What a great time to be a USA soccer fan. We are deep in the heart of World Cup Qualifying and a couple of big games coming up in the next year or so. The National Team is coming to play in Rio Tinto in September so in order to welcome them I went out and bought a jersey and a scarf.

The jersey is the home jersey for last year and this year. I like how it is white and gray striped. I like the detail on the inside collar. It is blue with stars and then red and white strips like the American Flag. It also says “Don’t tread on me” which is the Nike campaign slogan for the National Team.

I got the scarf at yanks-abroad.com which is a website that covers all the American soccer players that play abroad. The Join, or Die comes from a political cartoon that was made by Benjamin Franklin in 1754. The snake represents 8 parts of the 13 colonies and the cartoon was hinting at the fact the colonies weren’t unified. It is very fitting for soccer because very few Americans like soccer but it’s important for Americans to get behind our National Team because we don’t have a presence on the world soccer stage and we need to get one! The second pictures is “United States” written in Afrikaans which is the language most spoken in South Africa which is where the 2010 World Cup is. It is also in Red, Yellow and Green because those are the colors of South Africa. The other text says “South Africa 2010″ in the 11 official languages of South Africa. Beneath the Verenidge State is a Zulu tribal design.