Building up

Now that the Champions League final has concluded and the European season has completely run down, the countdown to the World Cup begins in earnest. All squads have assembled, and some have even arrived in Germany. And this week, some serious warm-up matches will be played. Here's the rundown for the next few days.

Tuesday night: USA-Morocco. Despite a large (for the US) media presence, the American camp has been largely incident free. Which is, of course, exactly the way you want it. Fresh from a 5-0 dusting of the Charleston battery in a scrimmage, the US travels to Nashville to take on Morocco. Bruce Arena is treating the next three friendlies as a dry run for the rigors of the group stage: there will be three matches in a week. So it's hard to say precisely what lineup Arena will use; pretty much every player will get a significant amount of playing time in these games. Some questions for the Tuesday night game: Is O'Brien ready? Who among the strikers will get the goals? And can we avoid the kind of injuries that derailed Chris Armas and Greg Vanney in 2002?

Wednesday night: Ecuador-Colombia. This one's at Giants Stadium, so if you are in the New Jersey area, come down and see how the Ecuadorians are adjusting to playing in oxygen rich environments. Although now that I come to think of it, East Rutherford NJ can hardly be called an oxygen rich environment.

Thursday afternoon: England "B" vs. Belarus. Huh? What precisely does England B mean? From what I'm reading, it means that you might see some players who won't actually be on the World Cup squad; Sven-Goran Erikkson wants to rest Gerrard, Lampard, Terry and Beckham, and he might be a bit short of numbers otherwise. But you probably will see Owen, Campbell and Ashley Cole, and even maybe Theo Walcott if his mum lets him come out and play. It'll be intriguing to see this (it's on FSC in the US.)

Friday afternoon: Saudi Arabia vs. Czech Republic. This is pretty much the first of the pre-Cup friendlies in which both teams will actually be playing in the tournament. If you're one of the six people in the US who gets GolTV, you can actually watch it.