Championship Matchup Is All MLS Feared and More
This is not the championship game Major League Soccer had in mind. Not by any means.
The howls were long and loud at MLS headquarters in New York when Ante Razov’s 88th-minute shot slammed into the back of the New York-New Jersey MetroStars’ net Friday night, giving the Chicago Fire a 3-2 victory at Soldier Field.
But they were nothing compared with the despair that set in when Miklos Molnar took advantage of a Galaxy mistake at Arrowhead Stadium and slotted home the series-deciding goal for the Kansas City Wizards in the other semifinal finale.
Talk about sudden death.
What MLS officials were hoping for, indeed praying for, was a New York-Los Angeles championship match Oct. 15 in Washington.
What they wanted to see was Octavio Zambrano versus Sigi Schmid, the Galaxy coach who was fired versus the Galaxy coach who was hired.
What they wanted to see was Clint Mathis versus Luis Hernandez, bleached blond on bleached blond, coast versus coast, Galaxy past (Mathis, Steve Jolley, Roy Myers, Mark Semioli) versus Galaxy present.
Instead, they get Chicago versus Kansas City, a Midwest yawn-a-thon that features two teams that drew a combined 18,453 at home for their crucial playoff games Friday.
Worse yet for the league, the season’s showcase game could turn out to be a ratings disaster for ABC, which will televise the 10:30 a.m. PDT final live from RFK Stadium. In particular, Missouri, five years into the Wizards’ tenure at Arrowhead Stadium, remains the Don’t Show Me state, and the distraction of an NFL Sunday doesn’t help.
It could be ugly.
WHERE THE BLAME LIES
The temptation in L.A. will be to blame defender Danny Califf for the Galaxy missing its third final in five years.
That would be a mistake.
Sure, Califf was stripped of the ball by Mo Johnston in the sudden-death mini-game that followed the Wizards’ 1-0 regulation victory. Sure, Califf should have headed the ball clear rather than trying to chest it down and control it. Sure, the miscue led to Molnar’s winning goal.
But remember two things: Califf is a rookie who deservedly was chosen the team’s defender of the year, and it was Califf who scored the overtime goal in Game 2 at the Rose Bowl that gave the Galaxy a chance to win the series and reach the championship match.
No, the blame lies at the other end.
Just what, for example, was Hernandez’s contribution during the three-game playoff series against Kansas City?
He is the experienced striker, the big-name, big-salary player who is supposed to deliver on occasions such as this. Instead, all that was evident was a series of so-so performances and a few dives here and there.
Even if he couldn’t deliver on the field, Hernandez was supposed to put bodies in seats. The bottom line (no pun intended): The Galaxy averaged 17,632 in 1999 without Hernandez and 20,400 in 2000 with the Mexican forward--a far cry from the 10,000-per-game gain team President Tim Leiweke had promised owner Philip Anschutz.
Small wonder there are influential players on the Galaxy who will be quite happy if Hernandez decides to stay in the Mexican league and does not return to MLS in 2001.
TWO BOBS AND AN OCTAVIO
It is fitting that the four MLS semifinalists were coached by last season’s MLS coach of the year (the Galaxy’s Schmid) and this season’s three coach-of-the-year candidates: Zambrano of the MetroStars, Bob Bradley of the Fire and Bob Gansler of the Wizards.
Zambrano and Gansler are up for the honor because they turned the two worst teams in the league in 1999 into contenders. The MetroStars went from 7-25 to 17-12-3, and the Wizards improved from 8-24 to 16-7-9.
But the best coaching job of the year was done by Bradley, who has not only built a team in Chicago that has exceptional depth but also has superbly marshaled those resources.
His handling of Hristo Stoitchkov has been a revelation, with the aging but fiery Bulgarian being nursed through a series of injuries and preserved for the playoffs.
Stoitchkov, whose old friend and mentor, Dutch legend Johann Cruyff, supposedly will be at the MLS final, played in only 18 regular-season games and started only 12, scoring nine goals and assisting on seven others.
The cautious approach paid off. Stoitchkov, who made his name in the United States during World Cup ‘94, has delivered in the playoffs. He has scored four goals in the playoffs, setting up the first goal and scoring the second in the Game 3 victory over the MetroStars.
And it is not only foreign veterans that Bradley can manage with aplomb. He does well with young Americans too.
Forward Josh Wolff, 23-year-old star of the U.S. Olympic team in Australia, already is catching the eye of several European clubs, including Liverpool if the rumors in Sydney are to be believed.
But while Wolff is interested in the challenge of playing in Europe, he also is quite content to remain in Chicago.
“As long as we don’t lose Bob Bradley,” he said. “I enjoy Chicago. I think we have the best coach in the league. We have a great setup. Our fans are fantastic. Our stadium’s great, and hopefully we’ll get a new one down the road.
“Chicago’s the best place to play, in my mind. The spirit there, the atmosphere, everything is fantastic.”
Wolff was on the Fire team that “did the double” in 1998, winning both the MLS title and the U.S. Open Cup.
In the next two weeks, the club has a chance to repeat the feat. After playing Kansas City Oct. 15 for the league championship, it hosts the Miami Fusion the following Sunday in the final of the Open Cup.
