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Check Fridays and Mondays for weekly team updates and match reports
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Move the final! September 12, 2002 (CSA) — They put the little disclaimer at the bottom of each column alerting you, the reader (and there is actually only one of you...I’ve really got to work on broadening my appeal), that what you have just read can be construed as thinly veiled Galaxy propaganda. Usually, I take that as a challenge. I want to cover the whole soccer world, not my little corner of it. And, in the past couple of weeks, I’m aware that I’ve overdone on the whole teal deal. What I’m trying to say is — this week it’s all Galaxy, nothing about any other team, tough toenails. I am going to buy a shirt with Rick Titus’ name and number, may God strike me dead if I don’t. Here’s what he said this week, to the Rocky Mountain News, duly repeated by Soccer America and now passed on to you. Wow, fourth hand news, no wonder I’m racking up the readers! I swear I’m going somewhere with this, though. Here’s what he said: “Dallas is done. They peaked too early in the season. Los Angeles is the team to beat.” This is why I love Rick Titus. Glance over to your right, and look at the current standings. If I’ve done my math right, the one, single, dead solid lock of a playoff matchup will be Dallas against Colorado. Who will have home field is a mystery at this point. Well, no, not really, it will be the team with the better record, I know that. So Rick has given his playoff rival a bulletin board quote to end all bulletin board quotes. Quick show of hands — we’re all going to be watching the Rapids-Burn series now, aren’t we? Oh, yes, indeed. His teammates may disagree, but Titus once again provides excitement to the league. Anyone in Dallas and Denver who doesn’t want to check out this little rivalry needs to be checked for a pulse. Speaking of Dallas — well, I think I might have gone a little overboard on the jinx. Sorry, Burn fans. We all know the story by now — Mike Jeffries rested his starters against the Rapids, lost a heartbreaker there, got blown clear out of Fullerton, then the Metrostars put the maraschino cherry on the Burn’s cupcake of death. Now, the real villain here was the scheduling. There’s no reason in God’s Hello Kitty-decorated wardrobe that the Open Cup game couldn’t have been played this Tuesday instead of last Tuesday. Both teams would have been rested, and the Galaxy still would have blown the Burn into little bite-sized pieces. But their regular- season campaign for the Supporters' Shield probably wouldn’t have been atomized, and their collective morale would have been somewhere above eight degrees Kelvin. Conventional wisdom says that the league forced the Burn to acquiesce in the scheduling, for its own sinister purposes of giving the Galaxy a leg up. Well, maybe. In retrospect, Jeffries should have called up Don Garber, said “We’re not getting on the plane, we’re not dressing for the game, we’re not a freaking Premier Development League team that plays three games in five days. Pick another day,” and then taken the phone off the hook until the fax came through correcting the schedule. Hopefully the next coach — league-operated team or no — will do just that. Anyway, Mike Jeffries should be enrolled as one of the heroes of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. We have gone from the days where franchises would sooner sacrifice their first born than play in the tournament, to where teams give their all for the Open Cup, even at the potential cost of their regular season campaign. This is exactly right and proper for national cup tournaments. If the Open Cup is going to be a significant tournament, then it’s going to be through Mike Jeffries and people like him, who realize the truth of the cliche “In it to win it.” Burn fans, from what I gather, aren’t too happy about how the week turned out. In fact, right now they’re making Russian serfs look like extras in “The Sound of Music.” (Well, not the ones who were playing Nazis. Cut me some slack on the similes, will you?) “Such is the lot of a Burn fan” probably won’t cut much ice amongst the disaffected, and, well, Dallas really did have the worst week since the Egyptian army in the Six Day War. I hope that Mike Jeffries, who I choose to believe made the best of a bad situation (as opposed to saying, “Three games, five days, eh, what’s the worst that could happen”), is not the fall guy for this. I hope that the Burn are able to put this all behind them, and make a productive and exciting run at the playoffs. Because Jeffries should have the chance to collect on the good soccer karma he got by respecting the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup as the competition it isn’t yet, but was once and might be again. Oh, for him to have a good season now, he’d have to beat the Galaxy and win MLS Cup? See ya, Mike. Enjoy college coaching. • • • I have decided that Jeff Bradley writes his MLS column just to annoy me personally. Straining for an award for Alexi Lalas, Bradley thinks COMEBACK player of the year? Oh, keep pouring on the faint praise, there, guy. How about you get an award for best soccer writer on ESPN’s website, while we’re at it? And don’t get me started on the elaborate mulling over of gee, who will win the MLS MVP award this year, there are SO many choices, gosh, it could be ANYONE, maybe RONNIE EKELUND, maybe CHRIS HENDERSON. You know what Carlos Ruiz’ shirt says when he scores a goal? It says, “Hey, Jeff, take a look at the top of the flipping scoring table and see if that doesn’t jog your memory just a tad.” (Remarkably compact language, Spanish.) But the final virgin into the volcano had to be this week. May I quote him? Why, thank you. “The crummy crowd for the Galaxy-Burn Open Cup game (3 and change) has me saying out loud, ‘Winner of Columbus-KC gets the final.’ Any objections?” Well, as a matter of fact, Jeff, yes, I’ve got about 2,103 of them. Fine, so when Bradley wrote his column, he didn’t know that the Open Cup semifinal would be about as popular in Columbus as a dance remix of “Hail to the Victors.” And yes, I know Edson Buddle made a big point of crediting the crowd for keeping the Crew in the game until they could come back. I wish the Galaxy players would have done the same for us...oh, wait, they did, now, didn’t they? Unless CSN's Llew Llewellyn is a darn liar...or Alexi Lalas is. We tried to tell you. Eddie and Scott of the Riot Squad recalled that finding out the time of the Open Cup Final was like finding the location of an underground rave. The USSF does promotions about as well as Beetle Bailey. For an example, we have to go all the way back to, say, this morning. Turns out, now that the Crew have won their semifinal, that the Final will be played on a weeknight. For you see, the Ohio State Fairgrounds is hosting a quarter horse convention. Like, oddly enough, the one that MLS didn’t see a problem scheduling MLS Cup alongside last year. Okay, so traffic was kind of a massive, evil, nightmare. But that was for a game that people actually heard about. The Open Cup Final, though, must be moved to a weeknight. That is, if it’s to be held in Columbus. It’s not too late to change back. Just send out another press release. “Dear world, we’ve come to our senses, we didn’t know yesterday that we were setting ourselves up for a massive fall, it’ll be in Fullerton, on the weekend we said it would be.” I mean, the Galaxy are the higher seed and defending champs, and suddenly three or four thousand people don’t look so bad now, do they? Come on, Dr. Bob. I know, the Cup is named after Lamar Hunt. So give him a plane ride to Southern California! He can see Legoland. He’ll have a ball. The game will make more money — probably not a hell of a lot more, but a little more. Besides, I know the ideal photo op would be for the Crew to present their beloved and wonderful owner, St. Lamar, with his own trophy. You’d have to have a heart as black as the Devil himself to want any other outcome. Except that’s not what’s going to happen, now, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, I know, on any given Thursday night before the horse show, whatever. The Crew are handing out own goals like Rockefeller handed out dimes. Just imagine what Carlos Ruiz is going to do with that kind of help. The Crew are going to be every semi-neutral fan’s pick just because of Lamar Hunt — as well as the fact that even their official website refers to their nearby rivals as “The Evil Chicago Fire.” It’s tough to do the necessary thing and shaft over such wonderful people, but sometimes, you just have to line up Bambi’s mom in your sights and blast the crap out of her. Do the right thing, USSF. Move the game. • • • Thanks to everyone who wrote about the playoff format — no one changed my mind, I didn’t change anyone’s mind, it’s all good. Mike Farrow wrote and asked why, since first to five was so wonderful, why the league didn’t use it for the Final. Well, the answer is, so MLS Cup will still be a Big Event. The NFL worldview has pervaded MLS in ways we’ll never know, and the basis of the NFL is the Super Bowl, the end-all and be-all of world sport and culture. Why is the Super Bowl bigger than the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup and the Stihl Lumberjack Challenge put together? Must be because it’s a single game final. If the NFL were ever to admit the existence, let alone the supremacy, of the World Cup, they’d probably use the same rationale. You don’t get a lot of deep thinkers in the National Football League. So the siren song of having MLS Cup be one one-MILLIONTH as big as the Super Bowl is pretty overwhelming. But the other reason I still prefer a one-off Final over the admittedly transcendent and celestial first-to-five? Well, because then, it would be tough to plan trips to MLS Cup, like I did this week! And no, it’s not because of Galaxy fan overconfidence. I bought tickets last year in August, when a San Jose-Chicago Fire worst-of-all-possible-worlds final looked probable. MLS Cup is a nice little gathering of the tribes, at least among the subset of we hardcore fans who choose to shell out the money. I’ve been to four now without having my head kicked in, and that’s as much fun as anyone can ask. Hope to see you there! Rumor
has it that Dan Loney roots for the Galaxy. He can be reached at
dloney@cybersoccernews.com.
Day-old
Loney, half price: |
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Upcoming
Matches 2002 MLS CUP FINAL Sunday,
October 20 U.S. OPEN CUP FINAL Thursday,
October 24 Results SEMIFINALS Game One Saturday,
October 5 Sunday,
October 6 Game Two Wednesday,
October 9 Game Three Saturday,
October 12
Regular season final standings September 22
Playoffs
- two conference winners plus next six best records Notes:
Results QUARTERFINALS Game One Wednesday,
September 25
Game Two Saturday,
September 28 Sunday,
September 29 Game Three Wednesday,
October 2
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