Lets dive right in.

The US moved up five spots to #28 in the latest FIFA World Rankings after their win over Costa Rica and draw to Mexico last month.  Since Brazil is not playing any qualifiers since they are the host nation, they are continuing to drop (to #19!) since qualifiers are weighed more than friendlies.

For those few people who don’t think Terrence Boyd is a “true” American, he got a new tattoo.

The English Premier League will have goal-line technology next season.

Despite being on loan with Sheffield Wednesday, Stuart Holden took over Bolton Wanderers’ twitter account for a couple hours.  Check out the timeline to see the questions that he answered.

Dylan Fahy writes on Michael Bradley for the NY Times.

As for another Bradley, here is a trailer for a documentary on Egypt’s quest to qualify for the World Cup.

Andrea Canales of ESPN FC has an article up on Herculez Gomez.

Sky Sports has a pretty cool scouting report on Anthony Brooks up on their site.

Brian Sciaretta caught up with Duane Holmes to talk about his new contract offer with Huddersfield Town.

And lets finish with a poorly translated interview with Jerome Kiesewetter.

Preston Zimmerman scored his fourth goal of the season in Darmstadt 98′s 2-0 win over Stuttgart II.  Jerome Kiesewetter also came off the bench for Stuttgart II.  Here are the highlights (Zimmerman’s goal starts around the 1:07 mark).

After having named 18 players for the CONCACAF U-20 Championship, Tab Ramos had two open spots to fill. One of them will go to Stuttgart II’s Jerome Kiesewtter.

The U-20 roster now stands at 19 players and the USA will add a 20th player in the coming days for the tournament. Ramos announced an initial18-player roster on Feb. 7 as the team traveled to Toluca, Mexico, to begin training for the tournament.

Kiesewetter, who just turned 20 on Saturday and holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Germany, last year signed with VfB Stuttgart in Germany’s third division, 3. Fußball-Liga, making his debut in September. For the U.S. U-20s, Kiesewetter played in two matches in 2012 and has seven career caps in this age group.

That championship has lined up US television coverage: the potentially-soon-to-be-senseless Fox Soccer.

Do you like links?  Then you will like today’s post.

Still not over Timothy Chandler?  Brian Sciaretta and Ives Galarcep each give their thoughts on Chandler-gate.  I can’t wait until someone named Gate/Gait gets in trouble so we can have Gate-gate.

US U-20 forward Jerome Kiesewetter has left Hertha Berlin and has signed a new four-year deal with VfB Stuttgart.  Kiesewetter is a German-American who played with the US U-18 team at the 2011 Milk Cup and was part of the US U-23/U-20 camp in November.  He leaves behind Alfredo Morales and Anthony Brooks at Hertha Berlin, who were just relegated to the 2. Bundesliga.

With Hapoel Tel Aviv winning the State Cup, Leo Krupnik and Maccabi Netanya will be in next year’s Euopra League.

Mikkel Diskerud wants to make his loan deal to Gent a permanent move.

There are some rumors in Scotland that Dominic Cervi could be headed to MLS this summer.  Cervi has been with Celtic since 2008-09, but has yet to appear in any league games.

Greg Seltzer recently caught up with Gregg Berhalter about his great start to the season at Hammarby.

Seltzer also did an interview with Evian TG goalie Quentin Westberg about his first season in Ligue 1 since 2006.

The Guardian released their team of the year based on the game-by-game player ratings given by the readers and even they are shocked that Clint Dempsey did not make it.  He wasn’t even rated as the top player for Fulham this season.

Sticking with Dempsey, he will be participating in some All-Star game in Miami in June, which will also feature players like Didier Drogba, Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez among others.  It also looks like Carlos Bocanegra and Jozy Altidore will be playing in the game.  Here is the website for the game.

Not quite cool as the OT XI, but SI.com has some awards/honors for the various Americans playing abroad.

