Weekly Column: Galaxy marketing gets ahead of reality (again)

Friendlies between MLS and foreign clubs are always just as much about marketing as they are soccer.

The video above, for instance, is as close as the local media got to American goalkeeper Brad Friedel, who was inexplicably not made available for interviews by Tottenham Hotspur ahead of tonight’s game against the Galaxy at Home Depot Center.

He’s not the only player “missing” for this game in one sense or another, of course.

Spurs’ Croatian midfielder Luka Modric belatedly crept back to training Monday in London after going AWOL in an effort to force a lucrative transfer elsewhere, but was instead reportedly hit by huge club fines.

Midfielder Scott Parker is out with likely Achilles surgery on the horizon.

And more tickets would have sold had Spurs’ Mexican midfielder Giovani Dos Santos not been on Olympic duty.

Still, fans knew ahead of time most of these players were missing for tonight’s game (live at 7:30 on KDOC and KWHY).

Other absences?

Well, the Galaxy carefully kept under wraps that two very high profile players would miss the game, presumably so as not to hurt ticket sales, as I observed in today’s column.

Classy.

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