Bummer for Bease

DaMarcus Beasley is done for the year. After hurting his knee in a Champions League match on Tuesday, Beasley will have surgery and will likely miss the remainder of the SPL season.

How does this affect his standing on the USMNT? In the first half of next year, Beasley probably won't play any role on it. He'll miss the Mexico game on Feb. 6 and whatever other friendlies the US schedules afterward. He could be healthy by the June qualifiers, though the US won't need him to get past Barbados/Dominica. He should be healthy by the fall and could see action in the semifinal qualifying round which starts in August.

Obviously, this is a much bigger blow for his club career. Beasley went through some tough times before settling in with Rangers and was faring well for himself. Though he won't be starting from zero once he gets back, he's going to fight another uphill battle to establish himself whenever his knee allows him to play again.

Beasley draws racist taunts

DaMarcus Beasley scored a goal for Rangers on Tuesday but it wasn't his actions on the field that made headlines. Beasley was the target of several racist chants during Rangers' 1-0 Champions League qualifying win over FK Zeta in Montenegro.

It's absurd that this happens but it does. Though not rampant, racist fans are an unfortunate part of soccer. Players have dealt with fans making monkey noises before and even Spain manager Luis Aragones was involved in a racist scandal.

The problem isn't unique to Eastern European nations either. This has happened in Mexico, Spain and Italy among other places. FIFA needs to come down hard on this sort of behavior. It has no business in soccer.

Bease to Ibrox

DaMarcus Beasley wasn't talking to anyone about his club career while in Southern California. I don't know if he's softened his stance back east but word has broken that Beasley will join Rangers for the upcoming season.

Perhaps their little trip out here will indeed help lure more fans to follow the Ibrox side. I'm sure some Galaxy fans enjoyed what they saw from the team and now with an American national teamer set to defend the club's colors, maybe it will indeed draw some more attention towards Glasgow and the SPL.

Different perspective

I was trying to remember a time when Alan Shearer might have participated in a match against or taken in a game featuring an MLS team, but I don't recall one.

Perhaps if he would have come over and actually participated against an MLS club, he might have thought and reacted differently.

Rangers manager Walter Smith was asked questions about the Galaxy and MLS and had some interesting things to say, including whether he thought that David Beckham could stay sharp enough with the Galaxy to compete at the international level.

"I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. I think the one thing that there’ll be at LA Galaxy is that they have a great level of fitness and the American lads who play will never be short of that...it won’t be easy and it would not be easy for anyone to go over and play there."

Galaxy-Rangers running blog (2nd half)

GAME OVER, RANGERS 1-0

Sorry didnt have a chance to update the blog. Had to actually write and do some work.

79 - Rangers counter; Gow to Ferguson but shot went wide

78 - Adam hit a 50-yard shot that nearly caught Cronin napping; Cronin had to push the ball out of bounds while backpeddaling

76 - Gow nice through ball to Kris Boyd but Boyd put a miserable shot on goal as it went well wide

70 - Burke shot, Cronin stood firm and knocked it clear

68 - Another dangerous possession for Galaxy but no one can make the final pass and Rangers clears ball

68 - Galaxy corner, Quarante takes it, Sturgis shot from 15 yards, McGregor dives and parries ball away

66 - Andy Webster nearly turns ball over inside his own area

62 - Cobi had space to shoot from 22 yards out but fired a shot well wide of the goal

57 - Game's opening up a bit, Galaxy corner kick after Cobi raced down right flank and won a corner

55 - Alan Hutton sent the cross in, Boyd hit it, not the cleanest shot but it went into the back of the net nonetheless

55 - RANGERS GOAL: Kris Boyd scored, knocked it in from 12 yards out

53 - Rangers booking; Ian Murray for kicking the ball at Kevin Harmse on a dead ball

52 - Randolph nice move on Hutton, got free down left flank, cross cleared away by McGregor

50 - Ian Murray leveled Donovan, no card; Charlie Adam did the same to Cobi Jones moments later, no card

47 - Quaranta down injured, walks off, comes right back on

Two subs to start the second half:

Galaxy: Landon Donovan in, Robbie Findley out
Rangers: Alan Gow in, Nacho Novo out

Galaxy-Rangers running blog (1st half)

HALFTIME

45 - One minute of stoppage time so the teams can kick the ball around and get nowhere

41 - Burke floated dangerous ball into Galaxy area but Marshall cleared it away

37 - Ian Murray fouled Harmse 27 yards out, Galaxy free kick; Quaranta hit the wall

