Jurgen Klinsmann will announce his roster for the upcoming camp/friendlies/qualifiers on Thursday.  He is going to name about 27 players, which is slightly more than usual, due to seven players sitting on yellow cards and late arrivals into camp.

One player who is rumored to be missing from this roster is Landon Donovan.  If Landon does not get called in, you would have to think he would be called in with the guys for the Gold Cup.

Speaking of that Gold Cup roster, it looks like they will have their own friendly against Guatemala down in San Diego before the tournament begins on July 9.  But US Soccer has not officially announced anything yet.

We told you about the Gold Cup getting a new trophy last week.  Well, here it is and it sort of looks like the old trophy.

With all these different USMNT rosters, Brian Sciaretta takes a guess at both rosters.

Jozy Altidore was named to the De Telegraaf Eredivisie Team of the Season.  And here are two photos of Jozy holding the Dutch Cup after last week’s victory:  Photo 1 & Photo 2.

Carlos Bocanegra is looking forward to returning to Rangers next season, although Bocanegra’s agent tells Greg Seltzer that there is some MLS interest.

There was a Sky Sports story that we posted last week about Bursaspor trying to obtain Maurice Edu from Stoke City on a permanent basis and multiple people are telling Greg Seltzer the same.

If Edu does return to Stoke City next season, he along with Brek Shea and Geoff Cameron will look like they play for the Columbus Crew in away games in their new black-and-yellow kits for 2013-14.

Remember when Freddy Adu’s manager at Bahia was fired a week after he joined the club and there was some crazy stat about the club going through 20-25+ managerial changes over the previous 10 years?  Well, Bahia fired another manager.

As expected, Steve Cherundolo will be getting a new one-year extension at Hannover 96.

After being released by Carlisle United, Frank Simek is currently on trial with D.C. United even though he would still need to go through the allocation rankings since he has played for the USMNT before.  Yay weird MLS rules!

Even with the broken leg, Will Packwood has agreed to a one-year extension with Birmingham City.

The LA Times has a new story up about Bob Bradley.

Brian Sciaretta talked to Alejandro Bedoya recently about his good start to the season and his big summer ahead.

Mix Diskerud talked to Goal.com this week about his future with the USMNT and his failed move to Portland.

Tijuana defeated Palmeiras 2-1 last night meaning they will advance to the quarterfinals of Copa Libertadores.  Edgar Castillo and Joe Corona both got the start in the win and they will now take on Brazilian side Atlético Mineiro.

Alex Kurial of Yanks Abroad has a story up on how Americans Shane Recklet and Jacob Wilson are trying to help Vasas SC back to the top level of soccer in Hungary.

And go take a look at our cool new Sacha/Over There shirt.  They will go up for sale next week.

Lets get right to it.

Much like last year, it looks like AZ Alkmaar probably won’t release Jozy Altidore for the beginning of the upcoming USMNT camp.

It appears that Michael Bradley does know how to smile between this photo and this video.

Staying in the Bradley family, here is a trailer for the upcoming Bob Bradley/Egypt documentary.

Brek Shea made the travel roster, but did not dress in Stoke City’s 1-1 draw yesterday.  I guess Ian Darke talked about it more at halftime, but he also tweeted that they are working on getting him 100% match fit as he finally got over his foot injury.  Here is also a story from England where it mentions that Tony Pulis brought Shea to the club with next year in mind.

It is not quite the silly season just yet, but we have our first rumor on a possible Jonathan Spector move to newly promoted Cardiff City.

Jermaine Jones talked to Bundesliga.com about Schalke’s last couple of games.

Honefoss goalkeeper Steve Clark was fined for taunting opponents during the club’s Norwegian Cup match from last week.  He was fined 20,000 Norwegian crowns, which the internet tells me is about $3,500 or 1,000 Schrute bucks.

Jon-Paul Pittman was one of 12 players released by Oxford United this week.  Pittman scored two goals in 15 appearances in 2012-13.

I posted about Paul Arriola’s move to Tijuana last week and he recently talked to Tom Marshall about making the move.

