BALTIMORE – As US national team players and coaches filed off the team bus for their mid-morning training session in Baltimoreon Friday, most of the regulars were all there: Clint Dempsey; Michael Bradley; Kyle Beckerman. All in a row, walking confidently towards the practice field.
Yet one figure was conspicuously absent: Toronto FC striker and typical USMNT shoo-in Jozy Altidore, who was sent home after the group stage of this year’s CONCACAF Gold Cup, replaced by LA Galaxy forward Alan Gordon. Altidore, who USMNT boss Jurgen Klinsmann described as being “just not there yet” heading into the tournament’s knockout rounds, has recovered slowly from a hamstring ailment and struggled to find his place with the national team.
“Jozy never really got into this tournament and never really picked up the rhythm,” Klinsmann said earlier this week. "He’s just simply not in the shape right now to help us. For Jozy it’s just simply going back to Toronto, picking up his rhythm, getting in shape, working on his fitness and then he will start scoring goals again.”
On Friday, Bradley, the USMNT captain and Altidore’s TFC teammate, was asked what he thought of the striker’s exclusion from the squad heading intoSaturday’squarterfinal against Cuba. Bradley gave a typically diplomatic, even-keeled answer.
“At the moment we’re concentrating on who’s here and the task in front of us,” Bradley told MLSsoccer.com “This tournament means too much to us to be worried about things that are going on outside of this camp.
“People ask me about World Cup qualifiers in the fall,” he continued, cracking a smile. “It means nothing to me.”
Still, Altidore’s exclusion did raise some eyebrows among US fans who assumed the forward showed enough progress through the group stage to earn a spot on the roster for the knockout rounds. Bradley, when pressed for a bit more detail, remained focused on the task at hand – a bit of a trademark character trait for the steely midfielder.
"We’ve all made no secret of the fact that after a World Cup it’s normal that, especially in some friendly games, new guys get opportunities, certain things get tried, but this Gold Cup is very, very important,” he said. “We want to establish ourselves as, again, the best team in the region, we want to lift the trophy and we want to be in the Confederations Cup in 2017. So all of our focus is on that."
Two CONCACAF teams dominate the Gold Cup: the United States and Mexico. Read our interactive presentation about five matches that helped shape soccer in the region.
