I'm so excited...

...and I just can't hide it.

About 15 hours from now, Team USA will take the field in Germany to play against Poland. The United States section of the World Cup Blog linked me to an interesting article over at ESPN. I learned that this match against Poland is probably the only time that Bruce Arena will have access to the full compliment of players. March 1st is the last FIFA-sanctioned playing date prior to the World Cup.

As I'm sure my reader(s) can recall, I've briefly covered part about FIFA mandating certain periods of time that club teams *must* release players to play with their national teams. What I didn't know was that March 1st was the last such date. Woah. That's a little disappointing to me, as a fan of the United States Men's National Team, but I suppose it *is* the club teams that pay the bills. Fortunately, our domestic league, MLS, is in the off-season, so those players don't really have many club team obligations. If the MLS one day gets close to the quality of the domestic leagues of Italy, Spain, Germany, and/or England, this looks to be a huge advantage for the U.S. team. So, dear reader(s), tell your grandkid(s) that you read it here first.