Here is a photo of Junior Flores in his new Borussia Dortmund gear.

Finally, both Julian Green and Russell Canouse scored for their teams in German U-19 action and you can view the goals in this U-19 video recap of the weekend (their games are the first two games highlighted in the video).  Hell of a strike by Canouse.

But that whole manhunt sort of got in the way.

Greg Seltzer talked to Bob Bradley this week about the chaos of coaching in Egypt.

US Soccer President Sunil Gulati was elected to the FIFA executive committee, beating out Mexican Football President Justino Campeon by one vote.  He will be taking over Chuck Blazer’s old spot.

Freddy Adu has made at least made Bahia’s gameday roster for this weekend’s game.  Adu was also on the BBC’s Football Focus this week.

Brian Sciaretta caught up with Stuart Holden this week to talk about his comeback.  Sheffield Wednesday’s manager Dave Jones also wants to extend Holden’s loan.

While there is a lot of speculation that Jozy Altidore will be sold to a bigger club this summer, Earnie Stewart claims that AZ want to keep Altidore and build around him for next season.

A new American youngster to keep an eye on down in Mexico, Alonso Hernandez, made his debut with Monterrey tonight.

I got a message from Daniel Stevens this week telling me that he is not longer at Kemi Kings in Finland, but he is now at Finnish side BK-46.  They just won their fifth round game in the Suomen Cup.

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.

A few random things for you.

Charlie Davies got the start and went the full 90 minutes in Randers’ 0-0 draw to OB today.  It was his first start in a top-flight European league since before his car crash with Sochaux in 2009-10.  As Howie pointed out to me, Costa Rica has played two WC Hex qualifiers on American soil since his last start.  Let that sink in for a second.

After playing some games with the U-23 team in the Regionalliga, Bobby Wood came off the bench and played 31 minutes in 1860 Munich’s 1-0 win over Erzgebirge Aue today.

Landon Donovan is back with the LA Galaxy and spoke to the press today.  He is hoping to get back with the USMNT in time for the three qualifiers in June.

The Birmingham Mail has a story on Will Packwood and his road to recovery.

Here is a likely poorly Google-translated interview with Alfredo Morales from Hertha Berlin’s site.

The US-Mexico game drew the highest World Cup qualifier match ratings in ESPN history.  And here are the field-level highlights of last Friday’s game against Costa Rica.  A friend of the site also sent in some photos from the game that I should hopefully have up tomorrow.

Swedish Superettan side IK Brage have signed central defender Tyler Ruthven.  Ruthven last played with the New York Red Bulls in 2012.

Bob Bradley has Egypt on the right track so far in their quest to qualify for the World Cup.

And good luck to soccer journalist Brian Straus. Staus was let go by the Sporting News along with some other writers this week.  Whether you enjoyed his now famous article from last week or not, we need more people like him following MLS/US Soccer.  Hopefully someone smart picks him up.  Maybe I can convince him to come to this site and pay him in high fives.

I already posted it earlier today, but it looks like we might see some special centennial USMNT jersey at some point this year.

Graham Zusi retrurns to the US this week to begin training with the USMNT, but he first spoke with Brian Sciaretta about his trial at West Ham United.

His training buddy at West Ham and now with the USMNT, Juan Agudelo, is getting linked some more with a move to Celtic.  And possibly Everton.  Yay silly season!

Jermaine Jones’ four-game ban has been reduced to three games.  And Jones picked up an injury during training camp in Qatar, so I don’t expect him to come back to the US to train/play with the USMNT like he did last year when he had a lengthy suspension around this time.

It looks like only 8,000 tickets have been sold so far for the friendly against Canada.

And one last thing about the USMNT.  Tony Beltran kicks off ussoccer.com’s January Camp journal entries.

Stuart Holden will be part of Bolton’s gameday roster for tomorrow’s FA Cup match against Sunderland.

It looks like Clint Dempsey will be looked upon to step up for Tottenham by Andre Villas-Boas while Emmanuel Adebayor leaves for the Africa Cup of Nations.

Not shocking, but Jurgen Klinsmann helped with Michael Parkhurst’s move to Augsburg.

