It’s a Game Idea, but This Rivalry Needs Some Action

It’s awfully quiet around this place these days. Too quiet.

The Lakers will be joining the Clippers on the playoff inactive list for the first time in more than a decade, trying not to grind too many molars to dust as they watch Shaquille O’Neal attempt to barge his way into another NBA Finals without them.

The Kings and the Ducks are on the sideline as well, still waiting for the next sanctioned NHL game with real players, or the return of the NFL to Los Angeles, whichever comes first.

The Dodgers and Angels have their seasons underway, and the Dodgers are winning games a lot more frequently than anybody expected, but that only makes Dodger fans anxious and wary and wondering if the inevitable crash is now going to happen in May or in June. Meanwhile, Angel fans look at their team’s record and placement in the standings and silently ask themselves, “When did Arte Moreno get around to changing the name of the franchise to the ‘Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Now Members of the NFC West’?”

How to cut the tension? How to pass the time while the local NBA teams wait for next season and the local NHL teams pray for next season?

Are you ready for some futbol?

Or soccer, depending on which side of the unabashedly precocious Galaxy-Chivas USA rivalry has the floor?

Very eager to step into the local sports entertainment void, the Galaxy and Chivas are working overtime to drum up interest in their first regular-season matchup, this Saturday’s 7 p.m. game at the Home Depot Center.

Expansion team Chivas has tried to bait the decade-old Galaxy with a nose-thumbing PR slogan, “Adios soccer. Futbol is here.”

Galaxy officials looked the slogan over, pondered a proper response and earlier this month happened upon one. They signed Landon Donovan.

The back and forth continued at a Tuesday news conference held to further fan the promotional flames. The Galaxy-Chivas series currently stands at 0 wins, 0 losses and 0 draws, but it already has a corporate sponsor, and a trophy, and a somewhat presumptuous “official” title, the “Honda Super Clasico Series.”

Chivas has played three games of Major League Soccer, has yet to win one, has scored a total of four goals while yielding eight. Still, that didn’t stop Chivas defender Ryan Suarez on Tuesday from comparing Galaxy-Chivas to Inter Milan-AC Milan.

And it didn’t stop there. On its Tuesday night news program, Channel 4 ran recent footage of Gary Sheffield tangling with Boston Red Sox fans with sports reporter Mario Solis intoning, “Nothing brings a sport to the forefront like a heated rivalry, such as the one between Yankees and Red Sox. In this city, Dodgers-Angels and Lakers-Clippers are not there yet. However, although L.A. just got its second MLS team, things are already heating up.”

Maybe they should simmer down.

At least until the Galaxy and Chivas play their first game.

For those with a vested interest, the enthusiasm is understandable. Soccer has been here many times before, knocking on the door, trying to attract some mainstream attention in the U.S. in between World Cups. Remember last season’s PR mania over Freddy Adu? It turned out to be much Adu about very little. Adu’s team, D.C. United, won the MLS championship, but young Freddy played little more than an off-the-bench supporting role.

Yet, soccer in Los Angeles has never had an opportunity quite like this -- no local hockey, no local basketball playoffs, two local soccer teams sharing the same stadium. It’s a chance the sport may never see again. And on the day the Galaxy announced its acquisition of Donovan, AEG President Tim Leiweke spoke excitedly about taking advantage of the moment.

“There is a definite opportunity in this marketplace to do something special now,” Leiweke said then. “So with Chivas here, with Landon here, this is a pretty good time for soccer in this city.”

Certainly, it’s a different landscape than when the Galaxy made its debut in 1996. Today, local fans have two English-language all-soccer TV channels at their disposal, Fox Soccer Channel and Gol TV, along with ESPN Deportes, which is launching its MLS coverage with the Galaxy-Chivas game and will conduct its version of “SportsCenter” on site at the Home Depot Center.

During that inaugural season nine years ago, MLS had to buy time to get its games televised live on ABC and ESPN. This season, ESPN2 and Fox Soccer will each air 26 MLS games -- ESPN2 is broadcasting the Galaxy-Chivas game -- and ABC four. Additionally, FSN West will televise a total of 20 Galaxy games and 20 Chivas games this season.

The Galaxy-Chivas series is also a test experiment for MLS as it continues to search for ways to expand its niche audience. During a recent visit to Los Angeles, MLS Commissioner Don Garber spoke of how the league initially wanted to place the Chivas USA franchise in either San Diego or Houston, but Chivas owner Jorge Vergara held out for Los Angeles.

“We believed we needed to expand our footprint for national television purposes and the like,” Garber said. “And [Vergara] said, ‘This is why you want me as an owner. Because it’s not just about the business of the sport, it’s about the passion of the sport. And you’re going to see a rivalry in the Home Depot Center that’s going to rival what we have in Estadio Azteca or in Barcelona. And that’s what [will drive] our success. Not one more market.’

“And so far, he’s been proven right. We’ve had great success on the commercial front, on the local television front [in Los Angeles]. There’s certainly a lot of buzz in the market.”

And Saturday night, provided everybody involved can survive till then, there will finally be the inaugural game.