Aston Villa goalkeeper Brad Guzan received his first USA call-up since 2010 recently and admits it was a nice little surprise.

The 27-year old, who mainly plays second fiddle to Shay Given at Villa, is on contention for some game time when the US meet Italy in Genoa on Wednesday night and he is excited about the prospect.

"Yeah, any time you get to be back with the National Team it's good," he told ussoccer.com.

"For me, having that time away and missing what it's about - representing your country and missing the guys - wasn't easy, so it's nice to be back in camp."

But Guzan is well aware he needs regular minutes at club level - which he got for about two months when Given was injured - to really challenge Everton's Tim Howard for the number one shirt in Jurgen Klinsmann's US team.

"When Jurgen first came on board, he made it clear that he wanted guys to be playing. As a player you have to respect that because games are what are going to make players better," he added.

"You can train and train and you try to keep yourself fit obviously and keep sharp, but you can't really recreate that in training. For me, it was very important not only in that sense, but because in my last few years at Villa, I've only really played Cup games and haven't really gotten a run of games. So to have eight, nine games in a row was really good."

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