Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Celebrating a loss

While sitting in on the Gold Cup conference call yesterday, I had on the Liverpool-Barcelona game. I don't really care much for Barcelona so I was hoping Liverpool would win. They didn't, but they did. Lost the game but won the series.

Barcelona won the game 1-0 but it didn't matter because Liverpool went through because of their 2-1 win in Spain. The fans went nuts and Liverpool players paraded around the field with obvious excitement.

The scene did strike me a bit odd. Most of those fans had gone there to support Liverpool but they not only didn't see a Liverpool goal (Crouch blew that one at the end) but saw their team lose. I don't blame them at all. In fact, if that were my club I'd be celebrating louder than anyone. I don't support Liverpool but I almost had goose bumps.

My first reaction was the reaction Peter Vagenas had to teams celebrating games which they did not win. I think it was Colorado who went into HDC last year and got a tie, 0-0 I believe. The Rapids players were celebrating each other after the game and Pete was irritated at that. He just couldn't understand why teams would celebrate draws.

Yes, completely different circumstances but that is the first thing that popped in my mind, Pete and his winning mentality. I know he takes a lot of crap in some circles but Pete is the Galaxy. His mentality, his love and passion for the club, his leadership skills and the perspective he takes on things. Whenever you need someone to tell you what's going on with the team, Pete always has the right answer.

3 comments:

D. Sivakumar said...

I was at Spartan stadium when the Galaxy tied the Earthquakes 1-1 and were quite happily celebrating after winning the aggregate 4-2 (3-1 in LA, after a 3-1 loss in LA in the final match of the regular season). Don't recall seeing Vagenas being irritated there, don't recall seeing any of the Galaxy players make any supportive gesture to the Spartan fans who were there to see their very last Earthquakes match.

L.B. said...

True. I'll have to ask him about that the next time he says something along the lines of "they're celebrating a tie."

If it makes you feel better, Vagenas points to the playoff debacle in 2003 in San Jose as one of, if not the worst loss he's ever suffered through.

A.C. said...

Well, if the loss to San Jose in that 2003 game had been a 3-2 Galaxy loss, I'm sure the Galaxy players would have celebrated it, because an aggregate series is built on the fact that total goals wins. So in 2005, technically, the Galaxy won. In 2003, they obviously didn't.