U.S. accepts invite to Copa America

The summer of 2007 will be a busy one for the U.S. national team, as U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said Monday the United States will take part in next year's Copa America, CONMEBOL's national team championship. The tournament takes place from June 26-July 15 in Venezuela, starting just two days after the finish of the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

With the Gold Cup starting on June 6, there exists the possibility that U.S. national team players who ply their trade in MLS could miss nearly two months of league action. At the moment, the federation and league's solution to the issue is up in the air.

"We're aware of all the scheduling conflicts in '07 and ... we're committed to finding ways to work through that in cooperation with the federation," said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. "Sitting here today, we can't give anybody any more details on that because we just don't know it." Copa America and Gold Cup aren't the only things on the minds of the league's decision-makers for next year. As Garber noted, several schedule-impacting developments are "swirling in the pot," including the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, new MLS TV windows on Thursday and Sunday nights, an odd number of teams -- 13 -- requiring an unbalanced schedule and the potential United States-Mexico club tournament. Splitting the 2007 season into two halves, which may seem to some an attractive option, isn't on the table at the moment, Garber said. He made it a point to stress that the league and federation are not at odds when it comes to club-or-country conflicts, even when tournaments like Copa America put a further strain on an already crowded calendar.

"We're not making any plans to split the season next year," Garber said. "We're continuing to look at our competitive format and will continue to do so over the next number of months, but right now there's no plan to split the season.

"[Copa America] benefits our players and what benefits our players benefits the league. We're still at the point where any opportunity we get to be more competitive is something that we will take advantage of." According to Gulati, the league's schedule was one of the federation's three primary considerations when deciding whether to accept CONMEBOL's invitation to Copa America.

"We've spent a lot of time over the months talking about it and gotten to a place that both Don and I are comfortable," Gulati said. "We're very, very thankful that MLS is going to be working with us to make sure we can have a good team go to both of those events." Another consideration was whether the U.S. would be allowed to start play later in the first round of Copa America to avoid any potential conflict with the Gold Cup title game. The last was that the yet-to-be-named new coach of the national team had to be comfortable with playing in both tournaments.

When it comes down to it, Gulati said, the next U.S. coach will decide whether it's best -- in order to minimize wear and tear or as a consideration for MLS -- to bring two entirely different teams to each tournament. "Some of the people we've talked to out of the five coaches that are still in the mix, I guess, like the idea of taking virtually two separate squads," he added. "At least one or two of the others think that would be the wrong way to go and they'd want to take almost the same squad. Another has said it would really depend on how the first tournament goes." Gulati said he anticipates naming a coach in November, but not before MLS Cup 2006 and not the week of Thanksgiving. If the timing isn't right for U.S. Soccer or whomever earns the position, the announcement could be pushed back to December.