Galaxy Earn 2-2 Draw in New England

LA Galaxy 2, New England Revolution 2
August 30, 2008
Gillette Stadium – Foxborough, Mass.

Scoring Summary:
NE – Taylor Twellman 7 (Khano Smith 3, Wells Thompson 1) 22’
LA – Landon Donovan 15 (Peter Vagenas 3) 33’
LA – Landon Donovan 16 (Eddie Lewis 1) 55’
NE – Shalrie Joseph 1 (Michael Parkhurst 1) 71’

Misconduct Summary:
NE – Wells Thompson (Yellow Card) 14’
LA – Eddie Lewis (Yellow Card) 14’
LA – Greg Vanney (Yellow Card) 63’
NE – Jay Heaps (Yellow Card) 90+

Lineups:
LA Galaxy: Steve Cronin (Josh Wicks 46’), Chris Klein, Sean Franklin, Troy Roberts, Ante Jazic, Greg Vanney (Mike Randolph 65’), Peter Vagenas, Eddie Lewis (Eduardo Dominguez 81’), David Beckham©, Edson Buddle, Landon Donovan.

Subs Not Used: Julian Valentin, Josh Tudela, Mike Munoz, Israel Sesay.

New England Revolution: Matt Reis, Jay Heaps, Gabriel Badilla, Michael Parkhurst, Chris Albright, Jeff Larentowicz, Pat Phelan (Sainey Nyassi 33’), Wells Thompson (Mauricio Castro 78’), Khano Smith, Shalrie Joseph©, Taylor Twellman.

Subs Not Used: Doug Warren, Amaechi Igwe, Chris Tierney, Rob Valentino, Brandon Tyler.

Notes:
· With the draw, the Galaxy are now to 6-9-7 on the season, giving them 25 points. The Galaxy are now alone in fourth place in the Western Conference, one point behind third place FC Dallas, who play later on Saturday night, and one point ahead of the Colorado Rapids.
· The draw gives Bruce Arena his first point as head coach of the Galaxy. He has begun his career with a 0-1-1 record with the club.
· Arena made three changes to his squad that lost 1-0 to Chicago on August 21. David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Eddie Lewis were all brought in to the team, while Ely Allen, Alan Gordon and Alvaro Pires were dropped from the starting XI.
· With his two goals tonight, Landon Donovan now has five multi-goal games on the season and an MLS-best 16 on the season.
· Eddie Lewis made his Galaxy debut in the match, starting on the left-side of midfield. He played the opening 81 minutes and had an assist on Landon Donovan’s second half goal before being replaced by Eduardo Dominguez.
· Steve Cronin left the game at halftime as the result of a right pinkie injury. He was replaced in goal by Josh Wicks, who made his MLS debut in the match.
· By exiting the match, Cronin’s streak of playing every minute of every regular season Galaxy game this season came to an end. He had played the first 1935 minutes for the Galaxy this season.
· The Galaxy’s winless streak is now at ten games, tying the mark for the longest winless streak in club history. During this current streak, the Galaxy are 0-5-5 and have been outscored 24-14. The only other time the Galaxy went ten games without a win was in 2006 when the club went 0-8-2 from May 6 until June 24.
· The attendance for tonight’s game was 39,256. This is the third biggest crowd that the Galaxy have played in front of this season. Only the games in New York on July 19 (46,754) and in San Jose on June 14 (39,872) drew more fans than tonight’s game.
· For more about tonight’s game, please visit www.lagalaxy.com.
· The Galaxy are back in action on Saturday, September 6, when they are back home to host Real Salt Lake at The Home Depot Center. The match will kick off at 7:30 p.m. (PT) and can be seen live on FSN Prime Ticket. The match will also be available live on the radio starting on AM 570 (English) and KWKW 1330 ESPN Deportes (Spanish).

Underway at Gillette Stadium

We're underway in Foxborough between the Galaxy and Revolution.

Bruce Arena is looking for his first win with the Galaxy, and here is the lineup that he has put out there tonight.

-------------Donovan------Buddle----------------

Lewis------------------------------------Beckham

---------------Vanney-------Vagenas-------------

Jazic---------Franklin-------Roberts---------Klein

-----------------------Cronin----------------------

Subs: Wicks, Dominguez, Valentin, Randolph, Tudela, Munoz, Sesay

Ready for the Revs

The Galaxy trained at Gillette Stadium today as they prepared for Saturday evening's game against the New England Revolution. The Revs are currently busy as of late, having reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open Cup, winning SuperLiga and also playing in the preliminary round of the CONCACAF Champions League, so the Galaxy will be looking to catch them tomorrow and snap their nine-game winless streak.

Despite the good memories that all Galaxy fans have of Gillette Stadium, the home of the Galaxy's 2002 MLS Cup triumph, LA has never won a regular season game at the stadium, which opened in 2002. They'll be looking to snap that string with a nearly full strength squad on Saturday night.

