Brad 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!