Your opinion. The quality is much better than the quality we are interupting MLS season for. You buy into the excuses, I think they are **********'s. Difference of opinion I suppose. But with that frame mind, what other tournament other than the World Cup should the US play in?Additonally, the 'didn't want to interupt the season' excuse doesn't fly either. They interupted to play a litny of friendly games anyway. BS excuse.
The game is somewhat a joke....Galaxy without Donovan is a pretty plain team (and also the other 3 guys) . Galaxy will keep score low, since they'll be running all over field, busting their ass, and are in shape. Real will 'keep the score low' as another poster said...by not going 100%. Its going to be a laugh. But I hope Galaxy get on the board early to keep it respectable. 3 or 4 to 1 to Madrid..
once again- we are in CONCACAF and the Gold Cup is our championship.However much you wish, we are in North America.Copa is the South American chamionship. We made the last 8 of the WC without Copa and playing just the Gold Cup.
If you only goal as a soccer nation is to qualify for the WC, then I guess you should be satisfied. I think we should be striving for more than that. Just my opinion, i understand lots of you guys are satisfied with where we are..
Of course. Because everyone one knows that CONCACAF is a joke, so why not release him. Then in two years they'd be able to point out that "hey, Landon Donovan played a friendly for his club - during the Gold Cup - so it must be a joke!"
I, for one, would like to see Donovan get to play against Real Madrid. Any chance the Reggae Boyz will do us exhibition game fans a favor and beat the USMNT on Saturday?
I believe that in order for the Galaxy to be real competitive in this match, they need Landon Donovan. Perhaps the Galaxy will be competitive without him but in all honesty, I can't see them beating Real or drawing even. With him they have a chance but without him I doubt it. Personally I believe the Galaxy ought to have first priority over him since they (in this case MLS/AEG) are the ones paying his contract. The U.S. team has enough good players on their roster that they could afford to drop Landon for this game, even though its getting to crunch time in the Gold Cup. I believe the game against Real should not be taken as an exhibition but played as a regular season match. All MLS fans should be pushing hard for a Galaxy win or at least a tie to show that our league is for real.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! I don't care as much as Donovan playin i just wanna see the game. Besides, the semi's and finals of the Gold Cup are in NY. I want to see us in em..
This mirrors the decision to make Chivas players skip the Libertadores Cup to play in the Confederations Cup. I was against that since the Confederations Cup is a fake tournament and the Libertadores is old and prestigious and no Mexican team (I think) has ever won it. I do not think of the Gold Cup as a fake tournament, though. A shabby one, yes. Moreoever, if UNAM beat Madrid in Spain, then the Galaxy are only playing for the right to say they are as good as UNAM (and maybe not even that - no road win). And only people with FSC will be able to watch this match on television. It just doesn't seem like enough to me. I sympathize with the argument for including Donovan in what should be a gala affair, to represent MLS there. But this is not a gala affair. It just doesn't feel like one to me. It's not big enough. I think Donovan should stay with the national team.
Normally I'll take country over club every single time. However, in this case, I don't really see a problem with Landon playing a half against Madrid on Monday. He'd still be 100% in his match against Jamaica on Saturday and then the US don't play again until Thursday and even then it's against Honduras or CR, not Mexico or South Africa (The only two teams remotely impressive in this tournament.) Landon would not miss any US matches and in all likelyhood only need to play 45 at the HDC. I'm not furious or anything but I would have liked to see the Bruce be a little more flexible. Mike
I'm not saying Bruce doesn't want to win the Gold Cup, but isn't it pretty clear from his selections and line-ups that he is treating this as a useful laboratory to play with different players and different formations? And that's fine - without Gold Cup he would probably set up a bunch of friendlies to prep for WCQ games for just the same reason. So, what does he need to learn about Landon? Nothing. Having Landon with the USMNT in Gold Cup is superfluous to Bruce's clear objective - test his depth and test his formations. So, it would not be a big deal to release LD for the Real game. No matter what we think of the Gold Cup, Bruce's actions have made it eminently clear what he thinks of the Gold Cup.
Bruce wants to force MLS to schedule better and take breaks when the national team plays. Keeping Donovan and make MLs go without its biggest star in a spotlight game will push them in that direction.
True, Bruce is clearly a one tournament poney. He cares about nothing else except the qualifying for and playing in the World Cup. PS: In the last 10 years or so, which tournaments have we actually won?
That's fine and all in general, but surely MLS and more specifically the LA Galaxy had no options when it came to scheduling this game. Real's Asian tour was scheduled and it was basically "play us at this time, or don't play us at all." What would you do if you were the Galaxy? Of course you'd play Real so you could charge $50 a seat for lawn tickets
We won the Gold Cup which is probably realistically the only international tournament we can have a reasonable expectation of winning.
Why do they 'need' Donovan in the Gold Cup? It's not a first rate competition. We didn't bring in all of our top players, and neither did any other team in the tournament, for the most part. Hell, even South Africa didn't bring their best 11. It's sad that a tournament that is really pointless (Unless you factor in the Confederations Cup possibility, which Arena probably won't coach in next time around) is an excuse to keep the club's best player. It would be different if this competition actually meant something. Do we really care about winning it? I don't. All that matters is the WC. I'm almost never a club-over-country guy, but this is just crap.