There is a saying: out of sight, out of mind, and this phrase perfectly fits into the football world where a good player can become a not required one in few months of absence from the field. US coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who is now shortlisting US national team for the remaining world cup qualifiers, has now said that their star player Landon Donovan needs some more time to secure his place in the national team. Accordingly, he has many players who, he thinks, are better performing than 31-year-old Donovan, who just returned into the field after an exile of four months. US national team has to play two exhibition matches before their next two world cup qualifiers, and in finalizing the team, coach has apparently been making a list of some spare players, coz many US players are already living up with yellow cards which could be a danger if they are further slapped with another yellow cards. Klinsmann recently said in a media gathering that “There are players clearly ahead of Landon Donovan right now. There are a lot of questions. Looking back now at the last two years we’re in charge of the program, we’ve seen a lot of players coming through and making big impacts, showing they are 1,000 percent committed to the cause and to the team and built themselves a strong position.”
Donovan has been one of the most successful US national players and scored 49 goals in his 144 games, but his recurring injuries made him almost disappeared from the field off late. Last year, he missed a major part of the year coz of his bronchitis, hamstring injury and a knee injury. It is also going to be a major challenge for the coach to select a good team after dismissal of Captain Carlos Bocanegra from last month’s world cup qualifiers. He emphasizes on building a team full of individual talents who are not carrying burdens of their names. He said about this, “We see the chemistry of the team developing and we try to have a clear picture of every individual player, what he brings to the table. Most of the time he was not part of that process. That was his choice, and I probably understand that, and it’s no problem. But at the same time we’re moving forward at our speed.”
While talking about Bocanegra, he added, “Thankfully now he’s back playing the last couple of games in the Spanish second division. At the same time, we have very-kind-of-promising players breaking through, like Omar Gonzalez or Matt Besler and Geoff Cameron. … Suddenly we have options, and Carlos is aware of that, and Carlos knows at the end of the day it’s competition.”