Weight of the World Is Lifted

Somewhere on the Mediterranean island of Corsica this morning, Greg Vanney will be smiling. Perhaps he will even put in a call to Paul Caligiuri.

Somewhere near Acapulco, Mexico, this afternoon, Jorge Campos will grin for no apparent reason. Perhaps he will even send Cobi Jones an e-mail.

Somewhere in Denver today, Robin Fraser will nod knowingly to himself and, not for the first time, will mumble “finally.” Perhaps he will even call Dan Calichman.

In places around the globe, wherever Galaxy players of the past find themselves, they will hold their heads a little higher, look strangers in the eye a little more directly and know that justice, at long last, has been done.

Especially those players who played for the Los Angeles teams of 1996, 1999 and 2001, the teams that reached Major League Soccer’s championship game only to be tripped at the final hurdle.

The nearly men are nearly men no more. The Galaxy is MLS champion.

The moment Carlos Ruiz’s angled shot slipped beneath the legs of diving New England Revolution goalkeeper Adin Brown Sunday afternoon at Foxboro, Mass., the albatross that had hung around the Galaxy team’s neck since its rain-soaked loss to D.C. United at Foxboro Stadium six years ago, suddenly took wing and vanished.

The disappointments of past seasons, of two title-game losses to D.C. United and one to the San Jose Earthquakes, are merely memories now. Unpleasant, true, but no longer a burden.

So if Eduardo “El Tanque” Hurtado looks a little happier today in his native Ecuador, there is good reason. If Carlos Hermosillo and Luis Hernandez appear in a brighter mood than usual in their native Mexico, it means the news has reached them.

If Martin Machon, the Galaxy’s first Guatemalan standout, is celebrating fellow countryman Ruiz’s achievement, the chances are that Clint Mathis and Chris Armas are too, along with Danny Pena, Welton, Jorge Salcedo, Harut Karapetyan, Roy Myers and the dozens of other former Galaxy players.

Championships are not won merely by the players on the field. Those on the sideline contribute as well. So, too, do those who over the years provided the foundation on which today’s trophy rests.

Teams change from one season to another. Players and coaches come and go. But all contribute a piece or two to the puzzle until the picture finally emerges.

When Ruiz’s goal -- his 32nd in 32 games in his inaugural MLS season -- slipped into the net to end 113 minutes of high drama, only one player, Jones, was on the field who had been there on April 13, 1996, when the Galaxy made its debut in front of 69,255 at the Rose Bowl.

When Cobi has a chance to show Galaxy fans the Alan I. Rothenberg trophy next season, it will not be at the Rose Bowl but at the team’s new home, its sparkling 27,000-seat stadium that rapidly is taking shape in Carson.

The league could not have scripted it better than to have its flagship team -- sorry, D.C. United -- open its season as champion in what will be the league’s finest soccer-only stadium.

The fact that winning the title qualifies the Galaxy for the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and that that tournament, in turn, can unlock the door to the World Club Championship, should FIFA revive that event, is merely tomorrow’s icing on today’s cake.

But for a long while Sunday -- for the entire game, in fact -- everything hung in the balance, and the strain was visible on the face of Coach Sigi Schmid.

No doubt, his predecessors, Lothar Osiander and Octavio Zambrano, were watching and were similarly stressed. After all, they helped build this championship team.

Schmid hates to lose, absolutely loathes it, so the poor man was in agony throughout a tense game that was always likely to be settled by a single goal. One miscue would be all it would take for the Galaxy to stumble yet again.

But it didn’t happen.

Kevin Hartman was largely untroubled in the Galaxy nets, thanks to the near-flawless play of defenders Alexi Lalas, Tyrone Marshall and Danny Califf.

In the five-man midfield, the last members of the original Galaxy team, Jones and Mauricio Cienfuegos, kept things flowing, along with Ezra Hendrickson, Simon Elliott and Sasha Victorine. Up front, Alejandro Moreno reduced the pressure on Ruiz.

After an hour, Schmid sent Peter Vagenas into the game in place of Cienfuegos, and later introduced Chris Albright in place of Moreno.

Those are the names that will be recorded among the statistics.

But fans who have followed the team for seven seasons know that those players alone are not responsible for this triumph.

It was the past that led to the present. Just as the present will lead to the future.