That's just one of the team-building activities that is apparently on the agenda for the US MNT as they prepare for June in Germany.

Following the recent history of American national teams for two of our native sports that also compete in international tournaments1, Bruce Arena's emphasis on team-building instead of strictly tactics and fitness is refreshing, and encouraging. (For Arena, World Cup Preparation Includes A Lot Of Fun -- And Games)

Ironically, both of those other sports are much more likely to see a single player capable of putting a team on his back for a streak in a tournament, yet the single biggest factor in their recent losses generally seems to have been their lack of team chemistry (certainly there has been a significant talent drop-off in the basketball representatives of late, but much like the pre-war English public, American fans expect that even a 3rd string US team can beat the best that any other country has, and on a strict talent basis, their assumptions would be correct.

But as has been demonstrated amply in both cases, and even recently in the soccer world2, improving internal team chemistry and bonding is not just essential, it is also much easier and less capricious in delivering measurable results and being a difference-maker. In short, among teams within a certain band of skill level, it is often what makes the difference between a good team that never wins (see just about any English national soccer team other than the 1966 example), and a scrappy team with out-sized achievements (all those wild card teams winning the World Series the last several years, and most famously in American mythology, the 1980 Olympic hockey team). You have to at least be good enough to make it to the the stage where you can win, and once there you just might sweep those another bunch of over-paid Yankees (both the New York baseball team and just about any non-soccer/rugby American team).

Finally for now, if you've got the situation that makes listening to an hour and a half worth of raw interview footage (like, say during a typical Northern Virginia commute), the podcasts of the conference calls following last week's roster selection (Part 1 Bruce Arena, Landon Donovan, Jimmy Conrad) , (Part 2 Bruce Arena, Landon Donovan, Jimmy Conrad) , (quotesheet: (Bruce Arena, Landon Donovan And Jimmy Conrad Conference Call On The World Cup Roster) ) and this interview (Claudio Reyna, Damarcus Beasley, Ben Olsen) (summary: (Beasley, Olsen And Reyna On Making The World Cup Roster) ) are pretty interesting. Nothing truly revelatory there, but I always find it interesting to hear someone like Coach Bruce Arena, Landon Donovan and Jimmy Conrad interviewed, especially when Arena is feeling a little feisty and he gets a particularly inane question (they were comparatively much fewer and far between than 4 years ago it seemed to me).

However one surprise for me came with his statement that only Jonathon Spector's recent injury kept him from being a serious contender for a spot (though I must admit that I haven't seen any Charlton matches this season, so I can't really assess how much progress he's made since the last time I regularly saw him when he played for them during their American tour and got a couple of early-season caps a couple years ago. Yeah, he played respectably last year against Panama and Scotland, neither of which was truly that competitive of a situation, so that's hardly something to stake a roster claim on I would have imagined.

1 - Baseball has the recently inaugurated World Baseball Classic and previously had an Olympics tournament. Both of which saw the U.S. knocked out by soccer-mad México, at the preliminary qualifying stages in baseball!

Basketball has two long-extant internationals. The older of the two, the Olympics, we couldn't even send a non-collegiate team until the first Dream Team in 1992, yet we still won every single tournament between 1936 and 1968, but only 5 of the next 9 (though they couldn't send a team in 1980). Once 1988 arrived, and we lost for the 2nd time in 3 tries with a full field (US boycott in 1980, Soviet boycott in 1984, and since the Soviets beat us in both of the losses, it's safe to assume their absence was noteworthy).

The more recent, and much lower-profile in the States, IBF World Basketball Championships have only had 3 American winning teams since the tournament's inception in 1950. The dominant team in that tournament has become Yugoslavia, the 2-time defending champions, who have won 3 of the last 5, while the US won the remaining 2. Prior to those 2 victories though, the US's only other victory was in the second tournament all the way back in 1954, the same year as the first soccer World Cup without an American team, a losing streak that lasted all the way up until 1990.

2 - Greece in the 2004 European championships, and both the U.S. and Korean teams in the 2002 World Cup I think showed what comparatively less talented, but more united teams can do in soccer.