Tony Taylor came off the bench and played nine minutes for Estoril in their 1-0 win over Beira-Mar today.  He played in their cup game last week and this was his first league appearance since late November, so he is slowly starting to get some more playing time.

Shawn Parker scored for Mainz in some Winter Cup match/friendly against Borussia Dortmund.  And here are some highlights of the goal.

Bruce Arena was asked about Landon Donovan’s future and we really don’t learn anything new.

FD: Landon Donovan?
BA: As we get closer to reporting date we’re going to finalize where he’s headed this year.

FD: Sounds optimistic?
BA: You never know with Landon, so we’ll see.

Bobby Wood is hitting the weights in Turkey during 1860 Munich’s training camp.

Goalkeeper Samir Badr is training with Manchester United this week before reporting to some MLS team’s training camp next month.  Badr was supposed to play with Haras El Hodood of the Egyptian Premier League last year before the season was canceled.

Some new jerseys/kits are slowly starting to leak out for next season.  Here is Djurgardens IF’s away kit for next season.  Hopefully Brian Span will wear it some more in 2013 as he appeared in only nine league games in 2012.

Bob Bradley and Egypt lost 4-2 to Ivory Coast in one of their final friendlies before World Cup qualification resumes in March.

And finally, could Bob and Klinsi battle in the future for a 20-year-old forward?  Probably not, but Amro Tarek Abd El-Aziz was born in the US and is apparently being looked at by US scouts according to that article, although he last played for Egypt’s U-20 team.  He has scored one goal in 13 appearances with Wolfsburg II in the German Regionalliga in 2012-13.

I just want to link again to the footage of Stuart Holden running around as it makes me happy to see.

Speaking of Holden, Bolton manager told BBC Radio Manchesterthat Holden could make his senior-team return next Tuesday in Bolton’s FA Cup replay at Sunderland.

Will Packwood is going to have a third round of surgery to insert a metal plate into his leg.

Zach Pfeffer scored again for Hoffenheim’s U-19 team in his second friendly with the club.

Michael Parkhurst got the start at right back in Augsburg’s 4-1 win over Hansa Rostock in a friendly on Wednesday.  Here is also a photo of Parkhurst in action.

Bob Bradley and Egypt lost to Ghana today, 3-0, in a friendly.

While most of Brøndby’s players are looking for new homes with the club’s financial issues, Clarence Goodson is not ready to return to the US/MLS.

US Soccer continues its “MNT in…..” series with Jose Torres in Mexico.

Will Parchman takes a look at everyone’s favorite Icelandic-American forward Aron Johannsson.

Travis Clark updates us on the latest US U-20 camp.  And Brian Sciaretta has an interview with US U-20 forward Daniel Cuevas.

And finally, Steven Goff has a story up on Joe Gyau.

This weekend was sort of a fun one with Dempsey and Herc scoring goals, plus the USMNT roster announcement.  Good times.  Now or some links from the weekend.

Speaking of the USMNT January camp.  Both Graham Zusi and Juan Agudelo are going to be a week late as they are headed to West Ham United this week for one of these MLS week-long-summer-camp-training sessions.

Doug McIntyre (ESPN Insider) gives us his surprises of the 25-man roster.

The other chatter from yesterday regarding the USMNT was locations of the various hexagonal qualifiers.  We are nearing the home opener against Costa Rica in March and we still don’t know the location.  Grant Wahl is hearing that the final three possibilities are Kansas City, Salt Lake and Denver.  I am guessing it will be Salt Lake or Denver as the US plays Mexico at Azteca a few days later and those two sites give the US players some training/game action with altitude.

Steven Goff is hearing that the June qualifiers could finally be headed to the Pacific Northwest in Portland and Seattle.  While that is all fun and games, Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson was tweeting a bunch about how there probably won’t be a qualifier in Portland since they don’t want to put sod on their turf for a couple different reasons.  But he thinks there is a decent shot that Portland hosts a Gold Cup game.  You can check out his feed for all his reasons/ranting.

I already linked above Clint Dempsey’s goals from the weekend, but here is a video interview from after the game.

