Galaxy in USOC

Crap. I didn't want to start thinking too much about this game because I would get excited for it and it's still more than 24 hours away but the Juan Pablo Angel news spurred my thoughts to the game and now I'm anticipating it more than I had wanted to. Oh well.

Here are some random thoughts about the game.

- Frank Yallop didn't want to risk anyone last time around but still managed to field a strong team. I expect no different this time around. In fact, Yallop should put his best team out there because the Galaxy hasn't had any activity since beating Chivas USA nine days ago. I'd like to see mostly the first team out there, including Joe Cannon. I'm still trying to figure out this Galaxy team.

- A couple of weeks ago, I asked Landon Donovan what Chivas USA had to do to gain some true respect around the league. This is what he told me:

“You have to win something. You do. New York has never won anything so you never have that sense of ‘Wow. New York is dangerous’ or ‘New York is a special team.’ They’ve never had that because of that.”

In many ways, Landon is right. New York is no more special than any other team because they haven't won crap. This team feels special. This team feels like a team that merits attention but whether or not that's because they have a lot of big names on their roster and in the coaching staff or because they are actually a special team remains to be seen.

- I don't know who the Galaxy will trot out, let alone who the Bulls will send out. Given that they just had a league game on Saturday, I don't expect to see the same team take the field. But because they tied the way they did - giving up two goals in the last five minutes - they could very well field a lot of the same players in part to force them to get the bad game out of their system.

- If Yallop or Bruce Arena are bent on playing their starters for a limited amount of time, let's hope they bring in guys like Landon or Claudio Reyna at halftime instead of taking them off at the end of the first 45 minutes.