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Nesta injury could open door for Onyewu

The concerns over whether Oguchi Onyewu would be recovered from knee surgery in time for the World Cup have long been eased as he has trained on several occasions with the U.S. national team, but a lingering issue has cast a cloud over his eventual return to AC Milan.

Will he find playing time?

Onyewu has been cleared to resume training with AC Milan but another development may be even more significant toward his playing time. Veteran AC Milan defender Alessandro Nesta could be forced to miss the rest of the season if surgery is needed to repair a knee tendon. Surgery has been recommended and Nesta will ultimately have to decide whether to go through with it.

Nesta has paired with Thiago Silva to anchor the AC Milan central defense for most of the season, but with Nesta out of the picture, Onyewu would move a step closer to seeing playing time. Of course, he still has to actually train fully and be cleared to play. That should take place in the coming weeks, which will mean somewhere in the range of six weeks of the Serie A season for Onyewu to battle for minutes and regain fitness ahead of the U.S. national team's World Cup training camp in May.

Comments

  1. Gooch cannot pass. He can only be teamed with a top-shelf passer on the backline, or else he gives the ball to the opponents more than half the time. If possession figures were published, his ranking would shock every fan. Just count the turnovers; he’s up there with Feilhaber. If he takes the field as a starter for AC Milan in a Serie A game this season, I will eat eat two hats. No way it happens. He’s a one-dimensional sub in Italy; a goonish enforcer used to lean on small strikers at the end of games. He can start in the minor leagues (Belgium, MLS, the English Championship, France, etc.), but never for AC Milan or a team serious about the Champions League.

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  2. You don’t like my comment…I don’t like your picture. You think I’m obnoxious…I don’t like your face.

    Oh well, you can’t like everything about everybody. Time to move on with life. I do wish you good fortune in the future.

    GO USA!!!

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  3. You seem to have a unique definition of whining. I just don’t like how you said what you were trying to say because I find it emblematic of one of the reasons why American fans are rarely respected in other parts of the world. Light-hearted trash talking is fun. Unfortunately that’s not how what you wrote comes off, as should be evident from the general reaction to it. I could go into more detail about the difference in phrasing between a statement that seems like fun trash talking and a statement that comes off as naive/arrogant, but I don’t think it’s worth it. But I do understand now that you were trying to be light-hearted.

    I absolutely agree – we’re both allowed to express whatever opinions we want to. I don’t think I ever called you a monster, nor do I think you are one. I just find it problematic when people celebrate boorishness, especially when those people are my fellow US fans.

    And if this wasn’t clear before, I really don’t care what you think of my picture, though that’s probably the biggest piece of asshattery in this entire thread. I never called you any names. I don’t feel any need to prove my intelligence to some random guy on the internet, certainly not when he makes assumptions about it and calls me a “fool” based on a 100×100 pixel image on a blog.

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  4. “I look like someone speaking common sense” That’s your opinion. I think you look like you’re whining…and I didn’t know being confident in by national teams abillity to win makes me boorish and obnoxious. I think light-hearted trash talking is fun. You just don’t have any sense of humor.

    I am free to express my ideas, and you’re free to bitch about them all you want. I said something that you didn’t like, and you want to make me out to be a monster.

    And I’m not sorry that I don’t like your picture. You might be cheering, but you still look like a fool.

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  5. I look like someone speaking common sense. Though this may be futile when responding to someone who thinks there’s something positive about being boorish.

    Sorry you don’t like my picture. I didn’t know cheering passionately for the US at a World Cup game had something to do with intelligence.

    I’m all for freedom of speech. You are free to express your inane ideas, and I am free to call you out on them. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing.

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  6. …so how do you look right now after posting a response to my comment? And I would’t be talking about people not looking very smart with that picture you have posted.

    Gotta love the freedom of speech we have in this country!

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  7. Reading all this stuff about Onyewu makes me realize you are all so typically American impatient.

    Your interest as USMNT fans is that he get ready for the World Cup.

    Milan bought him because :

    1- He was comparatively cheap

    2- They needed someone younger than 54

    years old at the centerback postion that

    they could develop.

    Milan does not gives a rat’s ass for the USMNT’s World Cup concerns. They care only about Milan as well they should. If Onyewu cares about his long term future he will stay with Milan and fight it out and emerge a far better player ( or not).

    If he was concerned about this World Cup he should never have signed with Milan in the first place though I expect he didn’t plan on getting injured. Establishing himself is just going to take longer than everyone wants.

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  8. Again, they dont suck compared to the rest of the world…beyond their starting 11. A healthy Milan is a fantastic team, even with the questions at outside back.

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  9. Come on now, there is a fair amount of defense of the man too. It’s hard to counter scathing criticism with logical rebuttal that make it seem like the arguments are balanced.

    I do think most people are defending Gooch.

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  10. Being boorish adds to the fun. Ask yourself, do you think the same thing when the Yankees and Red Sox play against each other and their fans get into it? This is a soccer game, not war. A little trash talk has never hurt anyone. And all I said was that the USA is going to win. Why are so many of you getting bent out of shape? I could have said a lot worse.

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  11. It’s a BLOG, man. You’re acting like I’m going to bring about the 2nd Revolutionary War. I don’t care if it pisses people off, if their skin is that thin then they shouldn’t be reading the comments section in the first place. One of my closest friends is from London and we trash talk like this all the time…no big deal. I’m not Jesus, you don’t have to take everything I say to heart.

    Any way, I’m just excited to see the Yanks go marching into South Africa. Glad you’re on board. You have a good one too!

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  12. I believe it is true as well, to an extent. Of course you have to have the talent, but you also have to fight the stereotype of the American soccer player. It reminds me of how sometimes minorities have a microscope on them and can feel the pressure to be perfect so as to prove their doubters wrong.

    I think Friedel and Keller busted that concept for US goalkeepers sometime ago. For field players I think McBride and Reyna started to make believers out of many. Let’s hope the successes of Dempsey, Donovan, and company finally rid the world of any doubt that we have world class talent.

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