Foreign Interests Are Crucial in Galaxy-Rapid Playoff Series

Accepting the premise that American players on the Galaxy and Colorado Rapids are about equal in talent and experience, it figures to be the foreign contingent that makes the difference in the Major League Soccer playoffs.

For Los Angeles, that means El Salvador’s Mauricio Cienfuegos, New Zealand’s Simon Elliott, Mexico’s Carlos Hermosillo and Costa Rica’s Roy Myers.

For the Rapids, that means Sweden’s Anders Limpar, Canada’s Jason Bent, Panama’s Jorge Dely Valdes and Jamaica’s Wolde Harris.

Which of them, if any, will play a decisive role in Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals today at Mile High Stadium is a question fraught with problems.

Take Coach Sigi Schmid’s Galaxy, for instance.

Schmid will be unable to call upon Elliott because the midfielder was red-carded in Game 1 and is suspended.

How much Schmid can count on Hermosillo also is uncertain. The striker was injured in the next-to-last game of the regular season at Dallas and was held out of last Sunday’s 3-0 Galaxy victory at the Rose Bowl. Hermosillo, 35, was less than thrilled by that, claiming he was fit and that a player of his stature should not have been confined to the bench.

So he sulked and watched the game from the press box.

“His knee has actually responded fairly well [to treatment], but there’s still swelling,” Schmid said at the time. “That was the reason for not playing him. If we had tried to play him, it would have aggravated [the injury] and he would have been less than 100% [for Game 2].”

That leaves Cienfuegos and Myers. Both are playing well, Cienfuegos having set up two of the goals in the first game of the best-of-three series. It was his long, diagonal pass that sprang Ezra Hendrickson free for the opening goal, and it was his dribbling that forced Colorado defender Chris Martinez to pull him down by the jersey, leading to Greg Vanney’s penalty kick goal.

“We should never have given that penalty away,” Colorado Coach Glenn Myernick said. “We had Cienfuegos surrounded and he still got out. We also have to do a better job against Ezra and make him do more defending.”

That doesn’t bother Schmid in the slightest.

“Ezra’s opening goal was big-time, he finished the chance very well,” Schmid said. “Everybody sees Ezra’s offense, but I think he’s a much-improved defensive player from last year. His heading is a big plus for us. I think Ezra has had a great year.”

As for Myers, Schmid has been equally delighted with the player he rescued from the ruins of the MetroStars, who finished 7-25. The Costa Rican midfielder’s dribbling leaves his coach dumbfounded.

“Every day when I watch him at training, he gets out of some situation and I scratch my head and ask, ‘How did he do that?’ ” Schmid said.

Colorado’s Bent, meanwhile, will be occupied trying to keep track of Cobi Jones, and it will be up to midfielder Limpar to get the Rapids running smoothly again. Myernick believes Colorado, not the Galaxy, would have finished in first place in the conference had the Swede not been injured for much of the season.

“Anders is an important member of our team,” he said. “We feel pretty strongly that if he had played just half the games in the second half of the season, we would have won the conference a long time ago.

“He missed 14 of the 16 games, and I think [giving him the captain’s armband in Game 1] was a gesture on our team’s part to show him how much we wanted him back.”

But the captaincy might have distracted Limpar, who had little impact at the Rose Bowl. Not so, said Schmid, claiming Limpar’s ineffectiveness was caused by the defensive play of midfielder Danny Pena.

“I thought Danny did a great job on Limpar,” he said. “We talked to him about him not having to steal the ball from Limpar or win tackles, but just to make Limpar pass the ball where he didn’t want to pass the ball.”

In other words, disrupt his play making and create confusion. As a tactic, it worked perfectly.

“[Limpar] kept going deeper and deeper, looking for the ball, or kept going to the flanks, looking for the ball,” Schmid said. “We kept him pretty quiet.”

With their creative force subdued, the Rapids were unable to generate any goals for the sixth successive game. There is no guarantee that Dely Valdes and Harris--not to mention Paul Bravo--can be contained again today.

“We’ll do what we always do,” Myernick said after the loss. “We’ll look at the videotape and we’ll learn from our mistakes. And we’ll take the positive things and try to build on them.

“I don’t think there’s anything glaring that they did better than us. We can certainly play faster through midfield and finish better.”

The Rapids have gone scoreless for 589 consecutive minutes, but the Galaxy will be just as determined to score.

“We owe them,” Schmid said. “We went up there twice [this season] and lost, 1-0, both times. It’s about time we scored at Mile High.”