UCLA (10-4-6) hosts Cal Poly Friday (10-5-6) at 7 p.m. Friday at Drake Stadium with the winner playing 14th-seeded UC Irvine (14-1-6) on Tuesday.
Chatted with former Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid on Sunday who took pains to point out this is the Anteaters (!) first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance. His son, Kyle, is on the team, while another son, Kurt, is an assistant coach. More with Sigi in Tuesday’s column.
Complete pairings here.
A busy day as I write Tuesday’s column about the karmic Sigi Schmid, but wanted to note in passing that:
*The Galaxy’s poor season cost David Beckham a spot on England’s squad to face Germany Wednesday so cue speculation he must leave MLS for good to keep playing for England.
*MLS Rookie of the Year and Cal State Northridge product Sean Franklin was named to his first U.S. squad along with Chivas USA’s Sacha Kljestan and Jonathan Bornstein and Rolling Hills Estates’ John Thorrington.
The full roster for Wednesday’s meaningless (from a U.S. perspective) World Cup qualifier against Guatemala:
goalkeepers: Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Troy Perkins (Valerenga IF), Matt Pickens (out of contract); defenders Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Sean Franklin (Los Angeles Galaxy), Cory Gibbs (Colorado Rapids), Clarence Goodson (IK Start), Drew Moor (FC Dallas), Michael Parkhurst (New England Revolution); midfielders Freddy Adu (AS Monaco), Ricardo Clark (Houston Dynamo), Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA), Pablo Mastroeni (Colorado Rapids), John Thorrington (Chicago Fire); forwards Jozy Altidore (Villarreal), Davy Arnaud (Kansas City Wizards), Conor Casey (Colorado Rapids), Brian Ching (Houston Dynamo), Kenny Cooper (FC Dallas), Chris Rolfe (Chicago Fire).
And the season ended Sunday for the Cal State Dominguez Hills women.
A thick pall of smoke is mostly blotting out the sun in Torrance this morning, miles from the worst of the wildfires in Orange County where hundreds have lost their homes.
A layer of gray ash is coating cars, sidewalks and everything else.
And there’s a muffled, slightly subdued quality to the light and sound of this Sunday Southern California morning, lending an unreal edge to what has been a surreal last few days.
Welcome to Los Angeles in November.
Hopefully, things will have improved a week from now otherwise the air quality at Carson’s Home Depot Center will surely affect MLS Cup.
And just a week ahead of the second biggest event of the year at the stadium (the X Games are the biggest), the city of Carson is again contemplating a ticket tax at Home Depot Center.
If I recall correctly legal experts have differed in the past over the legality of such a tax being imposed (the HDC sits on California State University property, which didn’t, for instance, need any sort of planning permission from the city when the sports complex was built), but apparently it is now more than a possibility.
On one hand you can’t blame the city of Carson, which lacks much of a sales tax base, for eying the revenue stream. The HDC hasn’t done much to spur economic revitilization around the stadium (cleaning up graffiti on a KFC across the street appears the extent of it, sadly) yet makes planty of money for Anschutz Entertainment Group.
AEG, naturally, opposes the tax as the story points out:
Rod O’Connor, the general manager of the Home Depot Center, said that a 10 percent tax on tickets would be the highest in the Los Angeles area. He warned that one of the stadium’s two professional soccer teams – Chivas U.S.A. – has already been exploring getting its own venue and that any additional taxes might prompt event promoters to take their business elsewhere.
“This puts us at a disadvantage,” O’Connor said. “We feel strongly that the solution ought to be a fair solution that asks everyone to contribute a little bit, not something that is targeted at one business in our community.”
It’s an argument that might be a little more convincing if greedy AEG was more inclined to share the wealth themselves or at least give patrons a break from the likes of those crushing $20 parking fees.
And Chivas USA, struggling to broaden their fan base, is unlikely in this economic climate to make any move that would cost the club even more money, anyway.
