Recently in Guest Blogger Category

Douglas Morino is a reporter at the Daily Breeze in Torrance who attended last weekend's Galaxy-AC Milan game in Carson as part of the capacity crowd.

I asked him to write about his experience as a fan; he does not paint a pretty picture.

What my friend and I, along with hundreds of other soccer fans, experienced Sunday night at Home Depot Center was nothing short of outrageous.

I expected the bad traffic.

What I didn't expect was it to take us two hours to drive from the Avalon Boulevard off-ramp to the Home Depot Center parking lot. It was clear from the beginning the powers that be were unprepared for the influx of soccer fans descending upon the HDC.

I can deal with long lines for overpriced beer.

But outside the ticket gates closest to the tennis stadium, there were hundreds of people - literally, hundreds - lined up waiting to enter. The line was a dozen people thick and
stretched to the parking lot. The scene was unsettling. At that point, the match was already underway.

Frustrated, we went to the opposite end of the stadium, where the line to get in was shorter. We walked into the stadium 10 minutes after kickoff.

We had tickets in the general admission area - first come, first served - and by the time we reached the section it was clear there were no open seats. We stood for a while, along with dozens of other fans who were venting their frustrations at security guards and ushers. Who could blame them? It was hot, crowded and there was no where to sit.

I looked to the press box with envy as I envisioned a colleague sitting comfortably, maybe enjoying a cold drink and air conditioning, as he observed the match from the 50-yard line and typed away on his laptop.

Around the 25th minute we sat in fold-out chairs behind the general admission section along with about a dozen other people. We were immediately told to leave, and the argument with stadium officials would last until the final whistle blew.

After halftime, people continued to scramble to find a place to sit, or even stand. Some seats lining the section remained empty the entire match, and security guards and ushers would not allow them to be filled. The growing crowd continued to protest.

Security, not surprisingly, was having no part of it. They told us to leave the section, they told us to take it up with customer service, then they threatened to kick us out. By this time, the crowd behind the section had grown substantially - and so had their anger. Security called at least one sheriff's deputy to the scene. It was obvious they had oversold that section and the entire stadium. I wondered were the Fire Marshall was to enforce any fire code.

Finally, in the 70th minute, a sympathetic security guard intervened, and using verbal force, cleared some space and found us a few seats in the general admission section. Unfortunately, many who paid to get into the section were left standing, far removed from the action on the field and in the stands.

Trying to get in the stadium was one thing. Trying to get out was something completely different.

After the final whistle blew, an elderly man took a break from the massive herd trying to leave the section and sat down in an empty seat. A young female security guard promptly told him to stand up. People passing by spoke up in defense of the old man.

"I don't have to take any of your (expletive)," she shouted.

We finally made it outside and literally ran to our car to avoid the impending onslaught of traffic. I've been to packed Dodger playoff games, BCS bowl games, and sporting events in the Developing World, and nothing compared to the disorganization and blatant disrespect being forced upon paying customers Sunday in Carson.

My friend and I drove out of the stadium parking lot that night, vowing never to return.

It seems Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns and operates the stadium, as well as the Galaxy, keep finding ways to drive new fans like Morino away. Incidentally, a press box colleague (who arrived late to the game) had a very similar experience with the traffic control (or total lack thereof outside the stadium) calling it "complete chaos." And power hungry security at the stadium is another recurring theme, too. I'd be interested in hearing from other fans and AEG officials are welcome to respond as well in the comment section.

Daily Breeze intern Lisa Hirschmann graduated from Columbia University in December with a bachelor's degree in Hispanic Studies. The Pasadena resident has studied in Madrid and Argentina (and came away from the experience a fan of Real Madrid and that South American country's national team) and played soccer for 10 years. She offers a different perspective of U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati ahead of the start of World Cup qualifying.

Most United States soccer fans know Sunil Gulati as the president of the United States Soccer Federation. But before I was aware of his alternate life as the USSF president, I knew Gulati as the teacher of the only college economics class I remotely enjoyed.

Gulati is a very popular professor who teaches two introductory level economics courses for undergraduates at Columbia University: "Principles of Economics" and "World Economy". I took the latter in spring of 2006. It's a large lecture that covers the basics of international trade.

He hardly mentions soccer in the classroom and appears to fit in well with his colleagues, which is why I say he leads an alternate life. Most of his students don't, and probably won't, ever find out how important he is to U.S. Soccer.