36 - Burke danced around in area with the ball but shot deflected off a teammate and rolled harmlessly to Cronin

34 - Novo had the ball deep inside penalty area, couldn't turn around, ball skipped over end line

33 - Quaranta booked for dragging down Alan Hutton

32 - Haven't forgotten to update, just not a whole lot going on

22 - Chris Burke cross, Cronin got his fingertips on it before Kris Boyd got to the ball

19 - Santino sent Cobi nice pass down right flank, Cobi couldn't get a cross off, Adam cleared it, Galaxy corner

17 - Santino breakaway, GK well off his line, kicked ball clear from 15 yards out

16 - Tyrone Marshall shielded Barry Ferguson from a slow-rolling ball that eventually went over the end line; Marshall knocked Ferguson over

15 - Adam 22-yard shot goes well over crossbar

12 - Nacho Novo free in area for a second but handled ball with his arm

10 - Veris gave away corner kick; Veris headed a ball that was going right into Cronin's arms; on ensuing corner kick, Charlie Adam's header went just wide

5 - Rangers free kick on left flank, Kris Boyd fouled on the play; Rangers swing ball over to right flank, Alan Hutton with cross, Steve Cronin plucks it from mid-air

3 - Not much going on thus far. By the way, I'm told that there are seven subs allowed for each side. Rangers has six players listed as reserves for tonight's game so maybe Walter Smith will get some time on the field.

I wasn't going to do this but what the hell?

Game on. Lineups are below.

Lineups for Gers-Galaxy

Rangers: Allan McGregor; Alan Hutton, David Weir, Karl Svensson, Ian Murray; Chris Burke, Barry Ferguson, Kevin Thomson, Charlie Adam; Kris Boyd, Nacho Novo.

Galaxy: Steve Cronin; Ian Russell, Tyrone Marshall, Kyle Veris, Ante Jazic; Cobi Jones, Nathan Sturgis, Kevin Harmse, Mike Randolph; Robbie Findley, Santino Quaranta.

Sweet gig

A lot of people consider a soccer writer a cool profession and while it is a lot of the time, it's certainly not as glorious as other jobs. What really is a sweet gig is team photographer for a major European club. Not sure what her name is, but this is Rangers' team photographer. She was at Galaxy training yesterday. I'm guessing her pictures of training were better than mine.

Smith speaks

Rangers FC manager Walter Smith talks about the Galaxy, MLS and Rangers FC. The first audio clip kind of cuts out mid-sentence but I had to get to Landon Donovan before he left. I re-joined the conversation as Smith talked about the difficulties Rangers and Celtic face by playing in Scotland.

Gers-Galaxy advance

Here's a short advance for the Gers match from the Press-Enterprise.

I had room to write about the match for Tuesday's editions but not for Wednesday (#*!@% Ducks) so I went with it. I had asked Alexi Lalas a while ago about playing these games so I had that quote from him but the stuff from the Rangers manager I didn't get myself.

Rangers season wrap

This story is from the Glasgow Evening Times. Apparently, they still publish an evening newspaper in Glasgow. That's hard to imagine out here in Southern California.

According to Thomas Jordan, the writer of the story, Rangers has quite a bit of work to do in the offseason. Finishing second best to Celtic is never easy to accept but neither is losing the last two games of the season no matter how meaningless they are. Thomas is pretty harsh to Rangers but they probably deserve it I suppose.

I like the assessments of each player at the end of the story. I have thought about doing the same things during Chivas USA and Galaxy games but I just haven't taken the plunge I suppose.

I wonder how many Scottish media members will be out there for the game and how many of them made the trip from Glasgow for the match. If this was a preseason match, I might expect more Scottish media than local media but seeing as how it is at the end of a disappointing campaign, I'm not sure how many of them will make the 10-hour flight.

Crash course

I try to keep up with soccer all around the world but it's difficult. I probably am most familiar with MLS, then Mexico, then... well, everything else is pretty much lagging.

I watch highlights as much as possible and read about the goings on of soccer around the world but I can't list the teams who are being relegated from Spain, England, Italy, Germany, etc.

So I've been doing my best to get up to speed on Rangers. I guess I stopped paying too much attention to Scotland after Celtic won the title in, uh, like January or something. Turns out, Rangers lost on Sunday and it was the end of a sad season. I guess for them not winning the SPL amounts to a terrible campaign.

I did have one question about them, more specifically their logo. What is the significance of the word "Ready" on their logo? And has this been their logo for a long time or is it something recent? Not that I'm necessarily going to ask Walter Smith about this on Tuesday or anything but just curious about it nonetheless.