Tuesday, June 17, 2008

In Fullerton

I thought the days of MLS teams playing at Cal State Fullerton were over. I figured HDC would be the only place we'd see MLS teams play with the exception of the rare game at the LA Coliseum.

Turns out, Titan Stadium is still an option. Chivas USA and New England will play a SuperLiga match at the stadium on Cal State Fullerton's campus on Sunday, July 20.

Not sure why HDC was not an option. Perhaps the X Games are taking over, though they won't start until July 31. It seems HDC will be quiet, in terms of soccer, from July 16 (Chivas USA-Pachuca) to Aug. 14 (Chivas USA-Galaxy).

For me, Cal State Fullerton is actually closer, a lot closer than HDC. The game starts at 5 p.m., so I could leave my house at 4 p.m. and could still get there in time. However, the stadium is not exactly a fun place for soccer, especially when you have been accustomed to HDC. Back in the day, it was a nice, intimate setting for Galaxy games but that was compared to playing at the Rose Bowl.

New England, of course, has played there before. The Galaxy beat New England in the US Open Cup final in 2001. Chivas USA played a friendly there this year, beating Real Espana of Honduras a week before the season started.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does it have gridlines?

L.B. said...

Cal State Fullerton doesn't have a football team so I don't think it does. However, I think high school football games are played there. It's been so long since I've been there I don't remember but I don't think that will be a problem.

The stadium is your typical college stadium, with bleachers on both sides, a relatively small seating capacity, outdated press box, glorified bathrooms as the locker rooms. It will have a US Open Cup feel to it, I suppose, since the Galaxy regularly played their Open Cup games there.

Anonymous said...

Can you imagine Ronaldinho playing there? Apparently the Galaxy get errr....3 DP slots because he turned down 50 mill says the rumor mill.

BBSC

Dan Haug said...

I was at teh 2001 Open Cup final. Ezra and Califf scored the goals. It wasn't a bad place to watch a match... but there were only about 5k fans there.

Anonymous said...

Go Titans!