Now that Reyna is back to non-contact training, will he be useful to the USMNT performance in France. Seems like an awfully short time before the tournament for Reyna to be in form and contribute. The caliber of the teams we are facing and the 3 matches in 5 days in the first round mean that Arena needs to shift between two mostly different field squads (maybe Friedel will get the nod over Keller for 2/3 matches). As Reyna says in his interview after starting his training, maybe he will play one game!
If he's "going to play one game" then he needs to be off the roster in France. We need fully healthy players who can contribute, nothing less. Kevin
Re: Re: Reyna's importance at Confed Cup I totally agree. Any player that is not in form and at the top of their game should not be included in this tournament.
Re: Re: Re: Reyna's importance at Confed Cup I agree as well, however, Bruce may be approaching this from the angle of having to juggle "club vs. country" battles with MLS over player availability for the Gold Cup in addition to the Confed Cup. If he's able to take one fewer MLS player, that may be enough to justify taking Claudio for limited duty in Bruce's mind. I doubt he's looking at this as a tournament that we need to win, though he'd certainly want to get out of the group. If we get out of the group, you've only got the semifinals and final to go... I wonder if we'll see a lot of guys that play in Europe that we haven't seen much of in a while at the Confed Cup - guys like Wade Barrett, Greg Vanney, John Thorrington, Conor Casey, etc. Thinking back to the '99 Confederations Cup in Mexico where we finished third, Bruce took a group of veterans, but included some guys who had seen very little time with the MNT up to that point - McKeon, Bravo & C.J. Brown - Williams, Llamosa & Lewis were new to the MNT at that time and stuck around afterwards. I think that was the last time we saw Harkes in a U.S. MNT uniform. Balboa only had one appearance for the MNT after that tournament.