Brian Sciaretta has an interview up with Sacha Kljestan over at the NY Times soccer blog on Kljestan’s breakout season at Anderlecht.  Based on his quotes in this interview and the fact that he is celebrating his bachelor party this week (according to him on twitter), I don’t think he will be named to the USMNT roster this upcoming Sunday unless some midfielders pick up some injuries.

It should be interesting to see what happens this summer to Stuart Holden and Tim Ream as Bolton announced a plan to slash their wage bill by 50 percent before next season.

And finally, here are some more rumored/leaked kits for next season.

* Everton (Tim Howard) home
* Tottenham (Brad Friedel) away and third
* FC Sochaux (Charlie Davies) home

The German Bundesliga doesn’t resume play after its winter break until this upcoming weekend, but it hasn’t stopped teams from playing friendlies over the last two weeks.  And some of the younger (German-)American players have had a chance to play with their respective first teams.

Starting with Hertha Berlin, they defeated Swiss Super League club FC Thun 4-2 on Friday.  US U-20 defender Anthony Brooks got the start along the back, while Alfredo Morales started in the midfield (and picked up an assist during the game).  In the second half, U-20 forward Jerome Kiesewetter came off the bench and got to play 45 minutes.  All three players are trying to impress new manager Michael Skibbe and earn playing time with the first team in the second half of the season.

Over at Hoffenheim, they beat St. Pauli 2-1 this past weekend.  Both Danny Williams and Fabian Johnson started for Hoffenheim while Joe Gyau came off the bench in the second half.  Some might remember that Gyau played a bit with the first team at the Harder Cup earlier during the break, so Gyau appears to be inching closer to playing time with the first team.

It is always nice to see these young players progressing and getting closer to first team action.

Before diving back into the world of the club scene, Howie took a look last night at the lack of offensive production by the USMNT over the last year and a half (as well as some quotes looking at the big picture).  If you really want a post-game recap of Tuesday’s friendly, The Shin Guardian has you covered.

Now for some club-oriented stuff from the past week.

Granted the quotes are coming from his own agent, but Brek Shea is being tracked by a few Premier League teams.

David Smith recently talked to Bobby Wood about his recent play with 1860 Munich’s U-23 team.

Jerome Kiesewetter scored two goals this past weekend Hertha Berlin II’s 5-0 victory over Oranienburger in a friendly.  Alfredo Morales and Anthony Brooks also saw the field for Hertha Berlin.

Andrew Wooten also scored this past weekend, notching his fourth goal of the season in a 2-0 victory over Schalke II.

After a couple speed bumps, Gale Agbossoumonde was finally cleared to play with Eintracht Frankfurt’s U-23 team.  He also made his debut this past weekend, playing the final 10 minutes in a 2-1 victory over SGS Großaspach.

Sebastian Lletget has returned to the field with West Ham’s developmental team after starting the season with some muscle issues.  He is hoping he can do enough on the field to make the Olympic team.

Some website called German Soccer Traveler has an interview up with Preston Zimmerman.

I posted some friendly results earlier today, but here are some links.

While we posted about Gale Agbossoumonde going back to Traffic Sports limbo land this past weekend, Brent Latham takes a look (ESPN Insider) at Traffic Sports’ impact in the US.

Brian Sciaretta caught up with Jerome Kiesewetter to talk about the upcoming Milk Cup and his background as another German-American in the US player pool.

Nate Weiss’ latest adventure in Sweden has him trialing at Örebro SK.

Fresh off his 22-minute debut on Monday, Oguchi Onyewu will be part of Sporting CP’s 25-man roster when they take on Juventus in Toronto on Saturday.

A report out of Germany has Schalke looking to get rid of Jermaine Jones and apparently a team in Russia is interested.

Back to some friendly results.  Sebastian Lletget played 74 minutes for West Ham United’s developmental team in a 2-0 victory over Gillingham.  And Jon-Paul Pittman scored a goal in Oxford United’s 3-1 victory over Seacoast United on Monday.  They ended their US preseason tour winning two games and drawing one match.