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Well one thing my career at Baseball Digest Daily will allow me to do is digress into non-baseball stuff. I used to blog about soccer and I miss it so I suppose you’ll see the occasional soccer post on here from time to time.

Piotr Nowak has named the team he’s bringing into Olympic qualifying on March 11. It’s a strong roster but then the last one was stronger and it failed to qualify.

I’m very happy to see Eddie Gaven make it as I think he showed signs of turning things around toward the end of last year. When Eddie was 17 he had an enormous season in MLS, and remains the youngest player to be named to the league’s Best XI, and the next youngest isn’t close. It’s hard to know exactly what happened, but I’m sure at least some of it had to do with lousy coaching trying to drill all of his aggressiveness out of him. At his best he could create goals out of nothing, and dazzle with brilliant flicks, touch passes and 360 spins on the ball. He was nearly senior national team quality at 17, and was a below average MLS player at 20.

With Schelotto in place, Gaven started to come around in Columbus at the end of last year, showing some of the talent that had folks so excited four years ago (he is the only returning member from the U23 qualifying squad four years ago). He’s married now, and if he finally gets back on track, he can be a very useful attacking option for this team and the senior team in the future. We’re unfortunately a country that produces a lot of hard working soccer robots. A few artists are welcome.