Stam Has Respect for U.S. Team
Dutch defender Jaap Stam, making news on two fronts Tuesday, warned his Netherlands teammates not to take the United States lightly when the teams play today in Amsterdam.
The game involving the world’s fourth- and 11th-ranked teams will be televised live at 11:30 a.m. on ESPN2. It is one of several dozen international matches scheduled today.
Other significant encounters include world champion Brazil playing Ireland in Dublin; European champion France playing Belgium in Brussels; 2004 European Championship host Portugal playing England in Loule, Portugal; World Cup 2002 runner-up Germany playing Croatia in Split, Croatia; and Italy playing the Czech Republic in Palermo, Sicily.
“A lot of people think of American football as strange, but everybody knows that they have quality players as well,” Stam told Britain’s Press Assn. “Many of them are playing in Europe now, and we know that they are a good team with a lot of talent.”
Stam, who became the world’s most expensive defender when he joined Manchester United in 1998, was subsequently sold to Lazio in Italy’s Serie A for $27 million in 2001.
On Tuesday, his agent told Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport that the defender would leave the Rome club in June and join European champion AC Milan.
Meanwhile, U.S, Coach Bruce Arena has 11 European-based players on his roster for today’s game, including goalkeeper Tim Howard, who might get the chance to play against his Manchester United teammate Ruud Van Nistelrooy.
The match will be played at Amsterdam Arena, the home field for American midfielder John O’Brien of Ajax Amsterdam, who knows the Dutch strengths.
“We’re just going to have to hope we can stop them from scoring and then hope we can counter,” O’Brien said on UEFA’s Web site. “They may get stretched when they’re trying to pass the ball around. If you can pick it off and then go forward, maybe you get a quick goal.”
The Netherlands is 3-0 against the U.S.
Galaxy Update
Two Galaxy players will be among those taking part in international matches today.
Defender Tyrone Marshall probably will start for Jamaica in its game against Uruguay in Kingston, Jamaica, and forward Alejandro Moreno might play for Venezuela when it plays host to Australia in Caracas.
The Galaxy continued its exhibition season Tuesday with a 3-1 victory over UC Santa Barbara at the Home Depot Center.
Romario Electable
Romario, who led Brazil to victory in the 1994 World Cup, is expected to retire at the end of the Brazilian season and, according to the Rio De Janeiro daily O Globo, might run for political office.
The 37-year-old striker could run for either the Rio city council or for a federal congressional seat, the newspaper speculated.
German Pessimism
The German Bundesliga season has 14 rounds to play, but Franz Beckenbauer has conceded defeat for defending champion Bayern Munich, which trails league leader Werder Bremen by nine points.
“It hurts to say so, but I don’t think we can make it,” Beckenbauer, Bayern’s chairman, wrote in his weekly column in the Bild newspaper.
Euro Standoff
Europe’s leading clubs Tuesday reiterated their stance against any re-launch of a world club championship, which Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s president, has said he wants to revive in July 2005, with the United States or Japan as the possible host.
Meeting in Barcelona, Spain, the 102-member European Club Forum “unanimously agreed to reject, for a variety of reasons, any proposal for a FIFA World Club Championship.”
