IRENE, South Africa — The slogan on the side of the bus reads “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Victory!” with the Stars and Stripes painted alongside. The U.S. World Cup team is making itself at home in South Africa, ready at last to play the games that matter most.
The Americans are staying in the 74-room Irene Country Lodge, a luxury hotel north of Johannesburg and south of Pretoria protected by stone walls and barbed wire. There’s a lake on the property, with an adjacent farm filled with cows and enough roosters to make alarm clocks superfluous.
“It’s been a long time,” captain Carlos Bocanegra said Tuesday. “Now it’s finally here. We’re in South Africa. So we’re excited for the games to start. It feels real now that we’re down here in South Africa and we’re set up at our hotel and you see all the World Cup fanfare.”
The 23-man roster and about an equal number of coaches and support staff left Washington-Dulles International Airport on Sunday evening and arrived 17 hours later to a warm welcome. After a night of rest, practice resumed Tuesday ahead of the U.S. team’s World Cup opener against England on June 12. It will be the first World Cup match between the U.S. and England since the famous American upset in 1950.
Following a few warm days last week in the Northeast U.S., the Americans found themselves in a quite different climate: daytime highs in the 60s and nighttime lows near 40. They will get to experience game conditions Saturday, when they play Australia at Roodepoort, outside Johannesburg, in their final World Cup warmup.
“We’re trying to jell as a team and peak come June 12,” Bocanegra said. “The thing that sticks out to me just at the moment is to be a bit better defensively and solid, have a better team shape from the back towards the front.”
Footnotes.
Theo Walcott was omitted from England’s final 23-man World Cup squad four years after he was a surprise choice to go to soccer’s biggest tournament. The seven players dropped following a 30-man training camp were Walcott, Darren Bent, Tom Huddlestone, Adam Johnson, Scott Parker, Michael Dawson and Leighton Baines.
• American-born forward Giuseppe Rossi and AC Milan striker Marco Borriello were dropped from Italy’s roster.
• World Cup organizers said ticket sales are approaching the record set in the United States, where about 3.6 million tickets were sold for the 1994 tournament.
The Associated Press
