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U.S. U-20s to play Portugal in friendly ahead of World Cup

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By DAN KARELL

With a full squad finally available, United States Men’s Under-20 National Team head coach Tab Ramos will have one match to gauge his starting eleven ahead of the Under-20 World Cup in Turkey this month.

U.S. Soccer has scheduled a friendly match against fellow World Cup participants Portugal Under-20 on June 14 in Algarve, Portugal. The match is seven days ahead of the American’s opening match against Spain . Portugal opens their the tournament campaign also on June 21, against Nigeria.

What do you make of this news? What do you see Ramos learning from the match? Who do you see starting?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Will the U20 rosters be very different from the U21 Uefa Championship rosters playing now? Not as many 23 year olds with senior level caps?

    Reply
    • Well, the U20s will be 20 and below.

      UEFA U21: Players are eligible for the 2013 UEFA European Under-21 Championship if they were born on or after 1 January 1990.

      U20 WC: All players of its representative team were born on or after 1 January 1993.

      Reply
  2. makes sense. i guess i’d like to see the following guys start:

    Cuevas———–Rodriguez———–Villarreal
    ————Gil—————————Joya———
    ————————Trapp—————————
    Ocegueda—–Stanko——O’Neill—–Yedlin
    ———————–Cropper————————-

    Reply
  3. Now, this will be a much better indicator of how good/bad this team is. I think we will see a much better performance than we did in the Toulon tournament, basically because that team was a shell of the full-squad that will be in Turkey.

    Reply
    • Full squad?

      The Toulon tournament team is 85% of the WC squad.

      The only notable absences in Toulon were Gil, Yedlin and Vilarreal.

      Reply
      • Gil = MB90 for the youth team. He’s the one that makes it all work in the middle. So missing him is a big deal. Villareal was huge in qualifying too. Those two will make a big difference, and adding Yeddy to the mix only strengthens them even more.

      • I completely agree that Villarreal, Gil and Yedlin will strengthen the team but the point stands, we saw 85% of our starting lineup in Toulon and to pretend like we were missing 10 players is pure hyperbole.

      • Actually they were missing almost 40% of the starting line-up and that is depending on which game you are talking about. They started 3 different line-ups in the 3 games. Also this tournament helped cuevas regain his fitness which is great, because he was a force in the concacaf championships

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