A Practice of Biblical Proportions

The U.S. team met its first fans in China before its first training. Unfortunately, they were reptilian. When the USA arrived at the expansive Shenhua FC facility for practice, they found that the field was already occupied…by frogs. Tons of them. They weren’t tiny frogs either, they were a few inches long and quite unwilling to vacate the field, forcing the U.S. team to play a real-life game of Frogger for their warm-up run. With a steady rain falling, the U.S. team had a fairly short, crisp training following the warm-up run and stretch with some 5 v 2 and then some crossing and finishing. Before training, the U.S. players had some fun with the frogs (one player, who shall remain nameless, offered to kiss one to see if it would turn into a prince), before being told that they may be toxic, which quickly ended the frog-play. Scott Street, one of the USA’s massage therapists, channeled the late, great Steve Irwin and personally removed six frogs from the goal area, using a field marker cone as a scoop. Luckily, the frogs were smart enough to hop away from the playing area and there were no reports of any frog mashing incidents, because the last thing a goalkeeper wants to do when diving for a ball is land on a frog.