WVHooligan - Soccer Blog

Some FC Dallas news for you all this afternoon, probably something you may have heard by now as it was emailed to me earlier in the day by US Soccer.

FC Dallas midfielder Dax McCarty has been added to the Olympic roster for next month’s Olympics in China. He replaces injured Real Salt Lake midfielder Nathan Sturgis. McCarty caught an early flight this morning to join the Olympic team for training in Palo Alto, California today.

There was some mix up about this announcement last night as the FC Dallas team blog was asked by the USSF to take down the news until they got confirmation from RSL about Sturgis’s injury.

The Olympic Team will travel to Hong Kong on Friday, July 25 for the ING Cup, facing fellow Olympic participants Ivory Coast on July 30 and Cameroon on Aug. 2 in the final two matches before the start of the Olympic Games.

The U.S. has been drawn into a difficult Group B at the Olympic Games and will open against Japan on August 7 before facing the Netherlands on August 10, with both games taking place at the Olympic Sports Center Stadium in Tianjin. The team will then travel to Worker’s Stadium in Beijing to conclude group play against 1996 gold medalist and 2005 Under-20 World Cup champion Nigeria on August 13.

I like the addition of McCarty even though I still believe this roster would have been better used if coach Peter Nowak had added another defender. Still McCarty was a big part of the team’s qualifying and was considered a bit of a shock to not see on the original roster (he was one of the few alternates).

From a FC Dallas perspective its nice to see another young player get recognized even though he will be missed big time in the coming weeks by the club. Its one of those bitter-sweet kinds of deals.

What do you all make of McCarty being added to the roster?

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