Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Running Out the Rust

The two-week World Cup break officially came to a close for most of the Galaxy players this afternoon as they joined up for the club's first training session since last week's loss to Real Salt Lake. Despite seeing their mid-season break come to an end, the guys seemed to be in good spirits as they went through a 90 minute session at The Home Depot Center.The day saw a lot of work on attacking and defending as a unit as well as some possession work. And of course, coming on the heels five days off, there was plenty of fitness work for the guys at the end. We are happy to report that everyone was able to make it through their runs without any overt huffing and puffing.One person that would have been given a pass for being a bit short on breath after the session was Leonardo, pictured below on the ball and defending Omar, who worked alongside his fellow defenders all day long before joining in on the runs as well. The big center back has missed the last 10 games since injuring his quad in training in mid-April, but he will be looking to get back into the team for the second half of the season as the schedule starts to become a bit more congested.Speaking of Leonardo, despite all the work he just put in, he was one of the first players to race inside at the conclusion of today's session, along with fellow Brazilians Juninho and Alex Cazumba, to grab the best seats in the player's lounge to watch the game between Brazil and North Korea. The guys are not allowed to wear their sweaty training gear inside the lounge, so we think that the three guys all asked Raul for some extra gear in their lockers so that they could change as soon as they reached the locker room and see as much of the game as possible.We'll say that the boys left satisfied with the result, but would have appreciated a slightly bigger margin of victory heading into the final two group games against the Ivory Coast and Portugal.

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