The Gold Cup is the biggest headache on the schedule. We want to be respectful of the confederation championship and put our best team out there and try to win it. However, our focus has to be on World Cup qualifying. Those 10 games are the most important.

He enjoyed what we did. He liked our methods, and he felt the things we do are what players like. And when he reinforces that to me, that helps me. Soccer aside, he's a friend. . . . I did my best to get him involved back in the game again. He was in kind of limbo a bit.

I thought he's had a tough go at it. But I think you see today he's a player with a really great upside. We're going to move him around as best we can and put him in a position to make the World Cup roster.

We eagerly look forward to seeing our domestic players. We want to do the best job we can of making the roster as competitive as possible over the next six months so we can position our team to be successful in the World Cup. We view this camp and the games in January and February as critical towards our preparation for Germany.

In my opinion it's going to be the best World Cup in history for a lot of reasons. It's in Europe, which tends to bring in all the best teams.