The Columbus Crew’s Duncan Oughton has gotten the recall to New Zealand’s Full National Team for their upcoming Home and Home World Cup Qualifying matches against New Caledonia on September 6th and September 10th.
The call up is his first in 2008 and Oughton will be looking to build upon the 2 goals in 18 appearances.
New Zealand currently sit atop the group with 9 points, followed by New Caledonia with 8 points and Fiji and Vanuata tied with 1 point each.
Oughton’s last appearance with the All Whites was an International Friendly at Wales where he went the full 90 and assisted on New Zealand’s opening goal, earning rave reviews from Martin O’Neill.
I think that’s something we always forget about as fans when the team goes on the road, the constant badgering of the team by fans, radio stations and the phone calls in the middle of the night.
Makes it even sweeter when they walk away with a result.
UPDATE - Real Salt Lake and Under-23 starting keeper Chris Seitz and Danny Szetela have both made their way to Florida, joining up with the rest of Bob Bradley’s men.
The departed players: Brian Ching, Clint Dempsey, Steve Cherundolo, Landon Donovan, Brad Guzan, Frankie Hejduk, Maurice Edu, Sacha Kljestan, Pablo Mastroeni, and Matt Reis have already taken off and did not join the team in Miami for their preparations for the return leg at Barbados this weekend.
Ace, The Wifey and I (as well as Pops, Moms and Whitney who’s lucky enough to be heading to Sweden and will get to experience the 2008 Euros Swedish style) headed down to the Home Depot Center along with just 11,000 other Southern Californians to see the US put up an 8-nil drubbing on Barbados.
The north end was wide open, as was the upper deck once again. I’m just hoping it was the fact that it was Barbados because that’s miserable.
11k for a Qualifier? Here’s a chance for us US Mens Team supporters to represent and that’s all we give them?
At least I got to see an old school Chicago Fire DaMarcus Beasley jersey representing.
This was exactly the type of game that Bob Bradley’s men needed heading into this extremely tough phase of Qualifying. Barbados was an opponent that was unorthodox in style, dropping 10 players behind the ball at every opportunity and forcing the United States to beat them through ball movement and combination play in the offensive third.
Remember, this is a United States team that is going to have to go on the road to some very difficult places (bad fields and horrible weather) having to figure out how to break a team down to get valuable points against opposition that does not or will not play any true style other than using their athleticism and physicality to try and frustrate them.
Want to know how tough this Qualification Round is?
