The U.S. national team will play its final World Cup tune-up match on June 5 against fellow World Cup participant Australia in Roodepoort, South Africa, U.S. Soccer announced on Monday. The match will be broadcast live on ESPN2 at 8:30am ET.
Set to take place at Ruimsig Stadium in suburban Johannesburg, the friendly will be played one week before the United States opens World Cup play vs. England. The match will come after the United States plays a pair of friendlies on home soil on May 25 (vs. Czech Republic in East Hartford, Conn.) and May 29 (vs. Turkey in Philadelphia).
Australia begins World Cup play on June 13 vs. Germany in Durban, South Africa. The 'Socceroos' are in a very difficult group that also includes Serbia and Ghana.
The friendly will pit long-time Everton teammates Tim Cahill and Tim Howard against each other, while the Aussies also boast current and former English Premier League players Brett Emerton, Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill and Mark Schwarzer.
What do you think of this friendly? Excited to see the Americans face a good opponent just a week before the England match?
Share your thoughts below.
I’ve convinced myself that the “and former” was added after I made this comment 😀
(SBI-Nope, sorry. I included that specifically for Kewell and Neill. Nice try though.)
Ouch, that Luca Toni dive still hurts 4 years later…
Right! I was going to say, doesn’t the increased respect from the Confed Cup have something to do with Bradley as well…
I found dates that said May 12th for provisional squad and June 10 for final squad. Anybody know which dates are correct? Any know how many players can be on the provisional squad?
Bob Bradley was seen in Sweden watching Alejandro Bedoya play in the season opener yesterday.
No, it was Morocco and we lost.
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Someone nailed it pretty early on with the ‘feels like we’re playing ourselves’ comment. I definitely see the Aussies being pretty much our complete equals.
yabba dabba hell!
I’m confused about the warm up schedule. I thought our team was going to prepare in Europe — Austria or something like that. But now our (presumably complete) game schedule has us playing in the USA twice in late May and South Africa in early June before the big game June 12. Was I just wrong about that European training, or has that really been part of the itinerary?
have a feeling we’ll meet Germany, Ghana or Serbia before Australia. The Aussies could very well end up in fourth in that group.
This is great….they get to play in a city they will playing their 2nd game in and they will be able to remain at elevation against a decent team. Nice one Sunil and co…
The US has one of the more favorable schedules in group play with regards to climatizing (is that a word?) to the elevation. They will be at elevation for all three (and now a friendly) games. Many teams will have to go from sea level to elevation at some point in their group games. This may cause some unexpected results.
i actually think serbia finishes last in the group. everyone always gets excited about the darkhorse euro team, but beware of the overly defensive team that only does very well at home. doesnt exactly bode well for a neutral site game. same thing with slovenia. id say germany gets first and either ghana or australia get second.
Baron Harkonnen, you were in front of me this morning, and rest assured I reported your unsafe lane change as well as your right turn on a red light.
dammit they get to use the word football in their logo why cant we!!!!lol. Loving the matchup
and how much are those two things the same thing?? ya checkout this entire cycle!
I’m surprised they scheduled this friendly considering they may face each other in the first knock-out game of the World Cup.
Anyways, good opponent. This run of games before the World Cup should prepare us considerably better than 2006.
This friendly also showcases Fulham teammates Clint Dempsey vs. Mark Schwarzer.
Beuhler?