STANFORD, Calif. -- And now Brazil gets real. As the far-flung diaspora of America's best footballing talents gathered to start World Cup training camp on Thursday, a feeling of "first day at school" abounded around the team hotel. Watching the squad reconnect, check out each others' haircuts, and, in some cases, introduce themselves to each other for the first time, was to be reminded of the ephemeral nature of international football teams. They qualify by coming together in fleeting bursts, practice briefly, play, and then disperse back to their club teams, win or lose.
Except this team will now eat, sleep, train, and relax together for 33 days before they grapple with their next opponents at the 2014 World Cup. As the players unpacked and settled in, their hotel rooms may have been in California, but Natal, Brazil -- where the team face Ghana on June 16 -- was very much front of mind.
All of the players arrived dreaming of that trip to Brazil. Thirty men reported to camp, including a veritable "Chorus Line" of defenders. By June 2, 23 will remain. Jurgen Klinsmann told us he was not sure when those cuts would be made, but the uncertainty of their looming presence has given the first two weeks of camp a dual, almost oxymoronic, tension. This is a squad attempting to forge an unshakable
esprit de corps while the individual players are competing desperately to earn their final ticket.
That tone was set on the very first day. Klinsmann has declared his players will face a month of "extreme, intense workouts" in which they will "show they can go through two months of stress, of suffering, of sacrificing" in an alpha-regime of "two-a-day" practices.
"I don't know if it's one or two or three levels, but I think we have to jump a few levels, in their personal game, our collective game, and the speed of our play, and the speed of thought, and the technical discipline and the way they can keep focus and stamina through 90 minutes," he told us. "We definitely have to go two to three levels above what they are right now."
And so, the U.S. players, some just a half-hour off long-haul flights from Europe, took to the field for their first practice, with temperatures topping 95 degrees (a full ten degrees hotter than Manaus) -- the kind of heat Jozy Altidore would not have encountered in Sunderland, nor Mix Diskerud in Norway’s Tippeligaen.
In front of a billboard with a good luck message from Stanford alumnus and current Indianapolis Colts quarterback, Andrew Luck which read (
"Proud to Have You Boys at Stanford"), they cantered through a two-hour sweat-soaked workout, ending with a scrimmage in which tackles snapped, every call was contested, and the competition was, at times, ferocious.
The twin values of unity and competition crackled into life in Friday's grueling "beep test" -- an endurance trial in which the players attempt to shuttle backwards and forwards between cones at an ever faster tempo dictated by an unforgiving machine. Ten at a time they charged to and fro, covering up to 3,600 meters in 15 minutes.
Alejandro Bedoya described the ordeal with the touch of a poet: "Your legs go first, then your lungs constrict, and you spit up in vain after every lap but you keep your eyes on your competitors and that keeps you going," he said. "I kept telling myself, this is for the team, this is for my family, this is for Brazil, this is for Ghana."
As the test progressed, and the pace increased, the players began to desperately suck in air, shirts puddled in sweat, their faces masks of agony. One by one they reached their limit, legs going, they keeled over, and coaches swooped in to dispense the comfort of an iced towel.
I asked Chris Wondolowski if the test is the closest males come to experiencing the pain of childbirth. Though worn down by the trial, he still conjured the energy to smile. "I recently witnessed my wife in the maternity room, and I would not say it compares to that," he said thoughtfully, "but it is plenty painful."
It was while watching the elite athletes grind themselves to their core that the true nature of the squad revealed itself. Every time 10 players embarked on the 10 shuttled-between cones, their teammates clung to the sideline, bellowing their encouragement to will on men who in many cases are direct competitors for a place on the final 23.
Michael Bradley monitored proceedings with a careful eye. As he later told us, "This will be a World Cup where teams that do well will suffer. We want to be the team that can suffer the most."
