Though we’re admittedly a few days late on the Wednesday friendly versus Germany (which I didn’t actually think was so bad; at least we confirmed that certain dudes are complete wusses and have no business coming with us to Germany), the news item that we’ve actually been dying to post about happened more than a week ago: Bruce Arena’s decision to honor New England’s suspension of Clint Dempsey for fighting Joey Franchino in practice.

I don’t believe that this suspension impacts Dempsey’s chances to be on the team this summer even a little bit. He’s going to Germany. He’s absolutely the sort of too-dumb-to-know-any-better-or-get-too-nervous kind of guy that Il Bruce loves to trot out. I’m just shocked by the hullaballoo regarding a fight in practice. As AI would say, we’re talking about practice here, not the game. If the boys get a little riled up and someone decides to throw hands, I mean, is this such a big deal? Shouldn’t we applaud any sort of enthusiasm in the MLS (especially with the long, mostly meaningless regular season looming)? And then for U.S. Soccer to honor it?

We’re talking about practice here. Not the game. Practice.

Allen Iverson: Practice [MP3 file]