Thursday, May 07, 2015

Palmer-Brown Called Up for U20 World Cup

Sporting Kansas City home grown defender, Erik Palmer-Brown will be headed to New Zealand this summer. The 18 year old center back was today named to Tab Ramos' roster for this summer's U20 World Cup. The US is grouped with Myanmar, hosts New Zealand, and the Ukraine for the tournament which will kick off on May 30th for the USA against Myanmar. Second on June 2nd the US will play New Zealand before closing out the group stage on June 5th against the Ukraine. The tournament runs all the way through June 20th.

The US team will open camp in Carson, California on May 14th ahead of their departure for New Zealand. With that reporting date, Palmer-Brown will miss five games for KC (May 16th vs Colorado, May 20th vs New England, May 23rd at Seattle, May 29th vs Dallas, and June 6th vs Seattle). He also has the potential to miss KC's entrance into the US Open Cup this year with that game occurring on June 16th or 17th. Palmer-Brown has made one appearance for Kansas City this season, coming on for the last five minutes of the season opener against New York.

Palmer-Brown will become the third KC player to go to the U20 World Cup as a member of Sporting KC/KC Wizards. Francisco Gomez played for the team at the 1999 competition in Nigeria where the US fell in the round of 16 to eventual champions, Spain. More recently, Mikey Lopez was part of the team that qualified for the 2013 version of the tournament in Turkey. Grouped with Spain, France, and Ghana the US was only able to manage one point and went out in the group stage. Four other current KC players have played in the U20 World Cup as well. In 2005 Benny Feilhaber and Jacob Peterson (who even scored in the 1-0 win over Egypt) were teammates on the US team that topped their group ahead of the likes of Germany and Argentina (who won the tournament) before falling in the round of 16 to Italy. At the same tournament, Canadian, Marcel de Jong played, but the Canadians picked up only one point in a group containing Syria, Italy, and Colombia. De Jong did score in Canada's 4-1 loss to Italy. In 2009, Ike Opara was part of the US squad that went 1-2 but failed to make it out of their group after 3-0 loses to Germany and South Korea offset a 4-1 win over Cameroon.

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