Today with the announcement of the US roster for the South Africa friendly, it seems like the biggest talking point has been the inclusion of Teal Bunbury on the US roster. This has been especially true north of the border where Bunbury's jumping at the chance to represent the US national team has annoyed, frustrated, and pissed off Canadian fans. The main point of frustration is because earlier this year Bunbury said "I was born in Canada, I have a lot of family members there, and it would feel wrong for me to play for the U.S. I feel a connection with Canada."
Then last week Bunbury went on It's Called Football and seemed to waiver from that stance, saying that he wanted to do what was best for his career. A week later, he's accepting a call up to the US national team. Today in an interview with MLSsoccer.com, Bunbury says that he is 100% committed the USA and says that he doesn't think about if this or that happens. Bunbury also said that his reason for switching was because he wanted to play in a World Cup and he felt he had a better chance of doing that with the US. With the disorganization with the Canadian Soccer Association, it's hard to fault him in that regard, but you also have to wonder how Bunbury's going to develop, and if he'd even be in the picture for selection for the 2014 World Cup. Bunbury has a lot of raw talent and if he continues to develop it's certainly possible he could be on a plane to Brazil for the World Cup with the US. But that's certainly not a foregone conclusion, while the US striker depth is fairly thin, there is still a lot he'll need to do to make the team.
The other thing that certainly doesn't endear him to the Canadian fans is the fact that on his last appearance on It's Called Football last year he was asked if he'd been in contact with anyone from US Soccer (not necessarily called up), and Bunbury said no. But yet in the MLSsoccer.com interview Bunbury admits to having spoken with US coach Bob Bradley a couple months ago when he was told he was on the USA's radar.
All this is going to make for some very interesting games next year when Bunbury and the Wizards go to Toronto and Vancouver for games as you know the Bunbury/Canada angle is going to be played up (at least in the fans' minds) a lot. All that aside, this is a great opportunity of Bunbury to audition for Bradley right in front of him in training and in a game and prove that he needs to be in the discussion for future call ups.
Here is his interview with Dave Borchardt on the Wizards Youtube channel.
If you watched the interview, he said he talked to Bob, but didn't really think about it. I think thats what he meant when he hadn't talked to the U.S. about playing for them. That was probably true in the fact that Bob basically had told him that he's on his radar, which really was a given. But who knows, he's just 20, I'm not going to fault him too much for not handling this as well as he should've. Its a really tough decision.
ReplyDeleteHow should he have handled the decision? Its his decision to handle, not like he pulled a LeBron and decided to "take his talents to South of the 49th parallel".
ReplyDelete