Injuries Make Roster Picks Even More of Problem for Charles
Clive Charles will watch the U.S. national team start World Cup 2002 qualifying play today with a road game against Guatemala, but his thoughts will be somewhere else.
The U.S. Olympic team coach has less than a month before the Aug. 14 deadline for naming his roster for Sydney, and injuries to key players has not made the task any easier.
Currently sidelined are starting goalkeeper Adin Brown of the Colorado Rapids (after knee surgery) and starting midfielder Ben Olsen of D.C. United (badly sprained ankle). Both should be recovered in time to make the squad.
Then there is starting forward Chris Albright, whose season at D.C. United has been frustrating in the extreme. So much so, in fact, that the 21-year-old former University of Virginia player lost his temper in Dallas last week and hurled a water bottle at an abusive fan.
The fine from Major League Soccer is forthcoming, as is the lecture from Charles.
The good news for Charles is that defender Danny Califf of the Galaxy has turned into an MLS starter and is gaining valuable experience. Also, backup goalkeeper Tim Howard of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars had three shutouts in five starts going into this weekend after MetroStar starter Mike Ammann was injured.
Charles has only two warm-up games planned between now and the time the team leaves for Australia. The first will be against Bolton Wanderers of the English first division on July 30 at Indianapolis, a game that Charles said “will be very telling for us.”
“It allows me one of my few last looks at the squad before the Games,” he said.
The U.S. men have never advanced beyond the first round in the Olympics. They play the Czech Republic on Sept. 13 and Cameroon on Sept. 16, both in Canberra, and Kuwait on Sept. 19 in Melbourne.
SEE YOU, LOTHAR
Odds are that Lothar Matthaeus has played his final game in MLS.
Germany’s 1990 World Cup-winning captain met with MetroStar officials on Thursday and the team said tersely that an announcement is forthcoming.
The latest controversy comes after Matthaeus received permission from the club for a nine-day trip to Europe to treat a slipped disk in his back. His photo ended up on the cover of the German tabloid Bild, which showed him lounging on the beach in St. Tropez, France, with his girlfriend, Maren Mueller-Wohlfahrt.
“A decision on Lothar’s future with the MetroStars will be made by next Wednesday,” said Nick Sakiewicz, the MetroStars’ general manager.
EARTH TO DAUM
MLS might have some coaches who are only loosely tethered to the planet, but Christoph Daum, Germany’s coach-in-waiting, is definitely out there somewhere.
Daum, the coach at Bayer Leverkusen--home of U.S. national team defender Frankie Hejduk and U.S. Olympic team midfielders John Thorrington and Landon Donovan--will take over from interim Coach Rudi Voeller as Germany’s national team boss next summer. Already, he has some ideas about turning the faltering program around.
“Don’t get the idea I’m an [American] Indian devotee,” Daum, 46, told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit last week. “But they taught their children how to listen. They had to hear the wind, the trees and the earth talk. You can hear the earth, you know.”
Whether the earth can hear Daum is another matter.
“In football especially, we need a greater spirit of innovation,” he continued. “I will see to that.”
Daum said he would try to draw on “the power within” his players and himself.
“If I do everything to implement a strong thought, then the probability is high of this visualization coming to reality,” he said. “In the beginning of the world there was only an idea.”
QUICK PASSES
Reports in Chicago suggest that D.C. United will ditch Coach Thomas Rongen at season’s end and try to lure Fire Coach Bob Bradley back to Washington, where he was an assistant under Bruce Arena. . . . Former Galaxy and now MetroStar Coach Octavio Zambrano will coach the East team in the July 29 MLS All-Star game at Columbus, Ohio. . . . Alexi Lalas has been added as a studio analyst to “MLS ExtraTime,” the league’s hourlong television program on ESPN2. Lalas makes his debut at 8 p.m. Monday. . . . Two candidates for quote of the week: “I need this team more than this team needs me,” said Eric Wynalda, 31, after being traded from the Miami Fusion to the New England Revolution. And from Miami Coach Ray Hudson: “There are no drills for maturity. We have good young talent, but we need to become men. We need some hairy-chested Bulgarians on the team.” Does that mean the Fire’s Hristo Stoitchkov is heading to Florida?
