The US will make its 2006 Wold Cup start against the Czech Republic today at noon (eastern time, ESPN2). If you've done much reading on the game you might know all this, but here's a quick rundown of some points of interest.

The US is making its seventh World Cup appearance and fifth straight. The US first qualified for the 1934 cup in Uraguay, and in 1950, the US accomplished perhaps our biggest international win by upsetting England. Since then, we qualified in each cup since 1990.

The Czechs qualified independently for the first time this year, but as a combined team with Slovokia, the Czechs appeared 8 times, making it to the final game twice. In their opening game in the 1990 cup, they beat the US 5-1.

Jan Koller, the most acclaimed player for the Czechs, is also the tallest player in the cup at 6'7". The tallest US defender he'll likely be matched against is Oguchi Onyewu at 6'4".

The US team is represented by two players with ties to UNC. Eddie Pope (pictured above) is a High Point native, and played college soccer at UNC from 1992-95. Backup Gregg Berhalter played at UNC for 3 years before leaving to play professionally in Europe. Captain Claudio Reyna also took classes at NC State, although he played his college soccer at UVA. Pope currently plays for Real Salt Lake.