Galaxy Seeks at Least One for the Road
Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said he was hoping that his players have short memories.
If that fails, Schmid is counting on the team’s newcomers erasing the bad recollections of a season ago, when the Galaxy was winless on the road.
Tonight, Schmid’s team once again is away from home. The players left Friday for Denver, where the Galaxy will play the Colorado Rapids in the team’s first road game of the 2004 Major League Soccer season.
One statistic stands out: The last time the Galaxy won a regular-season MLS road game was Sept. 21, 2002, at San Jose -- almost 19 months ago.
Of course, that was the season the Galaxy won the league championship, but since then, the team has gone 0-10-5 away from home in MLS play, including a first-round loss at San Jose in the 2003 playoffs.
“It’s something that we’re not really reflecting upon,” Schmid said. “Last year was last year. It’s a different team this year. There are a lot of new faces.
“And we just don’t talk about it .... If I’m coaching Real Madrid, I’m not going to say, ‘Hey, remember when we were up 5-2 and we gave it away?’ ” in the European Champions League quarterfinals two weeks ago. “It’s something that you try to forget about and you don’t bring up again.”
But reporters covering the team have brought it up constantly this week, so ...
“Last year, we started off with eight games on the road and in a couple of them we outplayed the teams and didn’t come up with the results that we wanted,” he said. “It didn’t happen for us.
“There were other games later in the season when we played fairly well on the road and still didn’t come up with the result. Last year there was a little bit of psychological block, probably, in terms of the team because it started to take on a life of its own. We were struggling on the road and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Quick Passes
Cameroon’s defiance of FIFA when it insisted on wearing one-piece uniforms at the African Nations Cup resulted in FIFA’s fining the Cameroon soccer federation $155,000 and deducting six points -- the equivalent of two wins -- in World Cup qualifying play, hurting its chances of reaching Germany ’06.
Thursday’s riot by Ajax Amsterdam fans after a reserve team game against rival Feyenoord prompted the Amsterdam city government to ban Ajax from celebrating its almost certain Dutch league championship in the city center. “For rabble-rousers, there’s no party,” Mark Van der Horst, the vice-mayor, told Dutch television. Ajax, which extended midfielder John O’Brien’s contract until June 2005, can clinch the title Sunday.
Jamaican national team forward Onandi Lowe, 23, has been released on bail after being arrested in England on suspicion of drug possession. Lowe plays for Coventry City.
The Serbian club Partizan Belgrade has refused World Cup winner Lothar Matthaeus’ demand for $500,000 in compensation after the German walked out as coach in December to take charge of Hungary’s national team.
