Conrad taking on a leadership role as the US takes on Mexico

By: Michael | February 7th, 2007

KC defender Jimmy Conrad is quickly becoming a leader on the US Men’s National Team. He took up the rotating captaincy in America’s great game against Denmark. As si.com’s Grant Wahl points out, there has been no shortage of words from the Wizard’s defensive star going into tonight’s US-Mexico game:

- “I use the big brother/little brother analogy. When you know your little brother’s catching up a little bit, you get a little pissed off and say, hey buddy, I’m still in charge. They think they’re still in charge, and we think the opposite. We think we’re just as good and strong as you are.”

- “We’re starting to win a couple games off them, and yet they still give us no respect, and now they’re even bringing their friends for tomorrow … There’s going to be some chippiness…”

- “These are the games we need to weed out who can play at this level and who can’t.”

His leadership role has not been overlooked by interim manager Bob Bradley (It’s a long quote, but too good to cut):

“…I have only very very good things to say about working with Jimmy. He’s taken a leadership role. As you know he was our captain in the game against Denmark and his experience, his understanding of the game really is important, especially with the fact that we’ve had some young defenders in this camp throughout January. At one time or another, I would pair every one of them up with Jimmy because I feel like when we work in training it’s just a great exercise to have Bobby Boswell next to him on a given day, Michael Parkhurst next to him, Dasan Robinson next to him. I think he’s really done an excellent job of handling the fact that we’re asking him to help these guys and show them a little bit about the differences between playing on the MLS level and playing in international games. He had a good solid match against Denmark. We know that playing against Mexico there are some big challenges with the players that they have in the attack and Jimmy will play a big role again on Wednesday.”

Here’s hoping Conrad continues his great play and the US can again defeat our southern rival…