By Ridge Mahoney, Soccer America Senior Editor

IN CAMP: U.S. Soccer has not released a list of players training in Columbus under Coach Bruce Arena for the national team qualifier against Jamaica Wednesday, but hereÆs an unofficial list of players who are in camp or will arrive in the next day or so:

GOALKEEPERS — Jon Busch (Columbus), Joe Cannon (Colorado), Matt Reis (New England), Kasey Keller (Tottenham).

DEFENDERS — Ryan Suarez (Los Angeles), Jonathan Spector (Manchester United), Dan Califf (Los Angeles), Chris Albright (Los Angeles), Oguchi Oneywu (Standard Liege).

MIDFIELDERS — Pablo Mastroeni (Colorado), Bobby Convey (Reading), Brian Mullan (San Jose), Clint Dempsey (New England), Steve Ralston (New England), Ramiro Corrales (San Jose), Ricardo Clark (MetroStars), Landon Donovan (San Jose), Kyle Martino (Columbus).

FORWARDS — Eddie Johnson (Dallas), Brian Ching (San Jose), Brian McBride (Fulham), Jeff Cunningham (Columbus).

Johnson has been training with Manchester United and is scheduled to arrive in Columbus Thursday with Spector, who played 11 minutes in Man UnitedÆs 2-0 League Cup win over Crystal Palace.

Coach Bruce Arena plans to hold a mini-camp in December and another camp in January at Home Depot Center in preparation for the Hexagonal round of qualifying.

BUYER BEWARE: The MLS expansion draft will be held Friday, Nov. 19, and the first round is scheduled to be televised live on ESPN News.

Teams can protect 12 players, and can add one player to their protected list for each one they lose in the expansion draft. Players in the developmental slots, such as Project-40 players, do not need to be protected. A team can lose no more than three players.

If a team protects a player whose contact is about to expire and that player decides not to re-sign with MLS, the team receives no special consideration or compensation.

ôI think all of our guys want to come back and we want them back,ö says Fire coach Dave Sarachan of Ante Razov, Evan Whitfield and C.J. Brown, whose MLS contracts are about to expire. ôOf course, you still have to work out the money part of it, but it helps when both sides are on the same page.ö

The lists of protected players are to be filed with the league early next week. Chivas USA coach Thomas Rongen and Real Salt Lake coach John Ellinger have been discussing deals for more than a month.

ôYou do try to put yourself in the shoes of Thomas and John now and what kind of players they might be looking for,ö says Sarachan. ôAt the end of the day, for me, I have to look at my roster and the core of guys I feel we absolutely need to protect. I would think probably most teams would get to eight, nine or 10 pretty quickly, but thereÆs going to be some gray-area guys.

ôYou do think about which direction a Chivas might want to go, but if you play too many of those games you might get burned. You still have to protect guys in your best interest. If theyÆre Hispanic, theyÆre Hispanic. If theyÆre not, theyÆre not.ö