The Galaxy finally win a game. See the full post:
http://www.thesection108.com/2012/06/18/irrational-exuberance/
Time to panic? Yep. See the full post:
http://www.thesection108.com/2012/06/04/push-the-button/
I am guest posting over at the Section 108 blog. Thanks to the Gues-monkey for letting me do
that. Please check it out: http://www.thesection108.com/. Hopefully I'll be posting there more
often.
Five weeks ago I would have told you it doesn't. Home against Portland is always a game we
should win, but this season it shouldn't have made much of a difference. But tonight, it really
does.
The Galaxy have started the season 1 and 3. We were eliminated from the CCL by a Toronto team
that now can't seem to buy a game (granted they had Frings back then).
Yesterday the Galaxy traded Paolo Cardozo to Chivas in exchange for Brazilian defender David
Junior Lopes.
Before any of you English majors attack me for misuse of the quote above, I am not asking where
Paolo went. He went to Chivas. I am asking, appropriately for the quote, about his true nature.
I did not get to see the game this weekend. Wish I had Nathan still doing the game reviews. In
any event, by all accounts it was an unimpressive showing by our boys (sans Donovan, who apparently
had a slight injury).
Two questions come out of this game for me. The first is, can anyone fill Gonzalez's shoes.
There is a well known scene in Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" in which King Arthur fights a
black knight. As Arthur dismembers him, the black knight nonchalantly goes on boasting that there
are merely flesh wounds and he will go on fighting. Bruce Arena this week has reminded me of the
black knight.
It's the bitter taste of disappointment. It's the nagging feeling that stays with you that
something that could have been great has been lost. It's the hindsight that leaves you wondering if
it could have been won. It is the shame of knowing that it happened in our house, on our turf.
But it isn't a harbinger of a doomed season.
I miss Nathan's post-game summaries. Not my strong suit. But I did want to get something up
before tonight's game.
Last week in Toronto was a shaky start. Obviously giving up two goals in 20 minutes is bad news.
But for a team that really just came together it doesn't worry me. Magee was once again our hero
and Buddle turned on the tap again, so we come out of there in good shape.
Anticipation. Expectation or hope. Realization in advance. Intuition, foreknowledge, or
prescience.
It's that excited, nervous feeling you get before the start of something new. The tingle in your
gut before you board a plane to a foreign country. The wave of adrenaline as you launch your raft
down a turbulent river.
David Beckham's reent ejection from a youth soccer game has been receiving a lot of attention in
the press. To hear Becks describe it, he quite rightly protested a referee ejecting a 7-year old
from a youth soccer game and the ref kicked him out of the park as a result.
If Beckham's telling is accurate, it seems the ref overreacted twice and this is all much ado
about nothing.
He's baaack!
I like to think my post yesterday made the difference. That it was the final piece that brought
Buddle back. Okay, maybe not. But I can still think that.
I was excited when Buddle first joined the Galaxy. He was not so highly rated, but I had seen
him play and thought he had a lot of potential.
And I'm not talking about Beckham's 2-year $15 million contract.
I'm talking about Omar Gonzalez. Last month Omar pulled out of the national team training camp
for a very exciting loan move to Nurnberg. His very first day there he suffered a season ending
injury at the hands well, feet of his USMNT teammate Timmy Chandler.
It should probably come as no surprise that the Galaxy have traded Donovan Ricketts to the
Montreal Impact in exchange for allocation funds. Ricketts has statistically been the best keeper
in the league. But when he went out with injury this season, Saunders took the starting role.
Ricketts is older and costs more, so it isn't such a stretch to understand why Arena would part
with him rather than Saunders.
Does it make me a guy that after the game was over all I wanted to do was curl up and go to
sleep? Okay, I stayed for a little bit of cuddling and pillow talk, but when it was over I was
done.
In the last few posts I've talked about manifest destiny and how this was our time. But all
along the way I have been bracing myself for the possibility it might not happen.
