Posted on 06/02/2010 8:40:54 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
IRENE, South Africa, The slogan on the side of the bus reads "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Victory!" with the Stars and Stripes painted alongside. The U.S. World Cup team is making itself at home in South Africa, ready at last to play the games that matter most.
The Americans are staying in the 74-room Irene Country Lodge, a luxury hotel north of Johannesburg and south of Pretoria protected by stone walls and barbed wire. There's a lake on the property, with an adjacent farm filled with cows and enough roosters to make alarm clocks superfluous.
"It's been a long time," captain Carlos Bocanegra said Tuesday in the interview tent, pitched on the dairy farm. "Now it's finally here. We're in South Africa. So we're excited for the games to start. It feels real now that we're down here in South Africa and we're set up at our hotel and you see all the World Cup fanfare."
The 23-man roster and about an equal number of coaches and support staff left Washington Dulles International Airport on Sunday evening and arrived 17 hours later to a warm welcome. After a night of rest, practice resumed Tuesday ahead of the U.S. team's World Cup opener against England on June 12.
"The travel seemed quite easy. Maybe we're used to it by now," U.S. coach Bob Bradley said.
Practice is not too far away in Pretoria's Pilditch Stadium, a lush green field surrounded by an eight-lane running track with about 5,000 seats on one side. Berms topped with palm trees wrap the other segments of the field, and the leaves are starting to fade to brown as autumn approaches winter in the Southern Hemisphere. This will be the first World Cup south of the equator since 1978 in Argentina.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
I’ll just get it over with...
Soccer is for girly-men.
Soccer is boring.
Soccer is for Eurotrash.
Soccer isn’t an American sport.
Real men play football...and football isn’t soccer.
Nobody cares if America plays in the Soccer World Series Finals Super Bowl.
Did I miss any?
Go USA!!!
Pip, pip.....cheerio, and all that.....
Unless you are playing Australia Rules Football all sports are for girly-men
funny..I hate that slimy little b****d....
Real men play football, but they still dance around the end zone like ballerinas and act like dips#its off the field.
Can you run with them? Up to 10 miles in a game for some of them? If you call that ‘girlie man’ what does that make you?
Yeah, I'd like to see someone try to say that to Tim Howard.
Doesn't matter, though, because:
Nobody cares if America plays in the Soccer World Series Finals Super Bowl :)
I think you’ve misunderstood the point of the post.
Easy there...I didn’t think I needed the /sarc tag, but I guess I was wrong.
I love soccer, best sport ever, hoping for a fun cup.
If someone doesn’t like it, that is their choice, I feel the same way about car racing, incredibly boring and stupid, but have no problem with those that like it.
Now, we just got to beat the snot out of England.
You’ll have to add something about penalty shootouts when the knockout stage starts. Also look for plenty of comments about the “vuvuzelas” (those annoying plastic horns...looks like they’re going to be selling/giving them away at the games, unfortunately.)
This is criminal that this so-called news wire publishes the information on how to locate (and attack) the U.S. team. Hopefully, one day, conservatives will begin to publish the pictures and hotel room info on AP writers and editors.
Actually, I played soccer all my life.
I earned the starting spot as keeper during my second match on varsity, as a freshman. I started varsity until my senior year, when I decided to play tennis instead. My coach left just before my senior season started to coach college soccer. Between that and a dismal year as a team in basketball, I decided I wanted to give an individual sport a chance.
In those 3 varsity years, we had two top-4 finishes at state, playing in league with a team who was then, ranked #2 in the nation.
I didn’t think I needed the /sarc tag on my original post.
“beat the snot?” have to learn how to dribble first bambino
“beat the snot?” have to learn how to dribble first bambino
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