Green Soccer Bowl

I love soccer tournaments. It is always nice to see the brackets and where you team sits in the particular bracket. Well we have a little international tournamnet in Detroit Michigan in 23 days. It will start with CONCACAF entry Puerto Rico against Malaysia. These are the least ranked teams at 168 and 147 respectively. Malaysia is from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). They play for the right to advanse to play Nigeria (#20) the highest ranked team.

Nigeria and Ghana are the 2 World cup participants. They will be playing their B-team (fifa rules of rest) in this tournament. However they will be looking for players to fill out their roster for the World Cup. Kenya (#114) will battle Ghana(#32) in the other bracket on May 20th. the 3rd place game and final will be 6 23-2010.

This is the inagural tournamet and a crowd of over 20,000 is expected. There are already plans for next years tournament.

CONCACAF representative

Puerto Rico has been building is soccer program for a few years. The Puerto Rico Islanders success on the field and attendance highlights the interest on the Island. Puerto Rico recently started a soccer league and currently has 9 teams. The league started in 2008 and has help the growth of the sport on the island.
Colin Clarke (No. Ireland) coaches both the Islanders and the national team. Puerto Rico last game was a World Cup Qualifier almost 2 years ago (June 15th 2008). this game was a tie with the Wolrd cup bound Honduras side 2-2 in Puerto Rico. They should not be overmatched again Malaysia. This game will be good for both nations. We will see what type of team Clarke fields.

Clarke should go with a very young team sprinkled withh some veterans. Puerot Rico is hosting the very important CAC games this summer. The (CAC games) soccer tournament will have the top U-23 teams 4 from Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama and Belize) and the top 3 from Caribbean (not determined yet) and the host Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico will want to play well infront of their fans on a home pitch. These will be very competative games. Hopefully they can get by Maylaysia to play another World Cup bound team.