Essential personnel

A throwaway comment from Marcelo Balboa, but one you hear bandied around a lot: there are only seven or so places in the US squad that are actually up for grabs.

Is this true? Assuming health, who are these definites? I would say that, for differing reasons, the following players are in:

Keller
Reyna
Donovan
Beasley
McBride
Mastroeni
Cherundolo
Oneywu

And frankly that's it. The reason I think that we actually have so few definites is simply because we have quite a few positions (center back, left mid and striker) where there are a lot of very qualified players, possibly too many to bring to the cup.

For instance, center back. Oneywu is definite. Pope, Berhalter, Bocanegra, Conrad, Gibbs are all in the frame here. (Maybe even Jonathan Spector, but let's leave him out for the time being.) But I'm not sure you can afford to bring six center backs on your World Cup squad. One of them must be excluded, and it's not immediately obvious who. At the moment, I think Cory Gibbs misses out, but if he gets some regular club time and one of the others drops off for whatever reason, it all gets changed up.

At striker the same thing: McBride definitely, plus Johnson, Twellman, Wolff, Ching, and Noonan. Probably only three (maybe four) of those last five go, and although Twellman made a major move forward against Norway, there still isn't much to choose between the others; or at least, not enough so that you can say someone is definite. Likewise I'm not entirely sure you can bring both Convey and Lewis, both of whom play the same positions.

The upshot of all this is that I suspect there are quite a few places available in the US squad, more perhaps than in previous years. For the record, here is who I think is going at the moment, injury-permitting:

Goalkeepers (3): Keller, Howard, Hahnemann
Defenders (8): Oneywu, Cherundolo, Pope, Bocanegra, Berhalter, Conrad, Dunivant, Hejduk
Midfielders (8): Reyna, Donovan, Beasley, Mastroeni, Convey, Dempsey, O'Brien, Lewis
Forwards (4): McBride, Johnson, Twellman, Wolff

With Gibbs, Armas, Zavagnin, Albright, Ching, Noonan, Ralston just outside.