Bad Week On The Bubble

This isn't going to help the CONCACAF Champions' Cup gain any kind of traction in this country. First Pat Noonan, and now Todd Dunivant picked up injuries in their matches last week that will keep them from joining the U.S. National Team for its upcoming friendly with Poland on Wednesday.

The reflexive response is that these injuries could very well keep either player from making manager Bruce Arena's final 23-man roster for the World Cup this summer. I think that may be more the case for Dunivant than for Noonan, and even that assessment is kind of sketchy. Left back has been notoriously fickle for the Americans lately, with a rising tide of conventional wisdom that it's not Carlos Bocanegra's "natural" position and Greg Vanney sort of fading into the sunset. Heath Pearce is still pretty young, and probably a longer shot than Dunivant right now. Most, however, are expecting Arena to put left-sided midfielder Eddie Lewis in that role to start, and Bobby Convey might be able to do the same, although he's been playing much further forward lately with Reading.

Whether they play in the back or not, those two players are both ahead of Noonan, who spent all his time in recent friendlies on the left side of the midfield. There's no question that Lewis, Convey and DaMarcus Beasley all make the squad before the New England midfielder. Dunivant seems to have made more of a case for himself in recent matches, and his injury is a bit less severe than Noonan's, so at the end of the day, I'm not sure if any of this will really matter.

The guys to watch in this week's match are going to be Greg Berhalter and Oguchi Onyewu, who may find themselves with tougher competition for center back spots with Eddie Pope's resurgence, and Pablo Mastroeni, who returns to international action after a really long layoff.