Brummies Dump Donovan's Everton Out of FA Cup
The Galaxy's Landon Donovan may have the ball in this picture of him in action against Birmingham City today, but he apparently did little of consequence with it in a 1-2 Everton loss. (AP photo).
The on-loan Galaxy star lasted 76 minutes before being subbed and I couldn't find a match report that even mentioned his name.
It was Birmingham's first win on Merseyside in more than 50 years.
Updated.
Said LD on Facebook:
Tough night. My first FA Cup experience wasn't the best but fortunately we play again on Wednesday. Need to forget about this and move forward to Sunderland. Thanks to all the Everton fans for all your support...you guys have been great to me. See you Wednesday night.
Everton play Sunderland at home Wednesday, BTW.
2 Comments
Leave a comment
About 100 Percent Soccer
Sportswriter Nick Green has written the 100 Percent Soccer column since 2005 for the Daily News, Daily Breeze and other Los Angeles area newspapers. The blog of the same name began in 2007. A native of England, he began writing about soccer in the mid-1980s and in 2000 permanently exchanged a seat in the stands for one in the press box. He lives six miles from Carson's Home Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chivas USA and the training headquarters for U.S. Soccer and is married to a long-suffering soccer widow. Join Nick on FaceBook and follow him on Twitter.
If you believe the commentators on various US fan sites, part of the blame for Donovan's disappearance is what seemed to be an almost deliberate attempt by his teammate and captain Neville to not pass to him (perhaps being an idiot runs in Neville's family). There were also reports of at least one cross by Donovan that went through the box with none of his teammates making a swipe at it.
As a Galaxy fan, though, I would concede that he disappears in games from time to time. Let's hope he breaks out against Sunderland (which seemed to be quite porous in defense last weekend).
It reminded me of Bayern Munich where people were not passing to him. Yes he did make a nice cross across the box.
As for being invisible he kept drifting into the box repeatedly and infuriatingly for a long time. Also Saha came out on the right briefly as if Donovan and Saha were to swap places by intent.
Also, They put a lot of longballs into the box...most of them to the left.
I cannot imagine landon would abandon the right side without the coaches approval, otherwise he'd have been yanked at halftime. When he drifted into the box...he was like constantly too close to Cahill....maybe they saw something on film....maybe they wanted him to poach a rebound or do some close quarter passing....
When he did go wide, he was bottled up easily on 4 or 5 occasions. I'm guessing long ball + 3 in the box was an intentional strategy against Birmingham....there's just no way your right winger could spend 1/2 the match in the box without the Coach's explicit instructions.