Galaxy Has Put Itself in Tough Spot
It was late Friday night in Kansas City, Mo., and Peter Vagenas slumped on a bench in the locker room at Arrowhead Stadium, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, tears in his eyes.
He couldn’t answer the question. He couldn’t speak at all. He just stared silently at the floor, physically and mentally exhausted. He had run almost nonstop for 90 minutes, trying to plug holes in a patchy Galaxy defense, trying to spark a lifeless Galaxy offense, and he was drained.
That’s the way it has been this Major League Soccer season for the Galaxy. Individually, the players gave everything they had. Collectively, what they had was not enough.
Los Angeles struggled all season to become a team, to play the cohesive, fast-paced, attacking style of soccer that fans want to see.
Sometimes, the Galaxy fired on all cylinders. More often than not, it sputtered, coughed and wheezed. And ultimately faded out.
Shut out in Kansas City in the Western Conference final, the Galaxy players will be spectators Sunday when the Wizards play D.C. United in MLS Cup 2004 at the Home Depot Center.
Had Sigi Schmid still been the coach, the Galaxy might have been involved in the season finale. Just might. There are no guarantees. But Schmid did have a record of reaching championship games. He did it five times at UCLA -- twice as a player and three times as coach. He did it five times with the Galaxy -- twice in the MLS Cup, twice in the U.S. Open Cup and once in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
In the most spectacularly boneheaded move of the MLS season, however, the Anschutz Entertainment Group showed Schmid the door in August. Whether that call was made by Tim Leiweke, AEG’s president, or Doug Hamilton, the Galaxy’s president and general manager, doesn’t matter. It was made and it was wrong.
It didn’t really matter who Leiweke/Hamilton chose as a successor. There was no need to make the change.
If it was done for non-soccer reasons, as some suspect -- in other words, getting a Spanish-speaking coach to counter the arrival of Chivas USA and to curry favor with local Latino fans -- then there is even more reason to fault the move.
But done is done, and now the Galaxy has to pick up the pieces of a crumbled season. Coach Steve Sampson did not wow his new employer by going 3-5-3 after taking over from Schmid, but he will be given 2005 to set things right.
For starters, Sampson will need a new playmaker. When he took charge, Sampson said he would use Austrian veteran Andreas Herzog “more intelligently.” That turned out to mean Herzog would ride the bench and come on late, if at all.
Deprived of Herzog’s experience, vision and passing ability, it was no wonder that Los Angeles lacked rhythm. Especially since his understudy, promising rookie Ned Grabavoy, also was confined to the bench.
Now, Herzog is retiring, as is Korean defender Hong Myung Bo, giving Sampson some options without having to worry unduly about the salary cap.
Three other players are out of contract: Vagenas, fellow UCLA graduate Sasha Victorine and defender Ryan Suarez.
Vagenas could move on, if he desires. He holds a Greek passport, which means he can play in Europe without having to go through all the usual red tape. It’s a matter of finding the right club and the right offer.
Victorine also might contemplate a change. Rather than having a settled role, he has been used in several spots by Sampson, depending on team needs. Switching back and forth between defense and offense has not helped his game.
Suarez, meanwhile, appears destined to be one of the players left unprotected Monday, when the Galaxy and the other nine MLS teams have to name the players they will make available in the league expansion draft Nov. 19.
The league’s two new teams, Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake, will use the draft to partially stock their rosters.
Right now, three-time champion D.C. United is MLS’ flagship team. It is playing the best offensive soccer in the league and also has the league’s most vocal and passionate fans.
The Galaxy, meanwhile, has the league’s best stadium and worst identity crisis.
Questions abound. Questions about the lack of speed in the defense, the lack of a true playmaker, the lack of understanding by almost every player of his role, the lack of anyone to properly support Carlos Ruiz up front.
Sampson has to recognize who his key players are, then play to their strengths. Often, it has seemed that he was trying to impose a system of play on players unsuited to that system.
Perhaps if he brings in newcomers to fit his system -- look for an influx of Costa Ricans in 2005 -- it will work better, but for the final few weeks of 2004 it was more often a shambles.
Can Cobi Jones cut it anymore? How is Jovan Kirovski expected to be both a playmaker and a goal scorer? Is there any sense in Ruiz’s sticking around if he is going to be playing alone up front or should he be traded?
The Galaxy heads to Hawaii to play D.C. United in February. It is going to Brazil in March.
But it is next MLS season that matters. That’s when Sampson will have to get it right. If not, well, there are two teams in L.A. now.
