Tyler Duffy previews this weekend’s USA-Barbados match. Also, feel free to chat about what should be a thrilling afternoon of Euro 2008: Italy must beat Romania to have any hope of advancing to the next round, and Netherlands – perhaps the most impressive team through the first set of games – takes on France. We’ll be updating the scores as they happen. This photo is of Landon Donovan and his wifey, actress Bianca Kajlich.

The United States begins its World Cup qualifying on Saturday. Depending on your perspective, CONCACAF qualification is either a keen competition among equals or an insanely complex process to determine which team will join the U.S. and Mexico at the 2010 World Cup. The U.S. rolled over the competition during the last campaign, a testament to the opposition’s quality, going 12-2-4 (8-0-1 at home) with a +24 goal difference over their opponents.

Their esteemed foe this weekend will be Barbados, ranked 121st in the world by FIFA. The Barbadian Football Association website, last updated in 2006, epitomizes the state of the national team, urging professional soccer players who may be of Barbadian descent to e-mail them at a Yahoo account. The Barbadian squad for their last qualifying match against Dominica featured just one player plying his trade as a full professional outside the country, and he plays in the lowly Irish Premier League.

The U.S. has faced the Barbadians twice previously (during World Cup 2002 qualification) winning by a combined margin of 11-0. The results the next two weekends should be similar, with lots of strutting and chest thumping by Landon Donovan, master of the self-imposed fishbowl.

On the whole, the U.S. should qualify easily. They have an eclectic squad of experienced European based players, with some cagey MLS veterans. They were fairly competitive in the tough recent friendlies going toe to toe with the Spanish and drawing with Argentina.

The American defense will be formidable, led by Everton star Tim Howard. The issue, as always with U.S. teams, will be actually scoring goals, which makes the omission of $10 million man Jozy Altidore from the squad curious. Watch for twenty-year old coaches’ son Michael Bradley, who scored 15 goals from midfield in the Dutch league last season.