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" Most people will devote this evening to either drinking or watching tonight&amp;#039;s Madness games or both tonight. But in the off-chance you find yourself in a sports-diverse bar, surrounded by people \u2014 perhaps an attractive woman \u2014 in red-and-white striped jerseys, watching a crucial World Cup qualifier for the U.S. men&amp;#039;s national soccer team against Costa Rica (10 Eastern, on ESPN), it&amp;#039;ll be useful to have some quick talking points to wave around. There&amp;#039;s a lot going on \u2014 injuries, mutinies, and lineup quandaries \u2014 so we&amp;#039;ll keep it simple and introduce you to three key players. Players whose names aren&amp;#039;t Landon Donovan (absent), Tim Howard (injured), or Clint Dempsey (playing, the team&amp;#039;s best player, who you should already know since he was one of our Americans of last year): Brad Guzan The 2009 Confederations Cup was also the last time Brad Guzan started such an important game for the team. He&amp;#039;s the back-up goalkeeper for the national squad, and he held the shutout win that sparked Bradley&amp;#039;s rant. But he starts for English Premier League club Aston Villa. And while he&amp;#039;s been far from impenetrable (14 goals in the past eight games), he&amp;#039;s playing behind a struggling, porous team. Plus, he did shutout defending champions and second-play team Manchester City just three weeks ago.  For tonight&amp;#039;s match though, the defense is at most in shambles and at least unfamiliar with one another. They don&amp;#039;t know how each one will slide over to mark strikers or drop in to cover for late-driving midfielders. This has been a recent, embarrassing problem.) It&amp;#039;ll be on Guzan to not only bark instructions to the defenders, who have few starts between them; the Denver Post, which wrote about the &amp;#039;keeper beneath the dramatic headline &amp;quot;Future of U.S. Soccer Now in Hands of Brad Guzan&amp;quot; pointed out that after a recent practice, Klinsmann took the young defenders out for ice cream.  Hercules Gomez In its last five matches, the United States hasn&amp;#039;t scored more than a single goal in a game. They somehow won three of those \u2014 all friendlies \u2014 but most importantly lost in its initial qualifier against Honduras. And tonight, in will likely step the beloved Herculez Gomez. Call him Herc. He&amp;#039;s a bit of a folk hero among American soccer fans. According to a profile of him in American soccer magazine What a Howler, when he was a baby, his father bent and straightened his legs while he was crib-bound to prepare Herc for a soccer career. He&amp;#039;s also had professional coaches tell him to quit playing, to just end it. He&amp;#039;s been plagued by middling performances, he got cut from an MLS squad, and he&amp;#039;s suffered injuries ranging from a broken bone in the foot or a torn ACL. The list continues. But last season, at 30, he led the Mexican League \u2014 nothing to turn your nose up at \u2014 in goals, unlike any American has ever done in any foreign league. And so here he is, with a chance at starting up top with Dempsey or maybe Jozy Altidore (who has been scoring like crazy on his Dutch team), in a game that the American team could really use some goals, a win, and your attention. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a20892/world-cup-qualifier-costa-rica/>