Getting Ready for the California Clasico

TLAG EXCLUSIVE BELOW

The intensity picked up a notch today. The session was more focused on San Jose, saturday's rival in Oakland, and geared toward preparing a potential Starting XI.

After starting the day with some drills, the squad split into two for an 11v11 match. Ball distribution was particularly fluid and the tackles were not soft.

Looking to bounce back from Saturday's 2-0 loss to Real Salt Lake, Bruce outlined some of the challenges San Jose poses for the Galaxy.

"Just playing on the road, regardless of who it is in this league," is always tough, said Arena, who is 5-3-1 all-time against San Jose. "(Darren) Huckerby is back and healthy, he's a very good player, they've gotten some very good play out of their two strikers, (Ryan) Johnson and (Chris) Wondolowski, and we know that (Arturo) Alvarez and (Ramiro) Corrales are good players, possibly (Bobby) Convey will be back, so they have an array of players that can hurt you going forward.

"And defensively, they've made some changes over the past month to strengthen their backline, so I think they would believe they have a better group in the back as well."

Listen to more of our chat with Bruce below.

Before we get to the audio and photo portions of our recap, we have a TLAG exclusive that neither The Insider, SBI or MLSR has posted yet: Photo of Djibril Cissé at today's training session with Heroes star Jimmy Jean-Louis and Cobi Jones.


Cissé, pictured on the left, is in L.A. this week checking out the sights with Jean-Louis, who just returned from Europe to start production on Season 4 of Heroes. Jean-Louis has some hook ups with the club and asked if it was OK to bring Cissé out to The Home Depot Center to check out a Galaxy training session. The media that was here couldn't help but ask the 27-year-old striker if they could take a picture with him. In case you are wondering, and we know you are, Cissé is under contract with French Ligue 1 side Marseille.

The Hollywood factor was in full effect today as Chris Vance, the star of Fox's new hit drama Mental stopped by after training. A big soccer fan, Vance was joined by Josh Tudela and fellow Englishman Kyle Patterson for an interview and kickaround as part of an interview with the TV Guide Network.

Back to the on the field matters, here are our interviews with Arena and Alan Gordon as well as a couple of pictures, one of Omar taping a segment of MLSnet.com's "Rookie Life" with Troy Bardy and another from an upcoming Telemundo feature on Bryan Jordan and his new car, a 2005 electric blue BMW M3.

Here's the audio...

Bruce...


Alan...