Embarger (2), Gene Geimer (6), Gene Grabowski (1), Kasey Keller (102), Lawrence Lozzano (7), Manuel Martin (9), Michael Mason (5), Mike Masters (1), Matt McKeon (2), Oguchi Onyewu (38), Peter Piertras (2), Steve Shafter (3), Steve Sharp (8), Steve Snow (2), Taylor Twellman (30), Tim Twellman (1)


And of course a handful of non-soccer celebrities (in no particular order):

Susan Sarandon, Cindy Crawford, Mark McGuire, Rob Reiner, Bob Barker, Ozzy Osbourne, Nick Nolte, Barbara Bush, Connie Chung, Alan Alda, Janet Jackson, Marilyn Monroe

Whose Boots?

We noticed a lot of different boots were broken out for training today on Marvin Lee Stadium's artificial turf. Quite a change from the soft ground of Dwight Yorke Stadium in Tobago. Can you pick out which players are pictured above?

Catching up with Jared Jeffrey

After wearing the captain’s armband for the U.S. Under-17 Men’s National Team at the 2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup, Jared Jeffrey made the move overseas, signing with Club Brugge in Belgium. Now, as one of only three European-based players on the U.S. U-20 MNT that just qualified for the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Jeffrey is also one of the youngest. He spoke with ussoccer.com about his role as one of the younger guys, life in Belgium and breaking away from superstitions and you can read what he had to say by clicking here.