How a young U.S. team might may line up Saturday vs. Chile

While doing some reporting earlier this week for the U.S.-Chile match, I asked for some help in getting Dax McCarty on the phone from California. For my game preview in SI.com, I wanted to speak with one of the more experienced players in the national team camp.

Yep. The 23-year-old with two international appearances qualifies as one of the senior citizens for this camp.

I’m fairly certain we’ll see McCarty on Saturday in some form. When I ran the traps on Wednesday around the camp, coach Bob Bradley had yet to decided, exactly, how to line up his young men at the Home Depot Center. As you might remember, he was experimenting a little with a 4-2-3-1 late last year – a significant deviation for a tried and true 4-4-2 guy.

You can read the comprehensive SI.com preview here; the game at the Home Depot Center kicks off at 10 p.m. ET on TeleFutura or on ESPN3.com. Meanwhile, here are some guess as to some others we might we see in the match. And I do stress, these are guesses.

Among the foursome of goalkeepers, we know plenty about what Matt Pickens and Nick Rimando can do from their time in MLS etc. So you might think an appearance from Dominic Cervi or Sean Johnson is in order. (I’m high on Johnson, by the way, based on some mature performances as a rookie last year in Chicago.) But I think such a young back line may convince Bradley to go with a little more experience, at least for a half. So, I’d guess that Rimando may be up first, with Pickens or Cervi on deck. As this was Johnson’s first appearance in a national team camp, he’ll be fine sitting this one out.

As Omar Gonzalez and Tim Ream are the only natural center backs remaining in camp, I would expect to see them start Saturday. From there, it’s anybody’s guess. I do know that Zach Loyd, who played as a right back and a center back in Dallas last year, has been practicing at left back this week. He and Anthony Wallace, then, would seem to be the candidates to start on the left. The versatile A.J. DeLaGarza can certainly play there, too.

Candidates at right back are Sean Franklin, Ryan Miller, DeLaGarza and Marvell Wynne.

Wynne played as a center back most of the time for Colorado last year, so I would expect to see him off the bench in the middle rather than at right back.

The midfield, as I said, is a bit foggy. I would guess that we’ll see Alejandro Bedoya and Brek Shea on the right and left, respectively, although the intriguing Mikkel Diskerud was training along the outside. When Bradley opts for a four-man, straight line midfield, the two outside players are slanted fairly heavily inside anyway. We’ve seen Benny Feilhaber play that way for years, unable to crack the middle but still able to play in the middle, sort of. Sam Cronin has usually played in the middle in MLS, but he has also been stationed along the outside at times.

Best guess – and I assure you it’s just a big ol’ guess: Jeff Larentowicz and McCarty will hold the middle, with Bedoya and Shea on the outside. Diskerud will spell one of the men centrally for the second half.

The other midfielder in the mix, Dallas’ Eric Alexander, can play centrally or along the outside. So, like Cronin, he’s yet another utility knife in Bradley’s tool belt.

I’d love to get a look at Eugene Starikov, a late addition to camp. Born in Ukraine, Starikov moved to Florida when he was a child and remained in the States long enough to play two collegiate seasons at Stetson University. His contract now belongs to Zenit St. Petersburg in Russia. Hopefully, we’ll all know a little more about him by tomorrow night.

But I have a feeling we might see Teal Bunbury, perhaps paired with Chris Wondolowski. Talented young striker Juan Agudelo seems more likely to come off the bench. Still just 18 years old, I have a little feeling Bradley wants to keep moving him along slowly.

Wondolowski, by the way, was mostly an outside midfielder last year when he scored all those goals for San Jose. In this camp he’s been a forward on the few occasions the side lined up in an 11 v. 11 situation.