So I said in last weeks entry that Friday’s match up with the Revs was Abel Xavier’s chance to make it or break it as a starter for this LA team. He broke it like Nancy Kerrigan’s shin bone. The guy put up a howler in which he was partly responsible for both NE goals as well as a sitter that was denied by the upright. He, quite simply, can no longer be counted on to consistently compete at this level. That must be heart breaking to him too, because you can see he mentally knows what to do, but his body just can’t keep up.
Suddenly there is another problem for the Galaxy, two goals in two games. For a normal team this isn’t too large of a concern, but for the Galaxy you have to average three goals a game to even have a chance. Two reasons I’m not concerned about back to back one goal games:
1. Landon Donovan was a sickly shadow of himself last game, and he STILL raised the level of the Galaxy attack.
2. The team is creating chances, and bunches of them. The finishing has lacked the last few games, but I’ll chalk that up to being unlucky rather than a dip in form.
Enough about the past, this week is HUGE. Perhaps I should start prefacing such exclamations with the notation of “by Western Conference standards”. Because it is becoming quite apparent that the East is the class of the league. Hate me if you want, but it’s true. Hell, I hate myself for saying it, because the sad thing is my Galaxy should be disproving this fact by now. They have the stars and the style of play to take it to the Eastern teams, but they are wasting it with their defense. So this week against Chivas has to be a statement game. A statement to the rest of the league that you cannot lump LA’s one true team with the rest of this conference. A statement that the Galaxy started making with the 5-2 drubbing of Chivas the first time around.
The message to the team Thursday night needs to be “Mark your territory.” And I mean that in the most animalistic, primal sense of the phrase. These players need to stand up and become the Alpha Males of the West. Chivas walks down our halls, plays on our fields and parks their Taurus’ next to our Escalades. If we don’t lay the smack down on them the four times a year we get the chance, then all that separates us is body odor, little red horns and six inches on our rims. We can’t have that. We have to do more than simply win this game, we have to deny them their pride.
That’s what an Alpha Male would do…
One Liners:
-Heard at my house during Friday night’s game, “Why isn’t Big Bird out there playing any defense.”
-So I’m trying to get almost 40 group tickets to the Chivas home game versus the Galaxy in August. Left a message with their ticket rep 2 days ago and still haven’t got a call back. Are they really in any position to turn away spectators?
-Thank You MLS for scheduling Thrusday nights match at 8pm. Coming from the Inland Empire ain’t easy at 6:00pm in California.
-Can’t wait to see what the Riot Squad has planned for Thursdays match up. They always bring it for the Super Calssico. Here are some examples of years prior:
The Infamous Chivas Blow-Up Girls
And my favorite from this year’s Classico, the giant poster of this:
