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Training woes for US soccer team
The US soccer team is running short of players during the 11-day training camp ahead of the World Cup in Germany.
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 10:40 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
North Carolina:
The US soccer team is running short of players during the 11-day training camp ahead of the World Cup in Germany. Two players were in Germany, two just had landed at the Raleigh-Durham airport and another planned to head back to England in a week. But coach Bruce Arena said he wasn't too worried and added that it will not make any considerable difference. Arena said the focus of the camp will be to push the players a little harder to improve the overall fitness level and then moving on to "building on our team concept." "We know all these players, and they know what we're about and how we do things,'' he said. "It's just refining it and getting them back together and becoming a team again.'' Prominent omissions The team was missing a few players on Thursday, including one of its stars, Landon Donovan. Donovan and Chris Albright arrived in North Carolina after playing in a match for Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy in Dallas on Wednesday night. Steve Cherundolo and Kasey Keller will join the team on Sunday, after the end of the German Bundesliga season. The team also briefly will lose defender Eddie Lewis when he returns to England for a crucial May 21 match that could land his club, Leeds United, a spot in the English Premier League. "It is not really that long that the team is together before the tournament starts, so I think every day, in a lot of ways, counts,'' Lewis said. Cohesive group "We have always been a cohesive group, we have always had team chemistry, so being together as a group is going to help that. After the camp ends, the 23-man team will play three tune-up matches in US, and then head to Germany for the World Cup, which begins June 9. The Americans, ranked fourth by FIFA, play their opening match against the Czech Republic. (AP)Topics mentioned in this article
Football World Cup 2011
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