Birmingham City’s website gives us a quick update on Will Packwood.  It looks like he will be out “for at least nine months.”  Teammate Jonathan Spector missed out on the FA Cup match with some kind of back injury.

I missed this story last week, but this should make Bob Bradley’s job a little easier.

ESPN FC gives us three young Bayern Munich players to keep an eye on including Tampa-born Julian Green.

Shawn Parker scored the game-winning goal this weekend for Mainz in a friendly against Club Brugge.

Andrew Wooten and Sandhausen made it to the finals of the Harder Cup before losing to Karlsruher SC.  Wooten was one of Sandhausen’s top scorers of the tournament.  And it looks like I was able to find video of the whole final.  That looks like it would be fun to attend.

I haven’t heard Jann George’s name mentioned since he was kicked off Nurnberg in early November, but apparently I missed that he signed with 1860 Munich II late in November and has been training with the first team as they start their winter break training camp.

And finally, much to Howie’s chagrin, former US U-17er Fuad Ibrahim has been named to Ethiopia’s team for the 2013 African Cup of Nations.

Links and whatnot from the last couple of days.

Leander Schaerlaeckens has a nice little write-up on Sacha Kljestan finding his spot at Anderlecht.  Anderlecht have won their last 10 league games, tied with Barcelona for the longest active streak in Europe (or whatever European leagues whoscored.com follows).  Only Shakhtar Donetsk (15 straight earlier this season) have had a longer winning streak in league play in 2012-13.

Another (not) fun fact.  Sacha left Belgium to return to LA a few hours after I left Dallas on Thursday (according to twitter) and I think he beat me back to LA on Friday.  Lets just say that I hated life last Thursday/Friday.

Some good news.  Stuart Holden returned to the field this weekend in a closed-door scrimmage against Wigan.  Looks like he played about 60 minutes.

There is some twitter speculation that Eddie Johnson got called into the January USMNT camp.  Or it all could be some hogwash.  Yay social media!  I haven’t done a shameless plug in a while, but you can follow me or Howie (or even Jon Arnold) on twitter.

Brian Straus gives us his [insert something] of the Year awards.  He thinks it was the year of the Bradleys.

Despite getting roughed up lately (while also making some nice saves), Martin Keown selected Brad Guzan to his team of the half-season.  Guzan is also a backer of Paul Lambert (likely since Lambert gave him a chance to start).

Jon-Paul Pittman will be out at least three months after having surgery on his shoulder.

I don’t remember if I already posted this or not, but Brad Friedel has signed a one-year extension with Tottenham.

The guys over at Yanks Abroad have an interview up with American Dennis Lukens.  He is currently coaching at Ukranian team Krystal Kherson.

And Fulham no longer have any Americans at the club, but Jimmy Conrad did a tour of Craven Cottage, including a stop at McBride’s bar inside the stadium.

I planned on doing this earlier, but I had to do some assembly on some office stuff for my apartment and I want to hurt the person who invented the allen wrench.  I have lost all feeling in my right thumb.

As for some news, Joe Gyau is currently training with German 2. Bundesliga side St. Pauli and could be headed there on loan.  Gyau has not been receiving any playing time with Hoffenheim this season after participating in a lot of the preseason games, so this could be a chance for playing time.

Will Packwood didn’t play in Birmingham City’s 3-2 loss in the Capital One Cup, but Brian Sciaretta has an interview up with the 19-year-old over at the NY Times soccer blog.

You can get a recap of yesterday’s Capital One Cup action right here.  Also of note, while both Brad Guzan and Eric Lichaj played for Aston Villa, it appears that Irish defender Derrick Williams is also an American, but he has been playing with the various Irish youth national teams.

Sticking with Sciaretta, he predicts the USMNT roster for the upcoming camp/qualifiers against Jamaica.

As for one player who probably won’t be called in due to a recent injury, you can likely cross Edgar Castillo off the list.

We mentioned before about a documentary following Bob Bradley as he attempts to take Egypt to the World Cup.  Well, there is now a trailer to check out right here.

And on that note, I need sleep.