Holy crap that's amazing...

Landon Donovan became the youngest American (22 years and 98 days) to reach 50 caps (international appearances) this past weekend. For those of you that aren't soccer fans I will try to put that into perspective. The US's all time leading caps leader is Cobi Jones with 160 appearences. Cobi Jones is also the youngest male player in soccer history to hit 100 caps (he did it at age 27)... Landon Donovan has been playing on the men's team for 3 years and 234 days and has already gotten to nearly a third of Cobi's all time number... If this pace continues (and his resiliency to injury and growing importance suggest that it will) he will hit 100 caps on February 4th 2008 (just shy of his 26th birthday) and will have 156 caps by his 30th birthday. Consider that Cobi Jones hit 160 when he was 33 and you realize how remarkably fast this all is. Conceivably he'd hit 200 just after his 33rd birthday.

It's even more striking when you consider all of this in context to the rest of the world. Consider that Paolo Maldini, perhaps the greatest defender in history has only 93 caps for Italy. Lothar Mathaus, the german legend, had only 120 caps. Even in women's soccer, where the player's play year round, Kristine Lilly has only amassed 250+ caps (couldn't find current data). No male soccer player has played in 200 international games in the history of the sport (no modern era distinction for us soccer players).

So for all the talk about Freddy Adu let's keep the eye on the ball here and focus on the guy with 50 caps and 15 goals (a pretty good strike rate for a guy in midfield) who's helping to lead the nats to another world cup (watch this sunday's game against grenada... should be exciting even if one sided)