Final Preparations Complete

Today’s final training session at The Home Depot Center prior to tomorrow’s clash against the Houston Dynamo was a fairly light training session in comparison to earlier training sessions this week as the coaches and players went over formations, shape, tactics and set pieces for most of the session.
After a warmup, the guys went to a full field 11v11 with the players moving at ¾ speed. Arena and the coaching staff went over both the tactical plans on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball often stopping play to emphasize a point to the players. In addition, the coaches encouraged the players to ask questions about their assignments or how best certain situations the Dynamo will present for the team on both sides of the ball. Following that the guys moved on to set pieces working on both freekicks and cornerkicks.

Next, the players broke up into small groups with small-sided games with the small goals, while other played 5v2 one-touch possession games. There was plenty of energy and shouts of victory as the guys competitive spirit took over in the matches.
At the conclusion, Arena brought the entire team together on the bench and address them for a few minutes. Unfortunately, we were not close enough to listen in to the talk but the players came out of with even more determination in their eyes.

After training, we caught up with Alan Gordon and Mike Magee to get their take on tomorrow’s match against the Dynamo.

Alan…


Mike…


USA-Brazil Predictions:
We decided to poll a few guys after training in regards to the USA-Brazil final in the 2009 Confederations Cup, which will be played at 11am PT on ESPN. However, we noticed after a while that no one was going to pick against the USA. We are guessing that if we had continued through the entire team and coaches it would have been 35-0 in favor of the USA, whether it might be in regulation or penalty kicks. Call it patriotism or just superstition, but we certainly understand that no one was willing to go against home team. Go USA!!