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Oz vacationing Dutch-based U.S. midfielder working out the kinks
Midfielder John O'Brien is a key member of the U.S. men's Olympic soccer team, which heads Down Under hoping to do what it has ever done: make it out of the first round alive. O'Brien, 23, left California at age 17 to develop in Ajax Amsterdam's famed youth program. He is now a member of the first team at Ajax and has earned a spot in the full U.S. national team side during World Cup qualifying. Check in with O'Brien on CNNSI.com throughout the Olympics. How would you describe your Olympic experience leading up to the Games? As we finished our warmup in the locker room, the other semifinal before ours turning into golden goal and adding to the pressure of our task at hand, coach Clive sent a confident wink my way. We definitely didn't want our game coming down to one golden goal, or even worse the penalty shootout. After the whistle blew and we got started, all I remember was a lot of celebrating and seeing the ball fly into their net way more times than one would expect. At halftime came the reality check. Up 4-0 we could be pretty confident we would hold on and that Nike could go ahead and send the pre-Olympic goodies our way. "Oh yeah, a lot of warm gear; I heard August and September are some of their colder months, thanks." How is Australia so far? So far, we've been trying to adjust to the time difference, physically, and mentally prepare ourselves, and get used to playing with each other again. How has training been so far? Last night, we played our last preparation game, a 60-minute game against an Aussie club, so we could work out all the kinks. We've started talking about how the Czech team will play and what we can expect. I've seen them play against The Netherlands in qualification, and they were a very physical team that let Holland control the pace of the game and then broke out on offense from there. How has your experience since going to Ajax at a young age prepared you for the Olympics? Going to Ajax at a young age basically improved the training and the type of competition I was getting. Right now, I'm coming off a good preseason having played a lot of games and against top-class opponents, a lot of them with European Championship hangovers. That's all for now. Meat pie and VB waiting for me. Well, maybe I'll wait till after the Olympics for the VB. --John
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