All quiet on the German front

This is a quiet, yet palpably tension-filled time. The pre-WC friendlies are over. The WC is still more than a week away (for the US at least). And while many sites, including the indefatigable USSoccer.com, are publishing daily material regarding what color the carpet was the players walked on from their private jet to the airport terminal in Hamburg (red, btw) and suchlike, the truth is: there just ain't much going on.

And thus at this site for the next few days, there won't be much going on either. I've got a ton of work to finish before I can go to Germany, and that takes priority over blogging. Finishing it will also free me up to be writing maximally during the WC itself, when this blog will feature not only obsessive soccer analysis but also firsthand accounts of being in Berlin (and Kaiserslautern, and Nuernberg, and possibly Duesseldorf as well) for the WC.

What awaits in the interim? Well, I for one am very interested to see how the US get on in their June 5 friendly game against Angola. Most people are writing the Angolans off, but in my opinion they're not unlike Senegal v.02: a previously unknown team populated by players from a second-tier European league (Portugal, in this case, rather than France). I think it'll be a challenging test, and a good barometer of how we're doing (especially in terms of goal scoring).

And if unlike me you're just biding your time til then you might want to check out this weird but interesting site to distract from the unbearable tension: the Official Global Philips FIFA World Cup Preparation Center (or Philips' O.G.P.F.W.C.P.C. for short). It's got all kinds of simple but engrossing video games you can play online (including a fun free-kick one that promises hours of by-yourself enjoyment). But as for me, I've got to work. So I'll see you all on 6/5, to reveal the deets of the closed scrimmage with Angola that I will derive from all my secret sources.