We told you earlier this week how Jozy Altidore was being boxed into a bad situation once again, about to become a political football in a push and pull between U.S. Soccer and his recalcitrant Dutch club, AZ Alkmaar.
The odd thing about all this is that AZ’s technical director is Earnie Stewart, who was Dutch-born but was a U.S. national team fixture for so long in the 1990s and into the following decade.
Now Stewart says that he and his club are still talking to U.S. Soccer officials about the best release date for all parties. Goal.com had the story this morning.
That doesn’t mean this thing is done, however.
(MORE: Is Altidore’s Dutch club getting him into hot water again?)
It still sounds like Stewart wants his player to rest a while after AZ’s Dutch Eredivisie closer on Sunday. That contest is nine days before U.S. manager Jurgen Klinsmann opens his camp on May 21. The United States plays Belgium on May 29, then meets Germany three nights later in Washington, D.C.
Best guess: some kind of compromise, where Altidore joins the United States as it arrives into Cleveland on May 28. In that situation, he would miss just a week of U.S. camp, and would be away from high-level team training only about two weeks.
Stewart, by the way, insisted that AZ wants to keep Altidore. Which may be true … but if that is so, wouldn’t they work hard to keep the star striker out of these kinds of kerfuffles? Wouldn’t they work to avoid conflicts and putting the U.S. internationals in difficult situations?
