Galaxy Limping to the Finish
The Galaxy’s sprint to infamy -- going winless on the road a year after winning the league championship -- has picked up speed, thanks to a late-season rash of injuries and a pair of national team call-ups.
It has made the Galaxy’s goal of winning at Kansas City tonight that much more of a challenge.
The defending MLS Cup champion, which has lost four of its last five league games and is 0-8-5 away from the Home Depot Center, will be without starting midfielders Cobi Jones and Simon Elliott and starting defenders Hong Myung-Bo and Tyrone Marshall.
Jones has a strained right hip and Hong a strained right hamstring. Meanwhile, defenders Danny Califf and Ryan Suarez, midfielders Memo Gonzalez and Paul Broome, and forwards Diego Serna and Alejandro Moreno are all hobbled.
Elliott, for New Zealand, and Marshall, for Jamaica, will be playing for their national teams in exhibitions Sunday.
Still, so much uncertainty for the Galaxy leads to one certainty -- a loss to the Wizards ensures L.A. of finishing fourth in the Western Conference and playing the first-place San Jose Earthquakes four consecutive times beginning next week -- twice in a home-and-home series to end the regular season and twice more in the first-round, home-and-home playoff series.
MLS Update
Ante Razov had a goal and an assist as the Chicago Fire clinched first place in the Eastern Conference with a 2-0 victory over the visiting Columbus Crew in front of 30,845 at Soldier Field.
The San Jose Earthquakes and Colorado Rapids, the top two teams in the Western Conference, played to a 0-0 tie in front of 12,478 at Denver.
New England Revolution forward Taylor Twellman, the league’s leading goal scorer with 15, will sit out the rest of the season because of a stress fracture in his left foot.
Chicago defender Evan Whitfield was slapped with a three-game suspension and fined $1,000 by the league after hitting the Galaxy’s Broome with an elbow in the mouth last weekend.
FIFA’s Guidelines
Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the South Africa 2010 Bid Co., the organization that is seeking to have the 2010 World Cup played in South Africa, said that because the event is FIFA’s primary source of revenue, world soccer’s governing body requires bidding nations to show that they have the ability to add billions to FIFA’s coffers.
“You have to demonstrate to FIFA that as a business you have the fundamentals in place for FIFA to generate between $2.7 billion and $3 billion from the event,” Jordaan said in Long Beach on Friday.
“The challenge for African bidders is to show that Africa too has the ability [to generate such income].”
Jordaan also said that South Africa’s bid includes 13 stadiums, five more than the minimum required by FIFA and including three yet to be built. The opening match and final are planned for Soccer City in Johannesburg, a stadium that seats 94,700.
In addition, Jordaan said that if South Africa wins out over rivals Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia in its effort to stage the quadrennial world championship, he expects ticket prices to be lower than in Germany 2006 and expects that FIFA will stage its Confederations Cup in South Africa in 2009, as a dress rehearsal for 2010.
Hooligans Stopped
With the security level raised in Turkey in anticipation of today’s Euro 2004 qualifier match against England, Turkish police held 26 suspected English soccer hooligans at the Istanbul airport.
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Times staff writer Grahame L. Jones and Times wire services contributed to this report.
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GALAXY TONIGHT at Kansas City, 5 p.m. PDT, Channel 9
Site -- Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, Mo.
Radio -- KXMX (1190), KTNQ (1020, Spanish).
Records -- Galaxy 8-11-8, Wizards 9-10-8.
Record vs. Wizards -- 1-2-0.
Update -- Kansas City has a plus-two goal differential (44-42) whereas the Galaxy, the lowest-scoring team in MLS, is at minus two (30-32).
