Taco Night at the Buehler's

Two happy forwards gorge themselves on tasty Mexican food.

On Monday night, the entire U.S. team took a trip north to Del Mar for dinner at Rachel Buehler's house. Rachel is of course from San Diego, altough she attended Stanford, and her family welcomed the team into their home. Special thanks to the proud parents of the first-time Olympian, Mary Ellen and Donald Buehler (a heart surgeon) for hosting the team at their beautiful house. The players scarfed down piles of home made tacos (a local taqueria was cooking up the tortillas, beef, chicken and carnitas right there) and some absolutely fantastic desserts (home made pound cake and cheese cake = yummmmmm) as sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Hey, California livin' is good livin'. Anytime the team can get out for dinner it's a fun night, but they don't often get a back yard picnic and suffice it to say that we had to roll a few players out of there after they ate so much.

Rachel and her younger sister Anna, who like her big sis, will attend Stanford this fall. How about the most patriotic pound cake EVER?

Rachel and her Aunt Mardelle, a devoted reader of the WNT Blog.

You Stay Classy, San Diego!

The U.S. team got a great welcome at the San Diego Airport when they arrived in town on Monday morning. Thanks to all the girls from the San Diego Surf club (and thanks to the Soccer Moms who brought them) for coming out to greet the team. No matter how many flights you take and how many airports you walk through, it's always nice to be greated by smiling and excited faces. Hopefully, everyone got their stuff signed, got to meet former San Diego Surf player Rachel Buehler and we'll surely see most of the same faces at Torero Stadium on Wednesday night.

A-Rod signs some t-shirts. Not long ago, A-Rod was getting her t-shirt signed by WNT players.

Hometown hero Rachel Buehler chats with Jim Stone of the local NBC affiliate.

Home Run for A-Rod

Certainly a great event today outside of Denver. More than 15,000 fans, two excellent teams, a fantastic stadium and one world class finish. Although, it was hot. Darn hot. And dry. So hot and dry in fact that these quotes were uttered by U.S. players after the game:

Tobin Heath: "I felt like I had a big hair ball in my throat."
Stephanie Cox: "My mouth has never been that dry."

The fact that both teams were able to put on good performances in such heat and at a mile-high altitude was truly impressive. And if there are such things at breakthrough games (there probably aren't, as success on the national team usually comes from chipping away at the wall instead of breaking it down), then maybe today was that game for Amy Rodriguez. She came on at halftime and immediately started causing trouble for the Brazilians. Her world-class strike was as spectacular as it was exciting. Yes, the ball did skip through a Brazilian defender's legs to get to her, but it was the U.S. that capitalized on a mistake and her shot off the goalkeeper hands and into the roof of the net was about as good as it gets. The U.S. team travels to San Diego tomorrow morning, will have a light training in the afternoon and then tomorrow night...it's dinner at Rachel Buehler's house! We're not sure of the menu yet, but we know it'll be good eatin'.

Now That's Going Green

One U.S. player will be wearing these sweet kicks tomorrow against Brazil in the match broadcast live on ESPN at 2 p.m. MT / 4 p.m. ET. We're not saying who...you'll have to tune in to find out. Suddenly, we're hungry for peppermint, or maybe thirsty for some green tea.

Christie's Old Guards

Did you know that Christie Rampone has had the same shinguards for eight years? The WNT Blog didn't, until we found today. That has to be some kind of record, right? Said Christie: "I stick with what works. I like the way they feel." 'Nuff said. That dates these guards back to about the middle of 2000. These puppies are going on their third Olympics! We're wondering if maybe Nike can dig into the time capsule and pull out another pair for Rampone? Those things have to fall apart one day, right? Anyway, those guards have more caps than almost anyone who has ever played for the National Team. Speaking of a lot of caps, JP Dellacamera, who has done more WNT games on TV than anyone else by far (we don't want to say how long he's been around, but he did Mia Hamm's college games), and Tony DiCicco, who coached the USA for 119 games from 1995-1999, chatted with Abby Wambach after today's training to prepare for the ESPN broadcast tomorrow.

True Pioneer

The U.S. team had a special guest at training today in Linda Gancitano. Don't know her? You're excused, but she was one of 12 women who played in the first-ever U.S. Women's National Team match on Aug. 18, 1985 in Jesolo, Italy. The defender came off the bench that day against Italy, making her the first-ever substitute in U.S. history. She got her one career start against Denmark in the final match of that four-game tour and her two career caps make her one of the 281 women to have played for the full U.S. Women's National Team. She lives in Florida, but was visiting friends in Denver and made contact with U.S. Soccer, so we invited her to training. She's coming to the game tomorrow too. Surely, she'll be thinking "We've come a long way, baby." Check back soon on ussoccer.com's all_access video for a short piece as we take Linda back, WAY back...to the first-ever WNT game. Above, Linda takes a pic with two WNT greats. Below, the first-ever U.S. team.

That's Linda, front row, third from the left (we think).

DSGP

The U.S. team trained today at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, and as it's the first visit for the WNT to the venue, we must say we came away extremely impressed. Kudos to the architects, designers, workers and anyone else that was involved in building this building as it's surely one of the best soccer venues in the country. The 18,000-seat stadium, which opened in April of 2007, is surrounded by a 24 fields, and the stadium pitch is about as good as it gets. It's also wide. Very wide. We're told that the stadium features the largest video scoreboard for a stadium its size in the world, and that's pretty cool. The U.S. team had a 70-minute training in perfect weather and the atmosphere tomorrow for the game should be rockin', as it will be the fourth largest crowd to see the U.S. team play this year and largest inside the USA.