Aston Villa News 24/7Brad Guzan played in the United States’ penultimate friendly on home soil before the World Cup last night; a disappointing 4-2 loss to the Czech Republic in Hartford, Connecticut. Coach Bob Bradley was very much looking at his periphery players to help him decide who will make the final 23 man squad.
As one of the three goalkeepers in the 30 man preliminary squad, Brad Guzan is the only Aston Villa player that we know for certain will be travelling to South Africa. Everton’s Tim Howard is clearly their number one choice, but the number two choice isn’t quite as clear since Brad’s playing time with Villa this season was limited to the domestic cups and both legs of the Europa League tie against Rapid Vienna.
In contrast, Marcus Hahnemann has had a busy season at Wolves with 25 league and 2 league cup appearances. That’s in addition to a little over 300 appearances in all competitions for Reading. It’s clear who has the experience, but Castrol Football threw this little nugget out on Twitter a little earlier:-
Castrol Football
Hahnemann saved 78.4% of shots on target this season – best ratio amongst keepers in Europe’s top 5 leagues who made over 100 saves.
Not too shabby, eh?
Although I wouldn’t say that our Brad was really at fault for any of the goals and he was playing behind an extremely shambolic, make-shift back line, picking the ball out the net four times won’t have helped his cause much.
America have another game on Saturday, a friendly against Turkey in Philadelphia, before heading to South Africa. They’ll then have one last warm up game before facing England on June 12th, a friendly against Australia in Roodepoort, South Africa, which promises to be extremely interesting, but it’s a game that Bradley would be expected to be giving his best XI a final rehearsal.
With the final 23 just announced, Bradley must by now have a pretty good idea who he wants to play and further experimentation is unlikely.
But hang on, who or what are Castrol Football anyway? Good question, more details coming in a later post, but for now, congratualtions to Brad Guzan. Here’s to a successful tournament…
…after June 12th, obviously!
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4 Comments to “Brad Guzan Is Going To South Africa, But Second Or Third Choice?”
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Guzan is a great keeper, I think he will go some way in his career, it is just unfortunate for him he plays seccond fiddle to Friedel. Guzan is only 25, still very young in goalkeeper terms. I can see him playing in 2-3 World Cups to come.
amazing how the US keep churning out top quality goalkeepers!
i know he’s anxious to play more – hopefully we’ll get past the first hurdle in the europa league nest season, there’s games there for him.
Not convinced about Guzan, best of luck to him in the world cup and all that but I was horrified by his performances in the semis of the league cup against Blackburn. He was so bad in the first leg that Big Sam targeted him for the second leg and O’Neill couldn’t dream about playing him for the final.
His penalty heroics against Sunderland were great but there is no pressure on keepers in a shootout. The taker is expected to score and if the keeper saves he is a hero. What you want from your keeper is someone that instills confidence in the back four and commands the area in this respect he looks like a novice.
I hope he can learn quickly under Friedel’s tutelage but I have my doubts.
that’s a fair point. i think there was a clear progression in him from when we first tried to get him up until the blackburn games when, i agree, he didn’t look too clever at all.
he certainly made a difficult decision (who to play in the final) much easier for MON.
hopefully it’s just a confidence thing and with some games he’ll get back on track.