Well, the MLS schedule is out so now we know each respective SoCal team's path to the playoffs or to nowhere.
Here's a link to the full league schedule.
Some of the HDC highlights include:
Chivas USA vs Galaxy on Saturday, April 26; Thursday, July 10 and Thursday, Aug. 14. Interestingly, the teams will meet only three times this year as opposed to five times in '05 (four league games plus an Open Cup) and four times the last two years.
Chicago at Chivas USA, Thursday, June 19
Chicago at Galaxy, Thursday, Aug. 21
No scheduled league games at HDC between July 10 and Aug. 14.
Also, thought this was interesting. On Wednesday, Aug. 20, Chivas will play at Houston and D.C. United will play New England. That looks like they're setting up those four teams to participate in the Champions League.
As far as Champions League goes, MLS didn't do Chivas USA any favors. Now, I'm assuming Chivas will have to compete in the preliminary round. So they'll have a game Aug. 26-28 and another Sept. 2-4. Well, they play Wed. 8/20 at Houston, Sat. 8/23 vs San Jose, then a Cup game, Sat. 8/30 vs Toronto, the second leg on 9/2-4 and then AT Toronto on Sat 9/6. So they could conceivably play a Wednesday game in Central America and a game four days later in Canada. Nice. Then, if they advance to the group stage, they could be faced with some adverse travel itineraries. They play at New England (9/11), at Salt Lake (9/20), at DC (10/4) and at San Jose (10/11) during the group stage.
The Galaxy's schedule is fairly consistent. That is, it's not spring-light, fall-heavy like a year ago.
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