On paper the group of Americans Bob Bradley has chosen to take down to Venezuela does not stand much of a chance against Argentina, perennial favorite and sometime champion, especially at the youth level. But the game is not played on paper, and this is not a FIFA under-age tournament, so let me explore what may or may not happen Thursday and over the next couple weeks a little bit further.

If you haven’t already seen them, I’ve also added Youtube previews of both Argentina (Youtube Opponent Preview-Argentina) and the US (Youtube Nats Preview-Copa América Style) . All of the articles I've indexed about the US-Argentina game plus any articles about Bradley’s roster selections can be found here: (A Little US-Argentina Pre-Game Reading Material) .

At a minimum one thing those previews make abundantly clear is how relatively little scrutiny MLS and its star players receive in the media, or among soccer’s cognoscenti ("know-it-alls" for non-Italian/snob-speakers).

Whether that is wholly justified is open to debate, but one important thing I’d advise to bear in mind is that to date when given a chance to perform against the world’s best in competitive matches, World Cups 2002 and 2006, they have not done too poorly, with the acknowledged European league stars being far more responsible for the poor final result in Germany than the other way around (Landon Donovan excepted).

Does that mean that I would predict a deep run in Copa América? Of course not, but I would not dismiss the possibility out of hand either. It is completely conceivable that we could finish in the top 2 or 3 of our group and advance to the second round, especially since both Paraguay and Colombia are also in the midst of serious rebuilding programs in advance of their own World Cup qualifying campaigns, and Argentina has the weight of the world on their shoulders and a history of under-performing recently (thus the references to 14 years waiting since their last major championship in so many articles about them).

Before I get into my reasons why, I would first like to discuss all of the criticism that Bob Bradley has received from all sides for taking such a young and inexperienced side.

One line of criticism goes that it’s embarrassing taking such a squad down to the world’s oldest, and one of its most prestigious, international soccer tournaments, especially after taking the "big guns" to win CONCACAF’s Gold Cup. That is frankly ridiculous.

First off, winning the Gold Cup is the only way we could have earned a spot in the Confederations Cup being held in South Africa one year prior to the 2010 World Cup. That alone is justification for bringing the generally considered "A" squad to the Gold Cup and throwing everything at it instead of vice-versa.

As amazing and uplifting as it would be to win Copa América, it is not the championship of our confederation, and as such the highest finishing South American team in the tournament would still take CONMEBOL’s Confederations Cup slot. So we could feel real good about ourselves while we concentrate on qualifying for the World Cup, but would deny ourselves the ability to make possibly a crucial dry run through what would otherwise be an entirely alien soccer environment, just as México would have missed out on their practice run in the Confederations Cup in Germany 2005 had they not won the 2003 Gold Cup.

And for what? A little respect? If that were the deciding factor, we as a soccer nation would be behaving like a bunch of children, rather than adults going about the business of preparing for the real deal in 2010.

The people who criticize Bradley for not bringing all of our veterans are likely the same people who would be crying far and wide once 2010 came at the lack of depth of our player talent pool compared to the usual soccer powers if we had to rely on the same relatively limited set of players currently acknowledged as having a decent amount of international experience.

Even if a promising young talent like Herculez Gomez, playing in the international soccer backwater of Commerce City, Colorado, were to light up CONCACAF qualifying the way Eddie Johnson did back in 2005, they would say he still was not really tested since the level of competition in CONCACAF is nothing compared to Europe or South America.

That is a nice little bit of circular logic, Catch-22 style.

If Bradley has just a few of the new boys come through and shine in a big way, he will have significantly increased his team’s depth in a very short amount of time, with nothing lost other than the respect he doesn’t have anyway. He will then not only have captured our continental championship while beating rival México, coming from behind in a hostile environment to do so, but he will also have added several more players to his list of possibilities who can perform in such a situation. That can’t but help our chances come 2010.

Let’s set aside the practical aspects of how exhausted those Gold Cup veterans would be playing 2 back-to-back tournaments after many of those players had also completed grueling European campaigns, with no down-time to recuperate before the pre-season starts for the 2007/8 seasons and they have to earn starting postions again in such a state. What do you think likely falling short of a run to the Copa Finals would do for those players? Might it possibly undo any of the positive glow remaining from the recent triumph in Chicago? Boy, that would sure be a smart way for Bradley to manage his players’ confidence and keep them motivated, build them up only to tear them down again like he was some Fleet Street hack!

