The United States and Nigeria are playing the last friendly for the World Cup for the US team and the match is streaming from ESPN and is on TV Saturday night with a live stream from WatchESPN and starts up at 6 pm ET from EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Florida before the team travels to Brazil and Jurgen Klinsmann has some final tweaks left for his team before making the trip to South America.
The US team comes in after the best year ever for the team in 2013 so naturally the team got drawn into the best group or the toughest at least in all of the tournament in Group G. The Group of death has the United States, Portugal and Ghana and that will be a very tough group to come out of. Klinsmann knows Germany well, while Portugal has the potential of Cristiano Ronaldo and Ghana is the team that has knocked out the Americans in the past two World Cups. Klinsmann left Landon Donovan off of the roster for the tournament and that was a controversial choice and now his team will have one more prep for the Cup and they need as much experience together as they can get.
The Portugal squad comes in with Cristiano Ronaldo dealing with an injury and while he is back practicing, if he misses any games it will be very tough for the Portuguese side to advance. Any chance the US has of advancing out of this group could depend on the health of Ronaldo, who is arguably the best players in the world and everyone knows he is the best player on his team. Missing practice time is always hard for the World Cup, as Ronaldo has not been able to play with his teammates much and that lack of chemistry and time together could make it tough for him to get into a rhythm in the tournament. Nigeria is also preparing for the tournament and they are the 45th team in the rankings and they will be looking to head into the tournament in good form, as they are in a group with Iran, Argentina and Bosnia & Herzegovina and that means Lionel Messi and a favorite in the Argentinians.
U.S. Men's National Team finishes up their American friendly schedule before heading into Brazil and they are playing three matches in 12 days heading into the tournament and that could get the team into a nice flow heading into their first matchup against Ghana. The team also will play against Belgium in a scrimmage in Brazil at the World Cup that will be closed to fans and that will be the last true game for the team before starting their group stage schedule.
The US opens up their play in the World Cup with Ghana and then the team plays against Portugal before a matchup with Germany to finish off the group stage and that will make things tough. The team on the German side is a favorite along with Brazil, Spain and Argentina and getting to the knockout stage would be a huge accomplishment.