Before we get to the video, photos and audio, first, a couple of notes...

• Alvaro Pires and Alan Gordon did not make the trip East as each is dealing with an injury. Pires is hampered by a right groin injury while Gordon is struggling with a left heel issue. With those two out, a total of 18 players made the trip.


• It's a busy sports weekend here in New England as, in addition to the Galaxy game, there is a PGA Tour event being held near Foxborough and the Red Sox are playing at Fenway. Also, the Patriots, who share Gillette Stadium with the Revs, were at Giants Stadium on Thursday night for a preseason rematch against the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.


• Speaking of the Patriots, a bunch of their players, including quarterback Tom Brady, safties John Lynch and Rodney Harrison and linebacker Mike Vrabel stopped by the field as the players were beginning to stretch at the start of practice. Despite the fact that the training session was closed at the time, all of the players and staff were happy to meet and chat with the NFL stars and compare some notes on life as professional athletes.

Now to the video...

And some photos...

And here is what Becks and Bruce had to say prior to Saturday's game.

Becks...


and Bruce, first with TV


and then with the print media

Wrapping Up on Wednesday

The Galaxy held their last training session of the week at The Home Depot Center this afternoon, as Bruce Arena put the group through a nearly two hour session under the California sun.

Like, Monday's session, the day ended with a tournament style 6v6 competition. However, unlike earlier in the week, when it was a straight 6v6 game, this time, the team that was not on the field played as two-way players (two on each endline and one on either touchline) who could only use one touch. Also, unlike Monday, the team in grey did not win, rather it was the boys in red, which featured Mike Munoz, Tristan Bowen, Mike Randolph, Klein, Izzy and as we were reminded this morning, Julian.

Here are some pictures from today's training, as well as some interviews with Vanney, Cronin and Edson.





And now the audio...


Greg Vanney...


Steve Cronin...


Edson Buddle...


Speak to you all next time from New England.

A Tuesday Chat

Bruce, Landon and Eddie spoke with the media today after training and here is what they had to say.

Bruce:


Landon:


Eddie:


And a quick video of some of the above...



Lastly, we saw that a few of you were wondering who was wearing the #33 shorts at training on Monday, so we thought that we'd let you know that it in fact was goalkeeper Jordan King. A preseason trialist, King was not signed by the club back in February, but has been training with the team for much of the past two months, filling in for Josh Wicks, Charles Alamo and Vito Higgins when they were out injured. In fact, King is the only Galaxy goalkeeper with a win in the Reserve Division this season, as he played the full 90 minutes in the 5-3 win over Chivas USA on July 11. Alamo, Higgins and Wicks all missed that game through injury.

In addition to Jordan, the Galaxy also welcomed Tristan Bowen from the Galaxy Rios out to training today. However, the two young Gambians who had been training with the club for the last two weeks, Amadou Sanyang and Embrima Bojang have returned home.

Back on the Training Field

For the first time since taking the job a week ago, Bruce Arena had nearly his full team out on the field for training this morning as Becks, fresh off his appearance in Beijing and a morning arrival in Los Angeles, Eddie and Landon were all in uniform and participating in training.

Those three joined up with Ante, Pete and Troy (wearing grey) to win a 6v6 tournament that was held to close out the tactical side of the session. In the final round, the teams played five minute games with the first team to score twice declared the winner. In a winner take all final against the team of Klein, Munoz, Vanney, Franklin, Randolph and Buddle (wearing red), LD and Eddie scored to give their team the title and more importantly, bragging rights for the day.

However, despite their tournament win, those guys still had to run as much as the rest of the team to close the session, before Bruce got the group together for a quick chat.

Here is a series of photos that we took during today's session.

Bruce prepares to start one of the games during the 6v6 tournament.


The teams prepare for the final...

Greg Vanney get away from Pete...

Eddie Lewis, in his first practice with the club, goes at Chris Klein... (read more from Eddie here)

Josh Tudela leads his team in their section of the run...

While Greg Vanney and Mike Munoz lead the way for the defeated finalists...

Here are the champions...

So good that they get two photos...

Following the run, Bruce talked with his team as they stretched...

Eddie listens on now that training session number one is officially in the books.

Catching Up with Eddie Lewis

Nick Green of the Daily Breeze dropped by at training today to speak with the Galaxy's latest acquisition Eddie Lewis.

Here is a link to the conversation the two had and we'll be sure to get some audio from him this week as we begin to look ahead to Saturday's game against the Revs.

Speaking of the Revs, if you want to check out the Galaxy's next opponent and do some advance scouting of your own, tune in to Fox Soccer Channel at 5 p.m. (PT) on Tuesday night to see Steve Nicol's team take on Joe Public FC in the Preliminary Round of the CONCACAF Champions League.