Wizards Now Have Sporting Chance

For a soccer coach, Bob Gansler sure talks a lot about other sports.

Take last weekend, for example. Gansler’s Wizards were at home in Kansas City, about to play the Galaxy in the first of two pivotal games that very likely would decide which team would win Major League Soccer’s Western Division.

But before the match at Arrowhead Stadium, Gansler was talking about wrestling.

“It’s going to be hard-fought from beginning to end,” he told the Kansas City Star. “Both teams are going to be inclined to play the game and not get into WWF stuff.”

As it it turned out, there was very little fight in the Wizards, who succumbed meekly, losing 5-1 to a Galaxy tag team intent on showing the upstarts--the Wizards finished 8-24 last season--which team really is best in the West.

The four-goal margin matched the worst home defeat in Kansas City history, and in the aftermath Gansler decided that perhaps tennis was a better analogy than wrestling.

“We’re disappointed that we couldn’t hold serve today,” he said. “But if someone breaks you, you just have to break them right back.”

Or at least settle for deuce.

Which is precisely what the Wizards achieved Saturday night, when they held the Galaxy to a 1-1 tie in front of 33,112 at the Rose Bowl. The outcome served to keep the margin between the teams at four points. Advantage, Wizards.

Kansas City definitely has the upper hand in the stretch drive. It not only leads the division by four points but has seven games remaining, one more than Los Angeles. It needs to win only five of those games to put the title mathematically beyond the Galaxy’s reach.

There were two moments Saturday when the game and the race swung wildly in either direction.

The first came in the 29th minute when Galaxy goalkeeper Matt Reis and defender Paul Caligiuri made a dog’s breakfast of clearing the ball, allowing Kansas City’s Chris Klein an empty-net goal.

The second was equally ugly.

Most soccer teams have what hockey calls an enforcer or goon. Kansas City, even though it features such talented players as Preki, Chris Henderson and Mo Johnston, is no exception.

Its so-called “hard man” is Matt McKeon, and if the Wizards end up losing the division race, they can point to a moment of McKeon madness just before halftime Saturday as one reason why.

His vicious tackle on Galaxy playmaker Mauricio Cienfuegos led to a red card, leaving Kansas City a man down for a full hour.

McKeon is a one-dimensional player whose lack of talent was exposed when Coach Bruce Arena called him up to the U.S. national team in 1999, then rejected him almost right away as inadequate.

Gansler begged to differ.

“Cienfuegos is a master at faking that,” he said. “He went down as if he was hit by a sniper.”

The title race could come down to factors other than thugs (or snipers) on the field, however.

Kansas City has the more difficult schedule, with three of its remaining seven games against teams that lead their division. In addition, four of the seven games are on the road. Advantage Galaxy.

Los Angeles’ schedule includes only one difficult opponent, the Chicago Fire, and features two games against the worst team in the league, the San Jose Earthquakes. Three of the six remaining games are at home.

World Cup 2002 qualifying also factors heavily into the equation, and not to the Galaxy’s advantage.

For instance, Costa Rica plays at home against Guatemala Tuesday in a game that will have significant bearing on the United States, which is in last place in the same qualifying group and which plays Barbados in Foxboro, Mass., on Wednesday.

The Galaxy will lose Cobi Jones for the Barbados game; the Wizards will lose goalkeeper Tony Meola. Call it deuce.

But whereas Kansas City-- minus McKeon, of course--will otherwise keep its team intact for a Wednesday match at San Jose, the Galaxy will play the Colorado Rapids at the Rose Bowl without four starters involved in World Cup qualifying: Jones, Luis Hernandez, Ezra Hendrickson and Cienfuegos.

Advantage, Kansas City.

Both teams were without their marquee strikers Saturday. The Galaxy’s Hernandez was in Monterrey, Mexico, where his wife gave birth to their third child Tuesday.

The Wizards were missing Danish striker Miklos Molnar.

“He’s just not 100%,” Gansler explained.

“We’ve got some tired cowpokes here. When we go up to San Jose, we’ll see. If he’s ready to ride, we’ll put him out there.”

First wrestling, then tennis, now rodeo? Well, it is the Western division, after all.