The U.S. coach Bruce Arena iwill invite Freddy Adu to his first camp with the national team, leaving open the possibility that the 16-year-old could be on his World Cup roster.

Arena said at a soccer symposium that he plans to observe Adu during the team's first training camp of 2006, which starts Jan. 4 in Carson, Calif. at the Home Dept Center. But, with the current depth of the U.S. player pool, Adu would appear to be a longshot of winning a spot on the roster for the June 9th date in Germany.

Arena indicated foreign-based players will make up slightly more than half the U.S. team for next summer's World Cup in Germany.

"We are considering 12 to 14 players based in Europe for our 23-player World Cup squad," he said.

"We went through an important year in 2005 where neither Eddie Johnson, John O'Brien, Claudio Reyna nor Cory Gibbs were around much due to injuries, and those are four players that you would think are clearly going to be on our roster for Germany," Arena said.

The U.S. will play a friendly against Norway at the end of January.