Americans Still Kicking in Europe
Seven players on the United States’ World Cup team have been--and in four cases still are--involved in frantic championship or relegation fights in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands as the European season draws to a close.
In England, U.S. goalkeepers Kasey Keller and Brad Friedel, battling for the starting spot at Korea/Japan ‘02, both made an impact over the weekend.
Keller shut out Liverpool, 1-0, in his sixth consecutive start for Tottenham Hotspur to all but end Liverpool’s hopes of winning the Premier League title.
Friedel, meanwhile, helped the Blackburn Rovers celebrate their survival at the top level of English soccer with a 2-1 victory Sunday over Everton, the home team of another U.S. World Cup player, Joe-Max Moore. Blackburn and Everton, which both had been flirting with relegation most of the season, managed to avoid the drop when other results went their way Saturday.
Friedel has started all 36 of Blackburn’s league games this season and also was a key to Rovers’ League Cup triumph.
For U.S. captain Claudio Reyna, however, the fight goes on. Reyna will not be able to join the American team when it opens camp in Cary, N.C., on Wednesday because his English club, Sunderland, was held to a 2-2 tie at Charlton Athletic on Saturday.
That means Sunderland has to at least tie its final game, at home against Derby County on May 11, or hope that Ipswich ties or loses its final match, to avoid being one of three Premier League teams demoted to the first division.
Because of that, Reyna, signed by Sunderland from Rangers of Scotland for more than $6 million, probably will not be playing for the U.S. against Uruguay in Washington May 12.
Also battling relegation, this time in France, is U.S. defender David Regis, whose FC Metz team lost, 2-0, to Paris St Germain on Saturday and is engaged in a desperately close contest with Guingamp and Lorient to see which two of the three teams drop from the French first division to the second division. All three have one game left.
In Germany, Bayer Leverkusen, the home of U.S. defender Frankie Hejduk, was poised to win the Bundesliga title, but consecutive losses to Werder Bremen and FC Nurnberg have all but scuttled that hope.
Leverkusen, which has finished as Bundesliga runner-up three times in the last five seasons, was knocked out of first place by Borussia Dortmund over the weekend and no longer controls its future. If Dortmund wins Saturday, it will win the championship.
Bayer Leverkusen still has a chance to win the European Champions League, however. It tied Manchester United, 2-2, in the first game of a home-and-home semifinal series last week and the second game is in Germany on Tuesday.
The only American World Cup player almost assured a championship this European season is midfielder John O’Brien, whose Ajax Amsterdam team needs only a tie in its final game Saturday to win the Dutch title for the 28th time.
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Stephane Guivarc’h, a forward on France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team, announced his retirement because of a lingering knee injury. “My knee cartilage has suffered a lot and I haven’t touched a ball for four months,” Guivarc’h, 31, said. “Even with time, I won’t make it, so it is better to stop.”
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A crowd of 56,000 in Athens on Saturday saw AEK Athens defeat rival Olympiakos, 2-1, to win the Greek Cup.
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Injured England captain David Beckham is confident of being fit for the World Cup, and British newspapers Sunday quoted his father, Ted, as saying that the Manchester United midfielder could even be ready to play in the European Champions League final on May 15 if United beats Bayer Leverkusen in Tuesday’s semifinal.
Latin America
Goals from defender Ivan Cordoba of Colombia and forwards Alvaro Recoba of Uruguay and Ronaldo of Brazil earned Inter Milan a 3-1 victory over Piacenza at Milan’s San Siro stadium Sunday and left it within one victory of its first Italian Serie A championship in 13 years.