In general, Gulati is a great professor who cares a lot about challenging his students. With so many them, he treats each class a bit like a performance. He has a high energy level, and he tries to engage his students. Sometimes he gives fun trivia questions and asks students to e-mail him the answer (i.e. What is a technological device that creates jobs? Answer: a shovel, a pick, a wheelbarrow, etc.) He tries to get to know his students by taking them to lunch in the faculty dining room in small groups. He invites his international trade expert friends like Jagdish Bhagwati and Joseph Stiglitz to give guest lectures.

One of the biggest complaints about his class, which I share, is that it is too math-heavy (his dad was a math professor - maybe he's math-oriented?). As an introductory level course, "World Economy" emphasizes calculations more than concepts, which leads non-economics and non-math majors to retain less information than they otherwise might. It is also the reason that Gulati's classes are considered tough.

The other complaint you hear from some students about Gulati is that he is slightly arrogant. I can see how he might come across to some students in this way, but they probably have not bothered to Google his name, and still haven't discovered his claim to fame.

(And as a final anecdote, I'll add that in December, as I was studying for my last round of finals, I saw Professor Gulati on campus walking with Claudio Reyna. I looked around to see if anyone else was starstruck, but I was the only one.)

Here is a USA Today article about Prof. Gulati.

Read reviews from Gulati's students here.

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).

Gene Maddaus is a Daily Breeze staff writer. He covers politics. He tunes into soccer about once every four years, which makes him an extremely casual fan, although he has been to a few Galaxy games. He just returned from Argentina where he took in a soccer game on his honeymoon.

Being journalists, the first thing my wife and I did when we arrived for our honeymoon in Buenos Aires was to turn on the news. As we learned, the country was in the grips of two major crises. The first was economic: the government was about to take over the nation's private pension system. The second was soccer-related: River Plate was headed for the bottom of the standings.

If anything, people seemed more worried about "La Crisis de River." Economic disruptions were routine enough to be taken in stride, but how often was one of the country's two great club teams so awful? We decided to see a match in an effort to plumb the Argentine psyche.

We found ourselves at "La Bombonera," the home of Argentina's other major club, Boca Juniors. The guidebooks recommended getting tickets for the "platea," where seats are assigned. But on the day of the match, they were mysteriously unavailable, and no amount of inquiry in my beginner's Spanish could make them appear. That left us to fend for ourselves in the "general" area, where fans squeeze in shoulder-to-shoulder and where, if there is to be trouble, it is most likely to start.

On the way in, I was given a pat-down search. Once inside, we found that there was literally no place to stand. Our section was surrounded by aging concrete walls and high fencing -- the sort you see on international news coverage of crushing deaths during soccer riots. Many younger fans were already hanging from the metal fences to get a better view of the action. There were none of the amenities of an American sports stadium -- concessions, souvenir shops, bathrooms -- just a mass of Argentine soccer fans sandwiched together in the hot sun, a dense mass of blue and gold.

We squeezed into a spot near the top of the section. There were only a few inches separating us from the surrounding fans, some of whom had no inhibitions about leaning on their neighbors for support. As the match began, the crowd launched into the first of many songs of tribute to Boca, punching the air in unison. The density of the crowd amplified its fervor, and we had no choice but to be swept up in it.

Having been exposed to professional soccer mostly via the MLS, we were awed by the level of play. The players had such a fluidity with the ball and awareness of the field that scoring chances developed almost instantly, and from nothing. When Boca missed a chance, the crowd grunted "uh" in unison. At eight minutes in, Boca scored and our section exploded.

We were amazed to see a vendor parting the crowd in front of him, weaving his way with a tray of watery Cokes aloft in his right hand. Then, from behind, a man who smelled strongly of alcohol forced his way forward. Fans allowed him to pass only because he was carrying a toddler on his shoulders who might have fallen if the man's momentum had been stopped. He plunged down into the crowd and out of sight.

At the half the section sat down, en masse, for the first time. When play resumed, they stood again and remained on their feet for the rest of the game. The opposing club, Rosario Central, scored an equalizer early in the second half. The crowd did not boo or whistle, but seemed to redouble their intensity during the songs. When the Boca star Juan Roman Riquelme made a dazzling run and nearly scored, the crowd chanted "RI-QUEL-ME."

Boca went on to win on a goal in the 87th minute, and moved closer to first in the standings. Our taxi driver explained that with a San Lorenzo loss, Boca now had a real chance, something that seemed unthinkable a few weeks before.

River Plate, meanwhile, continued to lose, and is now dead last in the race for the Apertura championship. Like the global economic crisis, there is no end in sight.