Still, overall, the proposal feels more than a little like fiddling while Rome burns at this particular time, so perhaps that calls for an appropriately dark song to remind us of what’s really important:
Updated 1 p.m. Sunday
UCLA has just issued this press release:
“Due to several fires in Southern California resulting in poor air quality, Sunday’s NCAA Second Round match between top-seeded UCLA and San Diego has been postponed. The match has been rescheduled for Monday at 6:00 p.m. (PST).
The winner of Monday’s match will advance to face fourth-seeded USC in the round of 16.”
It’s Red Bull New York verses Columbus Crew at 12:30 p.m. Sunday at MLS Cup in Carson.
Juan Carlos Osorio has done what Bruce Arena couldn’t in New York. Former Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid has done what his former employer failed to do. And Juan Pablo Angel and Guillermo Barros Schelotto have outshined David Beckham in MLS.
No doubt MLS is just glad it’s not a Columbus-Salt Lake final; the two smallest markets contesting the championship of the most lightly regarded major sports league would have spelled marketing disaster.
Instead we have clear favorites against an erratic underdog, small town America against urban heavyweight and plenty of story lines.
Western Conference Final highlights:
Saturday’s College Scores
*USC beat BYU 2-1 Saturday afternoon on penalty kicks. USC plays either UCLA or San Diego in the NCAA Tournament third round.
*Cal State Dominguez Hills beat Cal State L.A. 4-0 to win the 2008 NCAA West Region title Saturday in Carson. The Toros host a quarterfinal match-up next Saturday against Midwestern State, a 5-0 winner Saturday over Fort Lewis.
Complete game story here.
*The UCLA men beat San Diego State 6-1 Saturday extending their unbeaten streak to eight games. Junior forward David Estrada scored two goals and added an assist, while junior midfielder Michael Stephens tied the school record with four assists.
Notable: The six goals scored were the most by a Bruin team since a 7-1 NCAA quarterfinal win in 2002 over Penn State.
Quotable: “I’m very pleased with how strong we finished the regular season,” said UCLA head coach Jorge Salcedo. “We possessed the ball really well, defended well and scored goals, and we look forward to continuing that in the postseason.”
Long Beach State’s run in the NCAA Tournament was short.
UCLA had no such problems.
Former West (Torrance) High star Jessica Murphey led CSUDH past San Francisco Friday and into the next round of the NCAA Division 2 Far West Regional.
Either Real Salt Lake or Red Bull New York will make club history tonight when the victor of the 6:30 p.m. game (live on Fos Soccer Channel) will face Sigi Schmid’s Columbus Crew next weekend at MLS Cup in Carson.
And lastly, David Beckham apparently doesn’t expect to be named next week to the England squad.
The season is over for the Galaxy and Chivas USA, but scores of kids will play this weekend in the finals of the inaugural Serie de Campeones at Home Depot Center.
The Galaxy program is aimed at the Latino community, providing independent teams – not top club teams – the opportunity to play for a trophy at a lower cost than usual.
Still, there’s talent out there. A Galaxy scout found Alejandro Covarrubias, a senior a Bell High School, at one of the tournaments who has become a regular on the club’s Under-18 Academy Team and was recently added to the U.S. Under-18 National Team Pool.
Serie de Campeones is a five-tournament program in which the winners of the first four tournaments participate in the fifth one.
There are seven divisions for various age groups, including a competition for girls.
Participating teams include the Gunners, Kids USA, Liverpool, St. Patricks SC, Tigres de Oxnard, Manchester and a Galaxy team.
Games run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday on fields 5 and 7 (the David Beckham Academy field). Admission and parking are free.
,
Bayern Munich will decide next week whether to sign Landon Donovan from the Galaxy.
Donovan even took a bit of a swipe at David Beckham in the article when he rejected any comparison with Becks: “I am not a good-looking posterboy, I am a footballer,” he said.
Ouch!
Meanwhile, Long Beach State is gearing up for its first-ever NCAA Tournament game tonight at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.
Thanks to those readers who asked about my mum, BTW. She was evacuated last night because of the massive fire in Santa Barbara. She’s safe and her little rented cottage has escaped the flames (for now) although the fire came very close and burned some homes just up the street.
