Looking for Goals in All the Right Places
Soccer fans in Dallas had to be thrilled with the sight of this: A Los Angeles player named Clint scoring his second goal of the night, then sauntering over to the sideline to slowly blow kisses in front of the television camera, then grabbing his right ankle and hopping on one leg, mimicking a rodeo rider.
Clint Mathis, a 21-year-old rookie midfielder with the Galaxy, calls it his “riding the bull a little bit dance.” OK, so it needs a catchier nickname, but Mathis claims he improvised it on the spot--”a spur of the moment thing”--and the home fans at the Rose Bowl loved every second of it, whatever Mathis decides to call it.
Mathis’ “Urban Cowboy” bit came after his game-clinching goal in the Galaxy’s 4-1 victory over the Dallas Burn before a crowd of 21,173 Saturday night. He scored it in the 66th minute, just three minutes after Dallas had broken Galaxy goalkeeper Kevin Hartman’s shutout and was showing dangerous signs of life on offense.
With the Burn pushing forward on another attack, Mathis broke free through the middle of the field, took a long feed from Galaxy defender Ezra Hendrickson and, in full sprint, kept dribbling through the heart of the Dallas defense.
One quick deke left Mathis alone in the left side of the Dallas penalty area. Then he turned and fired, with Burn goalkeeper Mark Dodd diving just to get a hand on the ball before it nestled in the side of the webbing.
Mathis had given the Galaxy a 2-0 lead in the 25th minute on the kind of goal most often seen in a Thursday night recreation league.
Unmarked in the Burn penalty area, Mathis volleyed a cross from Martin Machon into the ground and pogoed the ball over the head of a scrambling, backpedaling Dodd--the soccer equivalent of a Baltimore chop into the back of the net.
Add Wellington Sanchez’s long-awaited first goal for the Galaxy, in the fourth minute, and it was a charmed sort of night for the Galaxy--just the elixir the team needed after sleepwalking through its first defeat of the season Wednesday night in Chicago.
“A good win,” Galaxy Coach Octavio Zambrano called it. “It was good, obviously, to get a win against a team directly underneath us in the standings. From that standpoint, it was the most important game of the season for us.”
With the victory, the Galaxy improved its record to 10-1 and expanded its first-place lead over Dallas (6-4) in the Western Conference to 14 points and 3 1/2 games.
Afterward, Galaxy officials were marveling about Mathis--not so much about the two goals as about the very fact that they have him in Galaxy blue, black and gold.
“He was clearly the best player that came out of college last year,” Galaxy general manager Danny Villanueva Jr. said of Mathis, who played last year at the University of South Carolina. “We were stunned he was available when our turn came up [at No. 6 in the first round]. Hands down, we had to draft him.”
After drafting him, the Galaxy had to finagle a way to keep him. In March, Dutch power Feyenoord came calling and at one point in contract negotiations with the Galaxy, Mathis told Villanueva, “I can’t sign, I’m going to Holland.”
“We saved him,” Villanueva said. “We had so many people call him--Octavio, myself, a number of league officials. We finally convinced him to stay. We brought him back.”
Said Zambrano of Mathis: “He’s a good player, bottom line. I have been in this country 20 years and I have played with a lot of American players and coached at every level. You can spot certain things that are unique in a player. And this player has that.”
Certainly, the riding-the-bull-a-little-bit-dance qualifies.
