Gold Cup group play concluded today with two matches in Group C. First up, Panama dispatched Nicaragua with an easy 4-0 win. The victory put Panama on four points and eliminated Jamaica (3rd place in Group A) from the competition. Next up was Mexico versus Guadeloupe, where El Tri managed a 2-0 win to give themselves a first place finish in the group.

The U.S. will makes its second appearance for a full international in Philadelphia, and the first in more than 40 years, when they take the field Saturday against Panama. The U.S. Men haven't played a match in Pennsylvania since 1993 in Bethlehem, and the appearance in the City of Brotherly Love is the first since a friendly with England's Sheffield Wednesday at Veterans Stadium on Aug.

Today's train journey was the first for the Men's National Team since France '98. We've done a lot of traveling over the past 48 days and so a change of pace was nice this time around. We chronicled a bit of our trip on Twitter and we were even met by fans at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. Here's a few highlights from our trip into the city of Brotherly Love:

Today's training session featured smaller numbers, as a few players departed camp while Brad Evans, Chad Marshall and Robbie Rogers joined up with the Columbus Crew for a visit to the White House in Washington D.C. We went to the Philadelphia Eagles training complex, which as you can see from the above photo, is close to where we'll be playing Panama on Saturday night (you can see Lincoln Financial Field in the background above the trees).

Earlier today U.S. Men's National Team defender Chad Marshall assumed command of U.S. Soccer's twitter account. We asked fans to write in their questions and here are some of the higlights:
@ussoccer what is the difference between college, pro and national team coaches and trainings?
@johnnyazores With every level the players get better, stronger and faster.

The day before a game is always difficult for photos. There's only a set amount of time that training in the stadium is open for photos, so the MNT Blog tries to snap as many pictures as possible in that window. Usually there's some people running, some stadium shots, and, if we're lucky, some work with the ball.

U.S. Men's National Team defender Chad Marshall will be stepping in to field questions on our twitter feed in a few minutes. Chad will take over around 2 p.m. ET and answer questions for part of the afternoon. You can post your questions here if you want, but a better bet is to ask us directly at twitter.

After our day off yesterday it was back to work on Wednesday for the U.S. Men's National Team. We were back at the Philadelphia Eagles complex and the 18 players in camp put in a good shift as the U.S. starts to gear up for Saturday's quarterfinal against Panama...A full photo gallery is available at ussoccer.

The other day we showed you pictures of Philadelphia Eagles kicker David Akers' visit to MNT training. Here's the video:

Here's how the United States will start tonight's CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal against Panama:
Perkins; Heaps, Conrad (c), Marshall, Pearce; Holden, Pause, Beckerman, Rogers; Arnaud, Ching
All 18 players in camp are dressing tonight, so the subs bench looks like this:
Robles, Evans, Goodson, Cronin, Quaranta, Clark, Cooper