As you can imagine I’ve had concerns other than blogging, but I’ll return with more later, (the Santa Ana winds permitting).
First, my thoughts are with the folks in Santa Barbara tonight where a horrific conflagration of historic proportions is ripping through the city and thousands (including my 80-year-old mum who rents a cottage up there) have been evacuated and don’t know whether they will have homes to return to.
In light of that, the night’s soccer news is rather minor by comparison, but Sigi Schmid’s Columbus Crew did defeat the Chicago, um, Fire 2-1 tonight in the Eastern Conference semifinal to reach MLS Cup in Carson. It was a gutsy come from behind win by the Crew in front of a delirious crowd who will meet the winner of Saturday’s Real Salt Lake-New York Red Bulls Western Conference decider.
Highlights:
In college games tonight:
*USC beat Boston University 2-0 in Utah. USC will face either BYU or Virginia Tech in the next round on Saturday.
*Cal State L.A. and Cal State Dominguez Hills will meet Saturday in the Far West Final. CSUDH disposed of Notre Dame de Namur 3-0 with senior midfielder Kyle Holland getting his first career hat trick. Cal State L.A. advanced in a 5-4 penalty kick decision over Sonoma State.
Also: UCLA’s Tina DiMartino was named Pac-10 Player of the Year.
MLS today named Cal State Northridge product and Galaxy defender Sean Franklin as its Rookie of the Year. Franklin is scheduled to talk to reporters later today from the U.S. Men’s National Team training camp in Colorado.
How big of an accomplishment is this?
Franklin played all year in the center of a bad Galaxy defense, yet according to Coach Bruce Arena he’s not a central defender.
In other MLS awards-related news, Rolling Hills Estates Robbie Rogers is one of the five finalists for Goal of the Year. Vote here. Roger already beat out Beckham to become one of the finalists; can he do the same to Blanco?
And in other Galaxy-related news, Bayern Munich’s Web site has more on Landon Donovan’s German adventure. Hmmm, is he going to be there 10 days or 10 weeks?
Oh, and even though this was reported a while back the Galaxy has officially announced that Tristan Bowen, 17, of Van Nuys has become the first player to come through its youth academy to sign a multiyear contract with the club.
“Tristan is an exciting and talented young player who has impressed me and all of our coaches during his time training with the club,” Galaxy General Manager and Head Coach Bruce Arena said. “He has many of the attributes which are required in order to become a good player in MLS and has shown the drive and desire to improve all areas of his game. We are excited to have him join the club and look forward to seeing him grow in a Galaxy uniform.”
In Wednesday night games, Mexico beat Ecuador 2-1 in Arizona and CD Guadalajara lost 2-0 in the first leg of their Copa Sudamericana semifinal.
At 4:30 p.m. on ESPN2 the Crew and Fire face off in the Eastern Conference final with the winner heading to MLS Cup on Nov. 23 at Home Depot Center.
Even though former Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid is being circumspect about what it would mean to him to walk out on the home field of the club that fired him in the league’s title game, Crew forward Alejandro Moreno – who played for him in L.A. – isn’t as reticent:
“We know it’s special and we know he’s a California guy. I think what’s special is that I was in L.A. when Sigi got fired and probably at the time I thought it was wrong and even now I thought it was wrong and even with the Galaxy having won the MLS Cup after that I still think it was wrong.
“There was a lot of people who wrote him off and there was a lot of people who didn’t think he was the coach he was when he was back with the Galaxy and I’m here to tell you he’s still the coach (he was).”
Sigi talks here:
The MLS season is over for Chivas USA, but the injuries keep piling up.
Midfielder Sasha Victorine is out six to eight months – yes, months – after undergoing microfracture surgery on his left knee today in Santa Monica.
The former Galaxy midfielder played just five games for Chivas USA, scoring two goals, after his Sept. 15 deadline day trade from the Kansas City Wizards.
Originally, Victorine was supposed to be out a matter of weeks, not months, after suffering the injury Oct. 19 against Colorado.