So back to our bunch of supposed newbies, wannabes, and also-rans who are actually going to take the field in Venezuela.

In goal we are going to have evergreen Kasey Keller. That’s a pretty good start, since more than a few teams have been able to ride a hot goalie deep into tournaments (see US: Copa América 1995 where we did just that with whom? one Kasey Keller).

In front of Keller he has World Cup vet Jimmy Conrad, likely paired with Jay DeMerit fresh off a season in the EPL, or Dan Califf in the middle, with Jonathan Bornstein or Heath Pearce on the left. Right back is an unknown, but even among the so-called "A" team it’s an unknown, though not nearly as much of an unknown as Marvell Wynne is, a real physical presence and phenomenal athlete, but not always the most comfortable player with the ball at his feet.

In midfield we’ve got Gold Cup hero Benny Feilhaber, likely paired up with one of a number of bulldog defensive midfielders out of the Gennaro Gattuso mold: Ben Olsen, Ricardo Clark or Kyle Beckerman. They’re all tough play-destroyers who also like to get forward while playing in the center of the field. Lee Nguyen and Justin Mapp are more than competent attacking wing/midfielders, and once upon a time Eddie Gaven seemed destined for national team stardom and certainly can’t be ruled out to rise to the challenge now that he is being given a sniff of big-time action.

None of our forwards have the pedigrees of Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Hernán Crespo or Carlos Tevez, but that doesn’t mean they’re slouches who can’t shoot their way out of a paper bag either. Taylor Twellman’s aggressive play is what set up the Feilhaber rocket vs. México, and we all know what Eddie Johnson can do once he puts his mind to it. And if you haven’t had the good fortune to see Herculez Gomez play either, you are missing a heck of a talent who could easily become one of our strikers of the future.

Brad Guzan is absolutely already Tim Howard’s heir-apparent in goal, though the day when he will inherit the Number 1 mantle is still likely far away. Bobby Boswell at times has appeared to be destined for taking over where Eddie Pope was in terms of steady, solid central defense, but has been a bit uneven of late.

That pretty much exhausts my personal knowledge of the roster, but that just means that there remain only four players I’m not really sure of one way or the other as to their quality, and 2 of those players are European-based, so theoretically tested per Euro-snob criteria.

You may have noticed that I’m not comparing any of our players to any acknowledged greats of the current or past game other than the above Gattuso-allusion, but that does not mean they cannot advance to the knock-out rounds, Bradley’s stated goal for the Copa, nor that they are incapable of beating Argentina. Because these players are unknowns, their true potential is still largely unknown.

Some of these players would still be playing college soccer if Major League Soccer hadn’t come along in 1996, and one thing I’ve always loved about college sports is that because the athletes are so young yet, you never quite know what they’re going to do when they step on the field. Much of the time you get college kids looking like college kids, but almost as often you also get truly magical performances that seem to come out of nowhere as tomorrow’s superstars start showing themselves, or somebody plays out of their head during their one moment in the spotlight.

Soccer is a sport that players typically don’t peak until they reach late-ish 20s if they’re a field player, or mid-to-late 30’s if they’re a goalie, at which point not only is their body in peak condition, but they have enough understanding of the game that they can put that body to good use.

What that means is that at any point up until that time any one of them could all of a sudden blossom into something wholly unexpected. They could certainly also drift downwards into mediocrity, or just kind of level off and never get any better, but the important thing is you never know what they’re going to become when they’re that young, or when they will achieve their full potential as a player.

I personally don’t feel like I really understood the game at anything more than a rudimentary level until after I’d stopped playing competitive college soccer, as it involved not working on wind sprints and 3-mile runs, but paying more attention to the rhythms of the game, and unless you are lucky enough to find a coach or somebody who can help you see that, nobody would ever know that you could do more than previously shown.

One thing that each and every one of Bradley’s players on the bubble of a true international career knows is that if they want to make it to South Africa in 2010, or to a big league in Europe in 2007, a good start/big step will be a good performance in Venezuela. I don’t know about you, but that sure as heck would be one strong motivating factor for me if I was an international soccer player or had ambitions to become one.

Maybe in other countries that does not matter as much, but America has a culture that teaches us that if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything you can dream. Not that you WILL achieve your dreams, but you have the potential to. In order to actually achieve them though, you have to seize the opportunity when it presents itself, and for many of these currently "B" players, Venezuela 2007 is that opportunity.