In the matter of Mr. Beckham…
PRO: The guy has played well, he’s showed as much heart as at any time in his career, and he’s clearly chosen to lead and has been accepted by his teammates as the leader! Witness the fight he showed when getting right up in the face of players who commit nasty fouls on him…and the way his teammates sprint to his aid and back him up. The L.A. Galaxy have a chance to win a tournament championship the SuperLiga Championship[vs. Pachuca, Wednesday night, 11pm EST, on TeleFutura] because of his play last week.
CON: The L.A. Galaxy are a bad team. Several good players, good guys, but it’s a bad team that plays badly and has bad, if not cursed, luck. See the usual soccer sites for a list of reasons (scheduling, playing Beckham injured, not sticking to a clear plan). Though it is highly, let’s put that in caps and bold it - HIGHLY unlikely that they can beat Pachuca…but if they do, I wonder if a championship in such a disastrous year will pull focus from the fact that just about everything else went wrong.
One hope - they did what every serious team in the world (whether England, Spain, Italy, etc) does when they recognize the chance to win something: they wrote off part of their season and focused on winning something, anything. The Galaxy played a reserve squad against Colorado and rested Donovan, Pavon, Beckham and others. It was a blatant sign that they’ve written off the MLS season and playoffs…and probably the only good decision they’ve made in months.
U.S. Under-17 World Cup team:
The coach made tough changes, the guys battled hard…beat Belgium and made it to the Quarterfinals of the World Cup. They play GERMANY at 6:45am EST on ESPNU.
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