National Team Duty for Sporting Players

One day after Sporting Kansas City advanced to the fourth round of the US Open Cup, three more Sporting players took the field for their country in international friendlies.  The first was Soony Saad who made his debut for the national team of Lebanon.  In a friendly against Oman, Saad scored Lebanon's only goal in the 1-1 game in Qatar.  Saad was supposed to return to Kansas City after the game as Lebanon went on for World Cup qualifiers against South Korea and Iran.  Saad posted today on Twitter though that he is going to stay a little bit longer, meaning he's impressed enough that he's impressed enough to earn a place in the team that will travel for their two World Cup qualifiers.

The news wasn't as good for Sporting's two US representatives.  Graham Zusi started the USA's game against Belgium. After going down in the 6th minute, Zusi helped set up the equalizer in the 22nd.  His corner to the back post was headed back across goal by Clint Dempsey and headed in by Geoff Cameron. Unfortunately things didn't get better for the USA in the second half the US gave up two more goals to go down 3-1. In the 69th minute, Zusi exited the game for Brad Evans.  At the same time, Matt Besler entered the game for Clarence Goodson. Up until Besler's entrance he'd looked like the best center back of the night and hadn't even played a minute.  Goodson and Omar Gonzalez had looked very poor together.  Unfortunately Belgium scored shortly after Besler came on (although the fault more was on Damarcus Beasley not Besler).  Besler did make a great tackle later in the half that looked close to being a penalty but on replay showed to be a great tackle.  The US though fell 4-2 to the Belgians and now head to DC for a friendly with Germany before heading to Jamaica.