As my boy Ives already told you, US Olympic Team Head Coach Piotr Nowak has replaced Real Salt Lake’s Nathan Sturgis with FC Dallas’ Dax McCarty after Sturgis pulled his hamstring during training.

While we’ve seen Sturgis play primarily with Real Salt Lake in a holding midfielder role, Nowak used him (similar to Thomas Rongen in the Under-20 World Cup) as a Center-back and Left-back during the 2008 Concacaf Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

With McCarty (who I think would have been named initially if it weren’t for early MLS season injuries) occupying the deep, holding midfield role throughout that Qualifying Tournament, people will start to wonder why Nowak decided to replace a defender with a midfielder.

With everyone in the press already deciding that Nowak is going with an official 3-5-2 formation (one that he has yet to line up with), I personally tend to look a little closer at his roster.

Nowak knew that naming Sturgis to the initial Olympic Roster was going to be a risk because he’s been injured for a pretty significant amount of time, so I’m betting he was prepared for this to happen.

His alternate defender is Frankie Hejduk and Nowak can’t name him because he’s over-age and you’ve already got three of those named.

So in the back you have Ianni (Central), Orozco (Central, Left, Marking), Parkhurst (Central) and Wynne (Right, Marking)

The midfield consists of Adu, Bradley, Szetela, Feilhaber, Holden, Kljestan, McCarty AND Edu.

That’s a pretty formidable midfield right? With the expected 5 man midfield (well 4 with Freddy occupying that free role underneath McBride and Jozy), that means Nowak will has a couple players at his disposal on the bench.

Which tells me with so many options in the midfield, we’ll see Toronto FC midfielder Maurice Edu slot back into the defense (like we saw in the 1-nil win over Panama during Qualifying).

The way Edu reads the game, his athleticism, his physicality, his pace and his comfortability on the ball coming out of the back affords Piotr Nowak the easy decision to have Edu in the back if he so chooses. If Nowak goes with 4 in the back, I’d think it would look something like Orozco (Left), Edu (Central), Parkhurst (Central) and Wynne (Right).

Personally I believe that with all the competition at the Full National Team level in the central midfield, Edu’s best position might end up as a center-back.

image via PhotoBucket