Saturday, August 1, 2009

Landon: "It Will Be A Fun Night"


Following Friday's training sessions, both FC Barcelona and the LA Galaxy are ready for Saturday's international friendly at the Rose Bowl. Even though kickoff is not until 8 p.m., fans are encouraged to arrive early to avoid traffic and/or delays getting into the stadium.

The big news out the Galaxy camp was the return of David Beckham and Landon Donovan to training. David returned to the field after working out inside by himself on Thursday. Landon rejoined the squad after having participated in Wednesday's MLS All-Star Game at Rio Tinto Stadium.

With both back on the field, Landon told MLSnet.com's Larry Morgan that the club's goal for Saturday is to put on a good show for the fans.

"The reality is, should we expect to beat Barcelona? No. But we want to play well. Soccer is a funny game; if we play well and put in a good effort we have a chance to compete with them, and that's all we need," Landon said. "It will be a fun night."

Barcelona trained twice, at UCLA in the morning and then in the evening at the Rose Bowl, in front of LA Galaxy season ticket holders.

As you can see from the picture below, despite the short notice, a lot of people came out to see Barca do some light drills.




The fans enjoyed the opportunity to witness some of the best players in the world up close and had a lot of fun.



Some were more close than others, like the children that created a human tunnel for the players to enter the field through.


A special thank you goes out to LA Galaxy photographer German Alegria for providing us with these photos from Barcelona's evening training session.

Ticket booths and will call at the Rose Bowl will open tomorrow at 10 a.m. Be sure to arrive early and avoid the traffic.

2 comments:

charlesj27 said...

Thanks for the update. The way those guys train, with conviction & discipline - but, still having fun. Then, to see how quickly they flick the ball to the next player - always emphasizing the most minimal of touches - that's special. It seemed to me that many of their players just cared about warming up and playing / having fun - not very interested in pics/autographs for the fans.
I want to wish our LA Galaxy team a night of good playing, plenty of connecting to completion (I hope?), and solid work & effort. It was also nice to see some of the LAG Youth Academy players out there at the training session, as well. I want to wish the Youth Academies a much more fruitful, and better years to come. I'm dreading the parking and leaving the stadium situation already... yikes!

charlesj27 said...

Guys,
Any chance in providing a more current / updated list on who will actually be uniformed up and ready to play for the LA Galaxy in the next hour or so? What about Dema, Alecko, and Edson? Will they play tonight?
I looked at our schedule coming up in August - tough, tough games ahead for us, folks:
8/08: New England Revs (AWAY)
8/15: Seattle Sounders FC (HOME)
8/19: Chicago Fire (AWAY)
8/22: DC United (AWAY)
8/29: Chivas USA (HOME)
I really hope we have our best & most ready players this month for us - we need them... that's the only way our team will manage from slipping in the MLS Conference standings. I keep saying this: Bryan, Kyle, and Leo need to be playing more competitive games - we're in that stretch now!