Filed under: FIFA World Cup, International Soccer, U.S. Men’s National Team, United States
PRINCETON, N.J. — U.S. national team coach Bob Bradley said that he tried to steer Charlie Davies away from the comments and tweets that raised the hopes of so many — including himself — that the injured forward would be fit enough to make the 30-man World Cup roster announced last week.
Davies’ exclusion continued to be a topic of conversation on Monday as those players who did make the cut began to gather for a week-long training camp here at Princeton University.
It didn’t take long for a post-practice meeting with journalists to turn to the topic of Davies, who unloaded on both his club, FC Sochaux, and Bradley during a French radio interview last week. Davies claimed Sochaux “denied me a chance at playing in the World Cup” by not issuing a medical clearance for him to join the national team, and said his conversation with Bradley regarding his exclusion “turned into anger.”
In interviews and on his Twitter account, Davies implied throughout the spring that he would be ready in time for the World Cup. “Haven’t felt this good in a long time! Working extremely hard & extremely confident after seeing the results,” was a typical tweet. It built expectations, to the point that many were surprised that Davies was uninvited. Considering his injuries, they shouldn’t have been, and Bradley said he warned the player back in February that lifting hopes could result in a more damaging fall.
“From right after the accident until now, he put all his energy and emotion into his rehab and he did it with an obvious timetable. We talked about that along the way,” Bradley said Monday.
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