Soccer Watch

The Austin Aztex put their league lead and unbeaten road record on the line this week, playing at Miami as we go to press Wed­nes­day, and at Baltimore Saturday, May 29, 6pm (for a live webcast, see www.austinaztex.com), before coming home for what could be a stretch of six home games in 17 days, June 5-22 (depending on the U.S. Open Cup draw).

Just 14 days to World Cup 2010 kickoff in South Africa: U.S. Coach Bob Bradley named his final 23-man squad Wednesday (live at the ESPN campus). No real surprises, but it's a strange and potentially exciting front line: mercurial 20-year-old Jozy Altidore, plus Edson Buddle, Herculez Gomez, and Robbie Findley, three guys who, at the average age of 27, have never been part of the national-team picture and didn't play in qualifying. In the end, Bradley went with the hot hands: Buddle's been tearing up Major League Soccer this year, and Gomez was the leading scorer in Mexico in the just-ended season. A hot goal scorer is a unique commodity, no doubt. Can these guys do it at the higher level? We shall see... Only four MLS-based players were picked, while five of the seven cuts were MLS players, including Dallas' Heath Pearce and Houston's Brian Ching... Bradley included only seven defenders (most teams carry eight), and there are issues there. Notably, Oguchi Onyewu, the putative rock in the middle of the U.S. defense, looked shaky in his first game in seven months, a 4-2 loss to the Czech Republic Tuesday in a friendly, and he doesn't have much time to play himself back into form... Lots of other international tune-ups going on around the world: Mexico lost a pair this week, 3-1 to England, and 2-1 to Holland... On TV this weekend: USA-Turkey (Saturday, 12:30pm, ESPN2) and England-Japan (Sunday, 7am, FSC)... And, oh yeah, Inter Milan won the European Champions League defeating Bayern Munich 2-0 and are the best team in the world. Yes, better than any team in the World Cup.