Good evening all and I hope this finds everyone well and getting ready for a great 4th of July! We just returned about 30 minutes ago from our visits to the Dead Sea, Masada and a Bedouin tent dinner. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth and Masada is my favorite site to visit in Israel. Tomorrow we travel back to Jerusalem to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and then Mount Herzl. After we return around 10 pm we were successful in getting a lighted fieldbto train on until 11:30 pm. We are very happy about having this session, even late at night. We open tournament play on July 5, so a good session is very much needed. Belowcare some photos from our journey to Madada. So, until tomorrow evening, I will say good night from Ramat Gan, Israel, Coach G.

Good evening from Ramat Gan once again. Today we did not have training, but we did tour some caves in Bet Gervin. Typically, I do not like caves and today was no exception! I did one labyrinth cave and no more, as that was enough to last my lifetime! After the caves, we went to Latrun, where the armored tanks are and toured those and had a film on the history of tank warfare. It us always a special place for me to visit. As has been our custom since the 2009 games and again in 2013 with taking a photo of our team on top of the tank, we continued that custom today with our 2017 team. The photo is below. Tomorrow, we were scheduled to play a friendly with Mexico, then take our tour to the Dead Sea, Masada and have dinner at a Bedouin Tent. But, due to projected extreme heat, our medical team cancelled all training for all teams. This has caused us to miss training and if we can't arrange an evening session on Monday, after our tour to Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum), Mini Israel and the B'nai Mitzvah programs, we will have gone 4 days without a proper training session. We are certainly trying to arrange that practice for about 10:30 pm Monday night. When I write about our trips tomorrow, I will be able to update you on our training. So, until tomorrow night, I will say goodnight from Ramat Gan.

Good evening from Ramat Gan, Israel. Let's hope this finds everyone back home doing very well. I'm playing a little catch-up, as I didn't post our day yesterday, so I thought doing it along with today's activity would be okay. Yesterday we played our youth team in a friendly game and all our players played just about equal minutes in our 3:0 victory. It was nice to finally be able to put our team on the field in an actual game. We controlled the game from the start and miantained possession over 80% of the game. After our game was over, we started our Israel Connect program of touring Israel and yesterday we went to the old city of Jerusalem. It was a very nice day, culminating with a visit to the Western Wall and then to the city of Abou Gosh, an Arab city, for a very nice dinner. After dinner, we returned to our hotel to get some sleep, as we had a very early training session, beginning at 6:30 am. It was a very good session dealing with tactics of our style of play. After training, we had an early departure of 11:00 am for our Israel Connect of touring. Today we went to the old city of Jaffa, over looking the Mediterranean Sea. We then went to Tel Aviv for shopping and lunch and proceeded to Herziliya to go to the beach. Tomorrow, we are taking a day off from training and will play a friendly on Sunday morning at 7:00 am, against a Mexico. This game will be difficult, but again all players will play as we try to settle in on a starting eleven, by looking at different players at different positions. After the game, we will depart later for Beit Gurvin (caves) and then to Latrun, where all the tanks are on display throughout history. Having been a tanker in the army, I always enjoy going here. Latrun will also be the sight for the closing ceremonies on July 17. So in closing, here are a few photos from yesterday's tour into Jerusalem.

Good evening from our hotel in Ramat Gan, Israel! We arrived yesterday morning around 7:00 am and immediately transferred to our hotel. Everyone was a little fatigued, but all good. We had a very light warm down session yesterday around 4:30 pm for about 60 minutes to help with our fatigue by jogging, stretching and playing a little 5:2. After the session we went to the pool to do a good stretch and then to dinner. This morning we left the hotel at 6:15 am for our 7:00 am training until 8:30. We accomplished a lot considering how jet lagged we all are. The afternoon training was much better with a little pep in our game. We made really good progress in defining how we want to attack and defend and ended the session with conditioning in small sided 4v4 games. We train again tomorrow in our last day of two-a-day training sessions. The rest of our delegation will arrive tomorrow, bringing our total to over 1150 strong. On Thursday, we will have a Friendly Game with our youth team at 7:00 am and then begin the Israel Connect program of touring, until we depart for Jerusalem and the tournament on July 4th. Before we depart in the 4th, we will have our last friendly against Mexuco this Sunday at 7:00 am. This evening we watched a great film about the 1977 Maccabi Tel Aviv European Basketball Championship and it's star player, an American named Tal Brody. He was here and spoke to all if us after the film called " On the Map"! It was truly an inspiring and historical film, that everyone should see. After the film, we came back to the hotel and Mark Knue and a few of our players met with Tal and here is a photo in our hotel lobby.

