Association Football

Putting the US men’s national team camp in Princeton makes at a lot of sense. Princeton has great facilities – a reason that Bob Bradley sited. It is just outside New York, which encourages the east coast media to take an interest. The Daily Show for instance sent John Oliver to tape a segment. It is also close to two sites for friendlies in Hartford and Philadelphia.

But my question is that aren’t there other places in the United States that could more accurately reflect the conditions that US will face in South Africa? England are training in the alps in Austria and Algeria are training in Switzerland to get them used to the altitude and to try to emulate the temperature. One of the advantages that we have as a country is that we can generally emulate most climate conditions. In 2002, for instance the US I believe set up their camp in South Carolina to emulate the heat and humidity of South Korea.

So why not have camp at altitude in Denver or Boulder, or Salt Lake, or another city in the Rocky Mountains, were the US can get both acclimatized to the altitude and play in cooler conditions.

Now I am sure the US training staff has this figured out. We are world leaders in fitness science and I assume that the boys will be well acclimatized to the altitude. Still, with other countries making the concerted effort to emulate the conditions in South Africa, why aren’t we?

Filed under: USMNT, World Cup 2010 |