Galaxy in Attack Mode

It will be very much a new-look Galaxy team that kicks off its ninth Major League Soccer season against the New England Revolution tonight at the Home Depot Center -- and in more ways than one.

There are, naturally, the seven new players who have joined the team in the off-season: Andreas Herzog of Austria, Marcelo Saragosa of Brazil, Joseph Ngwenya of Zimbabwe, and the American quartet of Jovan Kirovski, Ned Grabavoy, Josh Gardner and Chris Aloisi.

Beyond that, however, there is the absence of Cobi Jones.

Jones, the team’s captain and the only original Galaxy player remaining from the league’s inaugural season in 1996, did not train Friday and will sit out a season opener for the first time, because of a combination of illness and injury.

“It’s just been a very frustrating preseason for Cobi, with the tonsillitis and now the injury [to his right leg],” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said Friday morning after the team’s final training session before tonight’s game.

“He’s a little under the weather.”

The entire Galaxy squad was that way last fall, when it watched a four-goal lead evaporate and was knocked out of the MLS playoffs by the eventual champion San Jose Earthquakes.

Pete Vagenas, who will be the starting defensive midfielder this season in Schmid’s new 4-4-2 formation, said the players have put last year behind them, and will have a fresh approach in 2004, and not only because of the new arrivals.

In 2003, the Galaxy came in having won the MLS Cup in 2002. This year, they come in as one of last season’s also-rans.

“We’re not the defending champions anymore,” Vagenas said. “I think that takes a little bit [of the pressure] off.

“We’re not stepping on the field trying to emulate what we did the year before. There’s a lot of baggage when you come in as defending champions and you try to play like defending champions.

“I think it’s much easier if you just go out and play.... Being more aggressive on the field and trying to win every Saturday instead of saving it for the playoffs is going to be much better for this team.”

The unhappy end to last season almost cost Schmid his job, but he and Doug Hamilton, the Galaxy’s general manager, sat down and hashed out what had gone wrong and what needed to be done and then set about rebuilding the team.

“You can market all you want, but at the end of the day people come to see good football and they come to see their team win and compete for championships,” Hamilton said. “We want to be more goal-dangerous.”

Los Angeles fans will miss Mauricio Cienfuegos and Alexi Lalas, both of whom have retired as players, but the newcomers will make the team much more attack-minded.

Schmid has switched from a three-man back line to a four-man defense, which probably will see Chris Albright, Danny Califf, Hong Myung-Bo and Tyrone Marshall as the starters.

“We want to play four in the back because it will give more security to the players in front of them to attack,” Schmid explained. “We also want to get our outside backs forward, to add to our attacking abilities on the flanks.”

The Galaxy will have a “diamond” midfield, with Vagenas, backed up by Saragosa, handling the defensive duties, Sasha Victorine and, when healthy, Jones, wide left and right, respectively, and Herzog, a two-time World Cup veteran, the playmaking midfielder.

Up front will be Kirovski, backed by Ngwenya, and the Galaxy’s unquestioned standout of the last two seasons, Guatemalan striker Carlos Ruiz.

The Galaxy’s depth is much better this season, which means Schmid can mix and match to a greater degree, depending on form and injury worries.

“One thing we’re happy about is we feel we have a good group of 15 or 16 [players out of the 24 on the roster] that we can really go to and it shouldn’t [negatively] alter or impact our quality of play too much,” he said.

The Galaxy’s defense, playing in front of starting goalkeeper Kevin Hartman, was the best in the league last year, but with the exception of Ruiz, who scored a league-high 15 goals, the offense sputtered.

This year will be different, Schmid predicted.

“You’re going to see a team that’s going to be better up top, because in Jovan [Kirovski] and Joseph [Ngwenya] we have players who can [support] Carlos [Ruiz] maybe a little bit better than we have in the past,” he said.

“And in Andy Herzog we have a player in the center of midfield who, with basically one pass, can open up a defense and can hit a 40- or 50-yard ball like [Marco] Etcheverry or Peter Nowak were able to do in the past.”

It might take Ruiz, Herzog and Kirovski a little time to get on the same page. They have been playing together for only a few weeks, but all three are encouraged by the early signs.

“I’ve jelled with Carlos pretty well,” said Kirovski, who left Europe for MLS specifically to get more playing time and to keep himself in the running for a spot on the next U.S. World Cup team.

“It’s great for me because he [Ruiz] is a poacher. He likes to be in the box. He’s a goal scorer. I’m more of a player who likes to come deep and get the ball in the midfield. I like to roam everywhere.

“So we complement each other well. He’s always in the box, and I’m always looking down the side and trying to get the ball into the box.”

Herzog, 35, is one key to the Galaxy’s 2004 fortunes. If he can spring the front-runners and they can finish with consistency, the Galaxy will thrive.

“Sometimes it’s worked very well [blending with Ruiz and Kirovski],” Herzog said Friday. “But it’s clear that when two out of three players are new, we have to work more and more. I think from week to week it will improve.

“They are two very good strikers. Carlos is the best striker in the United States. I hope he can score a lot of goals, and I want to help him.”

Ruiz is one of many Galaxy players who will have their season interrupted by World Cup qualifying games, but he is pleased to have the added support up front and from the midfield.

“The arrival of Andreas Herzog is very important to this team,” he said. “He’s a very talented player who will give us a lot. Also, Jovan will help us. There will be a lot more support from the midfield than there was a year ago.

“We [Ruiz and Herzog] have done very well in the preseason. We understood each other right away. He is a very dangerous player, and it means opposing defenses now will have to pay attention to two players who can score against them.

“The way the team is formed this year, I think we’re going to have a lot more space in the attack and we’re going to attack a lot more than we did a year ago.”

The onslaught begins this evening.