Shouts to Kyle Sheldon from Behind The Badge for the heads up.

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.

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Peter Nowak and his staff ran their first Olympic Team practice yesterday at Stanford University.

For all the up to date information from the team itself, check YNT-USSoccer.Blogspot.com.

image via YNT-USSoccer