Let's have ones ingle thread to cover international call-ups, be it Costa Rica or US youth national team or whatever. Giancarlo Gonzalez went the full 90 for Costa Rica tonight, while Waylon Francis watched proceedings from the bench. Joel Campbell and Alvaro Saborio scored for CR as they beat Paraguay 2-1.
Fast forward to the 41:00 mark of this video for Paraguay's corner kick goal. Looks like Gonzalez (wearing #3 I think) is marking his Paraguayan pretty tightly, so I don't think you can blame him. Campbell's goal in the first half was fantastic.
Nice to see the write up at thecrew.com about how one of our important new signings went 90 minutes for a world cup bound team. I guess they were busy.
Parkhurst got called up for the US/Mexico match tonight. It's not an international friendly date, so Costa Rica isn't playing. Two possible future Crew players got called up to US youth teams. http://www.thecrew.com/blog/post/2014/04/02/braima-swanson-called-represent-us Ben Swanson got called up to the US U-18 team, with 2 friendlies coming up next week. George Braima got called up to the US U-17 team, with 5 games coming up on a trip to Bosnia and Croatia. (First game is tomorrow, April 3.) Braima played in a few games last month for the U-17's too. (It looks like Swanson last appeared for the US U-18's in February.)
Love the idea of getting these kids in and around the team at an early age. With the new Obetz facilities and improved state of the team, the hope is that these kids dream of ultimately playing for the Crew first team. Most kids coming up think, "I'm going to make it big playing soccer, and that is going to happen in Europe." While we're certainly never going to have the same allure as a Barcelona/Bayern/United type club, we should be seen more and more as a better option for these kids than playing in the Denmark or Norway. With the addition of the Academy system and getting these kids around the first team at a younger age, we're developing a culture where young kids see where they want to end up every day they go to train at Obetz.
Wil Trapp is flying out to California on Sunday to take place an a U-21 camp, which apparantly has a long term goal of preparing a U-23 team to qualify for the 2016 Olympics. That tournament is still probably 23-24 months away. He should be back by next Saturday. http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...21-national-team-olympic-prep-camp-california
Trapp is hurt? Or just resting? http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...us-crews-wil-trapp-out-us-u-21-pre-olympic-ca
Well, both. Why fly a kid from Columbus to Cali for 4 days of practice with a U-21 team after playing 90 minutes on Saturday? Especially when he'll likely play another 90 this Saturday? My guess is that he had a slight knock and was going to be held out of practice today, maybe even tomorrow. So getting only a day or 2 with the u21s wouldn't be worth the travel. Better to just rest here and heal up before next weekend's game.
Kevan George came on as a second half sub in T&T's games against Argentina and Iran. Argentina won 3-0 and Iran won 2-0, but all 5 goals were scored before George was subbed in. I'm not entirely sure, but it appears he was subbed on for a midfielder in both games. He was subbed on in the 71st minute vs Argentina, and the 63rd vs Iran. So he got some decent playing time, 46 minutes plus whatever injury time there was, which likely got him over 50.
http://www.thecrew.com/news/2014/06/gonzalezs-feature-role-makes-him-key-cog-ticos-defense\ Sorry if this was already posted. Nice Crew shoutout from Gonzalez.
Copa Centroamericana will be September 3-13, and is being held in the US this time. Costa Rica has named a preliminary squad of 50 players, including Gonzalez, Francis, and Arrieta. They don't have to narrow it down to 23 players until September 2. I think. Obviously, this would conflict with our games against Chivas on September 7 and at Houston on September 13. The Centroamericana may be worth competing for this year, because the winner will be invited to play in the 2016 Copa America Centenario. Tune in in a week or two to find out if any of our guys actually get called up or not.
Ok, it would have been easier to answer the question if you knew. Looking it up, the tournament is being played partly on FIFA dates and partly not. FIFA has a window from Sept 1-9 so theoretically the Crew could recall the Costa Ricans ahead of the final for our league match with Houston. CR has a good chance of making the final though so that wouldn't earn any goodwill with the players.
I still expect Gonzalez to be sold. If that ends up happening I would expect we would prevent Gonzalez from playing out there a week before the deadline. After that, he's not our problem and who knows if he would decide to play there or in Europe. Arietta and Francis would be likely to miss a game or two.
http://www.mlssoccer.com/es/copa-ce...-entrega-nomina-de-25-jugadores-de-costa-rica Neither Arrieta, Francis, nor Gonzalez got named to Costa Rica's squad.
Gall called in to the USMNT U20 camp in Argentina: http://www.soccerbyives.net/2014/09/replace-thompson-training.html