Here are a few photos from our morning training.

So I wish every e a good night! Coach Goldfarb from Ramat Gan, Israel

Well, it's just about time to depart for Israel and our journey into the "Forever Team"! We depart on Sunday, June 25 from Newark, NJ, where our team will meet. It's going to be a legendary trip into Forever in our quest for history in our pursuit to go back to back Gold Medal winners! We are extremely excited about our team and the expectations of doing very well. We will begin training as a team for the first time together on June 26, when we arrive. We will have two trainings per day on June 27 & 28 at 7 am and 4:30 pm. We will have a few friendly games with our youth team and Mexico (who are in a different group this time from us).This will give us about 7 or 8 training sessions, including the two games. We will open defense of our Gold Medal on July 5 against Venezuela and then play back to back on July 9 & 10 against Great Britain and Australia and hopefully, the quarter finals and semi finals on July 12 & 13. This gives us hopefully, 4 games in 5 days in extreme heat. So, we must not only train as a team together for a few short sessions, but also allow our bodies time to regenerate and rest for this grueling schedule. We have a very short time frame to come together as a team and understand our team philosophy of playing very simple in order to make the team the superstar. If we remember simple soccer is pure soccer and fancy is complicated soccer and refrain from complicated, we will have great success as a team! So until we start our training, this will be my last blog from home and I want to leave you with memories of our 2013 Impossible Dream Team with our Gold Medals around our necks with hopes we can repeat and post this same photo with our 2017 Forever team on July 16!

We have had a couple of players that were originally selected have to drop for various reasons, so I thought I would post our final roster that will go after Back to Back Gold Medals and follow the "2013 Impossible Dream Team" and become the "2017 Forever Team"! Here is our team: this is a great group of players and better people. We are very excited to get started on our twice in a lifetime of back to back Gold! Coach Goldfarb 2017 Maccabi USA Open Team Name Position College Josh Haberman GK Princeton University Max Kurtzman GK University of Pennsylvania Ryan Jones Def Marywood College/Pro in England Jonny Dolezal Def University of Pennsylvania/Pro in Denmark Benjamin Issroff Def Princeton University Sam Raben Def Wake Forest University Elijah Lichtenberg Def Claremont University William Cohen Def Amherst University Daniel Rubenstein Def Wesleyan University Evin Nadaner Def Boston University/ Pro in Germany Kovi Konowiecki MF Wake Forest University/Pro in Israel Daniel Kohen Def Petah Tikva Jake Rozhansky MF University of Maryland Aaron Franco MF University of Maryland Lance Dotzman MF Muhlenberg College/ NPSL Lehigh Valley Sam Friedman MF Lafayette University Brett Walsdorf Def Gettysburg College Stephen Elias STK North Carolina State Alec Weiss STK Villanova University Oliver Eisen STK FC Taby, Sweden/Syracuse University

Well, the games are almost here and now we have our schedule. Here it is and it is tough, as we must play three in a row including quarter finals: 2017 Team USA Schedule Game Date Time Opponent Field Score 1 5-Jul 4:00 PM Venezuela Bait Vagan 1 2 9-Jul 9:00 AM Great Britain Bait Vagan 1 3 10-Jul 9:00 AM Australia Bait Vagan 1 4 11-Jul 4:00 PM ? Quarter Finals Bait Vagan 1 5 13-Jul 4:00 PM ? Semi Finals Bait Vagan 1 6 16-Jul 7:30 PM ? Finals Givat Ram We must stay really fit to overcome this tough schedule, but we can make it happen. We leave for israel on June 25 and have one training session on the afternoon of our arrival. We then train twice a day for two more days, then every morning after that, as we start touring on June 29th. We are working on two friendly games, one with Mexico and one with Maccabi Tel Aviv. I spoke with their Sporting Director, Jordi Cruyff and he is trying to arrange the game for us. So, until we depart, take care and I will keep posting and please keep reading... Coach Goldfarb