Lalas could not collude with AEG because he was an AEG employee, which goes to my point about self-dealing and lack of integrity.
I met him a few times at the old HQ, and he even came by our coaches' meeting. Not just slimy but clearly here to help AEG shut down the San Jose franchise. It was impossible not to dislike him.
Lalas knew Donovan wanted to come back so he gave away Donovan's rights intentionally so that he wouldn't come back to the Quakes and LA could get him. There were meetings in LA before Donovan went to Germany where he arranged for his rights to be given up clearing the way for him to sign with LA. Lalas, of course, was entirely unethical since his duty should have been to do things in the Quakes best interests. Instead he justified it as doing what was best for MLS. But it was what AEG and Donovan wanted. I don't remember for sure what the Quakes got for giving up the rights to Donovan--my memory wants to say we got Rico Clark, but that could be wrong.
True, I misspoke. Collusion involves a separate party, Lalas was joined hip & thigh to AEG. Conspiracy would have been more apt.
This may come as a surprise to some but I do actively search out MLS games that are free broadcast, I like to see for myself how our opponents are doing, the tactics they're employing and if the money they spent is paying off for them. I will not, under any circumstance, watch the filth play with the single exception of when we play them.
Aside from my personal disdain for him, there is no doubt Landon was a great player. If he had any guts , instead of going to LA for Bianca , he should have gone to England or Germany. The trouble with making it in Europe though were that the odds were against him. He would be considered a typical American failure as soon as he started slowing down and no way will he have been given whatever he wanted as he had in MLS or with the Galaxy. Looking back for him anyway, he probably came out on top by not going abroad.
I believe it was Ricardo Clark. I jumped into the wayback machine and found this thread, where many of us were saying pretty much the same things we are still saying today. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/landon-donovan-la-times-report-10-25.181420/
I remember they got Alejandro Moreno too but I think he may have been part of a different player trade...he did play well in 2005 though....they also got Mark Chung and he did good in his final season too.
They acquired Rico Clark with "a portion" of the allocation they received from the Donovan departure, but they also traded a "youth allocation slot" to NY along with the portion of the Donovan allocation. Don't know who else they were able to acquire with that allocation money, but they acquired a ton of players that year whether it was thru trade or whatever. For example they traded Dick Mulrooney and Arturo Alvarez for Davis (and some kind of draft pick exchange). Players they acquired in 2005, off the top of my head: Ronald Cerritos Brad Davis Rico Clark Wade Barrett Danny Califf Mark Chung Kelly Gray A. Moreno Danny O'Rourke (draft pick) It was a pretty massive rebuild, and hugely successful. So when Wade Barrett says "we played better w/o LD", it's not like they just switched out LD and kept everyone and else and they were magically better. It was almost an entirely different team. No LD created a void that enabled DeRo to really take off and shine that year, but if you added LD to that mix somehow, I doubt they would have become worse.
The players they got that year actually did very well. Davis, Chung, Rico, Moreno and Cerritos all played well and DeRo and Ching that season had a breakout year. That is the team that went to Houston and excelled. Cerritos and Mark Chung were on their last legs but they played great ball in 2005. At the time I thought they got all those players as the league felt sorry for them because of what they did with the "LAndy trade" but looking back, I think it was Dom and Lalas who picked up those guys. AEG in late 2004 early 2005 had imploded the team and if I recall correctly, the team had maybe 10-11 players on the roster in February 2005.
The Quakes won the Supporters Shield in 2005 without Donovan, but the Galaxy won MLS Cup that same year with him, and three more MLS Cups with Donovan. Since acquiring Donovan, the LA Galaxy have never won an MLS Cup without him. Neither, of course, have the Quakes. Also, in the absence of Donovan, AEG was able to move the Quakes to Houston, where two MLS Cups were won while San Jose fans languished without a team altogether.
Yep, say what you will about Dom and his more recent results in MLS, but he completely crushed it that year - rebuilt the team and had them playing really nice soccer. Went undefeated at home that year too I think.
Yeah that team played well in 2005 but DeRo and Onstad I believe also were Frank's guys. That team was very talented.I think it was better than any of our current Quakes teams from 2008 until now. Even better in my opinion than 2012. Aside from that though, I still can't believe AEG got away with moving the team and trading Landy the way they did.
What's so hard to believe? There were only a handful of owners that operated the entirety of the league at the time, two of which were operating new and absolutely abysmal teams, so they had no weight to throw around and make a fuss. That's if they even thought there was a problem with it to begin with, which they probably didn't. When you have single owners operating multiple teams in a league with little autonomy for individual teams, you get these kinds of scenarios for which there is no recourse or remedy. One could argue it was a necessary evil for the good of professional soccer in the US to succeed. One could also argue that this behavior has marred professional soccer in the US almost irreparably as there is no reason to suspect that MLS, as a league, cares about being fair or serving its fans in the best possible way. The second is true of course, and the first could also be true. Either way, the lesson for all of us should be to assume that the league and its owners are always lying to you, as they have no incentive to be transparent in their dealings.
Not being flippant, but not sure the Quakes' Hall of Fame even had criteria at the time John Doyle was named the first inductee. As I recall, it was an ad hoc affair at the time (2005), with some doubt that additional prospects would ever be forthcoming in light of the Quakes' precarious position with AEG's proposed move to Houston. Naming Doyle a hall of famer in that context was the proverbial whistling through the graveyard. I was invited to sit in the Quakes' box at Spartan for the game (against the Galaxy) in which Doyle was inducted. Doyle's family was in the box with me. As, among others, were Quakes non-dressed players, including, as I seem to recall, Taylor Twellman's brother James and Brian Ching.
During that time from 1996-2000, John Doyle in my opinion was the best American born centerback around. I don't' think there were that stoppers around. You had Mike Lapper , Steve Trittschuh Robin Fraser, Alexi Lalas and Jeff Agoos but Eddie Pope was too young and Thomas Dooley a foreign born naturalized citizen was too old in my opinion during that period and was pretty much done. Carlos Llamosa was also from Colombia and he was good but he was also a foreigner. I don't think he should count.
I think that the Danny Califf trade was the first to bite into the allocation for Cakes. I'm pretty sure it was Danny Califf. This LA Times article gives the mechanics of the trade as "the Galaxy will receive a portion of one of the player allocations owed to the Earthquakes by MLS." After all these years my mind had incorrectly switched the order to Califf's then Clarke's acquisitions, but I'm pretty sure those are the two halves of the Cakes allocation.
Losing Landon and the entire team the very next year was devestating. Even though we all speculated that the team would in fact relocate, I am pretty sure LAndy had inside knowledge more than anyone of the teams fate. I would have more respect for him had he stayed around one year longer and the league somehow would place or “allocate” him on the Chivas but AEG wasn’t about to lose him as a player. Whichever way you turn it though, that scenario was one of the crooked moves in sports. ln my opinion , it was worse than match fixing or even steroid use. Again they got away with it because other than a select few, no one cares about the game.
Great so the Gals wound up getting LD and part of the Quakes allocation for losing LD. AEG / MLS just wanted to prop up the Quakes so that the Gals would have a sorry foil, like the Globetrotter's Washington Generals. The beautiful irony is that, despite loslng to LA in the playoffs the Quakes were way better than LA that year.
A lot of people have defended AEG over the years, suggesting that without Phil Anschutz there would be no MLS. The defense is akin to an abusive parent who argues that the abused child in his or her custody owes its life to having been born into this world via the abusive parent.