Yanks in Europe: Gooch Offers to Play for Free

Okay, so I may have lied on Sunday when I said that that edition of Yanks in Europe would be the last one for awhile.  Here's one more short one with a couple of updates:

Yesterday, 28 of the 30 players on Bob Bradley's preliminary World Cup roster were in Princeton already, with one of the lone exceptions being Alejandro Bedoya.  Bedoya was still with Orebro, who squared off against last place Trelleborgs on Monday afternoon.  They earned a comfortable 2-0 victory, severely outshooting their opponents in the process.  The result pushes Orebro up to third place in the Allsvenskan table.  Bedoya played the full 90 minutes and took several shots of his own, though he did not score or set up either of his team's goals.  Nevertheless, it was yet another one of the energetic and active displays that have helped bring him into the final 23 conversation over the course of the past couple of months.

Elsewhere, Oguchi Onyewu made the news when he decided to extend his contract at AC Milan for one extra season.  The contract originally ran through June 2012, but it will now finish in June 2013.  The real noteworthy thing here, however, is that Gooch has decided to play that extra season without pay to make up for this past season that was lost due to injury.  Of course, there is a good chance that Onyewu might not even be in Milan by the time the 2012-13 season rolls around, but he is nevertheless being praised by the club for his "exemplary gesture".

Some have speculated that such an extension may have been some kind of concession from Onyewu's camp to convince Milan management to keep him around for at least another year; I won't say that's definitely the case, but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that did in fact happen.

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This duo will head to Princeton today to get their World Cup preparations underway, rounding out Bob Bradley's group of 30.