More than two years after disappearing in a cloud of Texas dust, the San Jose Earthquakes are back and ready to take the field tonight. San Jose makes its MLS return at Home Depot Center against the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Normally you would expect an expansion team to be a heavy underdog in a first match, but not after the Galaxy looked like a glorified pub team in its 4-0 season-opening loss to the Colorado Rapids. Now LA must find a way to rebound without forward Carlos Ruiz and defender Abel Xavier.
San Jose has the pieces in place to boast a stingy defense, but its offense is weak. Too week to score on the Galaxy? I wouldn’t go that far. The Galaxy’s defense is somewhere between horrendous and abysmal.
Look for the Galaxy to put pressure on, but San Jose withstands the early pressure before finding its own late goal to score a 1-0 victory.
Tonight’s match is set for 10:30 p.m. on ESPN2. If you are going to be watching the match on TV, or ESPN360, please feel free to share your thoughts and views on the match here.
Enjoy the match.
MasterShake, you’re kidding me right? Sure, we’d all love for Landon to maximize his vast potential like, yesterday, but he showed last night that he’s definitely a quality player. Granted, everyone else on the Galaxy pretty much sucks, but Landon is a terrific player.
Chanting MVP for Kobe? At a soccer game. Gotta love L.A.
Or chanting it for Beckham? Either way it doesn’t make sense. 😉
Wow, big surprise, Galaxy win after a blowout. I didn’t watch the game, but only because I knew the league would engineer a win for it’s precious L.A. Galaxy no matter what.
I think…? the goal Becks scored last year was in Superliga, not MLS…correct me if I’m wrong
just got back from the game–
every seat was filled. great crowd. nice 200 person section of quakes fans as well. a packed house that freaked out every time beckham touched the ball.
at the end kobe bryant leaned out from the beckham box (right above my seats) and had a huge MVP chant going.
great great night.
in all seriousness though, alan gordon is exquisitely bad. like special surprising bad.
does that mean edson buddle could possibly be worse?
The Galaxy actually have some hope if they can somehow dump
the contracts of Xavier, Gordon & Vagenas. Klein is expensive but he seems to play well with Beckham and only good teams expose his lack of speed…and at this point I think the Galaxy should focus on beating the bad teams and not worry too much about the good teams. The disposed of a very weak SJ team but they disposed of them nonetheless.
That free kick that Beckham hit at end of first half where Pires just missed on the header was perfect. I know that’s what he does but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.
I would throw out whatever evidence they think they have from last year and start fresh this year and see if it works.
And I thought that coming over here, Beckham was looking forward to trying center midfield – he changed his mind so quickly?
A.S. – they tried that last year. Wasn’t so hot. Beckham wasn’t so into it either. Everyone is happier with him on the wing.
The trick is, you have to remember he is their best player, so no, really, keep feeding the right side, unless you can burn the defense for cheating over too much.
The trap is that the left wing opens up because he’s so much better, so you get tempted to go that way more and more. The Gals will just have to stay discipled/non-moronic and keep running their offense through him.
I don’t understand why they don’t play Beckham in central midfield instead of wide right. He’s so wide that he’s out of the play 2/3 of the time. If they played him in the middle, they’d get a lot more play out of him. And he’s clearly their best player – so why not play him where’s he’s going to get the ball the most?
@RK Beckham’s goal against DC last year was in Superliga.
@MasterShake Get real. The Galaxy don’t have much, but Donovan is quality.
Did anyone else think it cute that whenever the Galaxy didn’t switch sides to him he just stood there with his arms up? He’s like the one good kid, normally the coaches son, playing with all the other worse kids.
Atleast he scored.
SJ looked starstruck playing out there. And I didn’t even mean that pun. Galaxy. Starstruck. No?
I gotta give credit to Beckham, i wish i could get royalties everytime they ask him the same dumb,repetitive, and cliche questions. I would have been rich by now. He really shows his professionalism by sitting through these cheesy interviews.
Only good thing out of the game is that JP and John Harkes are now officially my favorite commentator team on ESPN.
overall a pretty entertaining thursday night…good night all
Foudy just doesn’t know when to end an interview