rooting for the overdogs

The Game: MLS Cup 2012, LA Galaxy vs. Houston Dynamo, December 1, 2012
The Viewing Location(s): 1st Half: PPL Park Stadium Club, 2nd Half: My apartment
The Beer: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

There were a lot of disappointments for me in the MLS Playoffs this year.  The first came before the playoffs even began.  On September 29th, the Philadelphia Union lost to the Columbus Crew, and the Union's slim chance to make the playoffs disappeared.  Not that I had high hopes to see the Union in the post-season this year, but still, it's just not as fun to watch the playoffs when you don't have a horse in the race.  So I decided to pick some new horses when the playoffs began in November.

If you don't follow MLS, you can see the MLS Cup Bracket here:

http://www.mlssoccer.com/mlscup/2012/schedule

With the Union being out of the playoffs, it wasn't easy for me to pick teams to root for...I've built up at least some amount of dislike for most other teams in the MLS over the course of watching them play against the Union.  But there are some teams I respect more than others.  My initial pick in the Eastern Conference was the New York Red Bulls.  Yes, they are probably the biggest rival of the Union.  However, former Union favorite (and a favorite of mine), Sebastien Le Toux, currently plays for the Red Bulls.  And whatever people may say about Thierry Henry, I have great respect for him as a player and I love to watch him play.  As a sidenote, I think it's unbelievable that his cornerkick-turned-goal did not win Goal of the Year (watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4myldOypqs). Unfortunately, as things stand right now, the Red Bulls may well be the worst team money can buy.  Not that they're a terrible team, or even a bad team.  It's simply that they have three of the highest-paid players in the league, including the highest-paid player in Thierry Henry, and they have only been mediocre this season.  It seems ridiculous that with players like Henry, LeToux, Kenny Cooper, and former EPL player Tim Cahill (to name just a few) that this team didn't make it to the final.  Given the season New York had had, I wasn't ready to place any bets on them to win, but I preferred them over DC United.  DC is also a Union rival, and I've built up a somewhat irrational but nonetheless strong dislike of Dwayne DeRosario.  In the end, though, even without DeRo, DC was the better team in this series.  DC can also thank Rafa Marquez, who appeared to be single-handedly throwing the series for them, most notably with an idiotic tackle that led to a second yellow-card and his ejection from the game (which erased the one man advantage NY had earned). 

With NY out, I switched to rooting for DC, who advanced to the Eastern Conference Championship against Houston.  Houston had ousted Sporting Kansas City, and that made me happy enough (I can't stand Jimmy Nielsen, KC's goalkeeper, a 30-something year old with bleached-blonde hair who can't ever seem to keep his tongue in his mouth).  But I'm not a big fan of Houston either - they knocked the Union out of the playoffs last year.  It only contributed to the misgivings I already had when Andre Hainault denied a goal-scoring opportunity but inexplicably was not red-carded (to paraphrase Alexi Lalas - "He's a ginger and I love him, but I can't defend him").  Given all the difficulties DC was going through, mostly with injuries, it seemed that Houston deserved to fall on some hard luck, but it never came and Houston advanced to the finals.

That brings us to the Western Conference.  From the beginning, I knew I was never going to root for the San Jose Earthquakes.   I will say that they had an amazing season and they deserve a lot of respect for what they were able to do this season.  Chris Wondolowski also deserves a huge amount of respect individually.  But I just can't root for any team that Steven Lenhart plays for.  1. He has ridiculous hair.  2. He plays dirty.  I can respect the results he gets for his team but not the way he gets them.  My feelings about the LA Galaxy in this year's playoffs were a bit more complicated.  The Galaxy are kind of comparable to the NY Yankees - they have a lot of money and are expected to win everything and they have a lot of people who hate them simply for that fact.  I have never hated the Galaxy, it's just that I find it boring to root for them.  That said, all that money pays for some incredible talent.  There's Beckham, Donovan, and Keane of course, but there's also Juninho, Gonzalez, and Magee.  It was striking to see what a different team the Galaxy was without Gonzalez for part of this year.  And Mike Magee to me is one of the unsung heroes of the Galaxy...I can never forget how he stepped in as goalkeeper when Donovan Ricketts broke his arm and then Josh Saunders was ejected when the Galaxy played San Jose last year.  Magee usually plays as a forward or midfielder, but he kept a clean sheet in goal for 47 minutes in that game.  And it wasn't for a lack of effort on San Jose's part.  Still, I was pulling for either the Seattle Sounders or Real Salt Lake in the Western Conference.  LA won the MLS Cup last year, so I wanted to root for another team.  But LA showed again why they are champions, and advanced to the final.

In the match up between Houston and LA, I was a little bit torn about whose side to take.  As I've explained above, I generally like the LA Galaxy despite the fact that they're overdogs.  I do not really like Houston, despite the fact that they are a very good team and they do it without all the money that teams like NY and LA have.  It seems it should have been an obvious choice for me to pick LA.  But I'm usually not really one to root for the overdogs (I've broken that rule for other teams of course, namely Barcelona).  In the end, I did choose LA.  The fact that this would be the last MLS game for David Beckham and possibly for Landon Donovan factored into this also.  However you feel about David Beckham, he has done a lot for the MLS and I felt that he deserved to exit as a champion.  Landon Donovan, too, has done a lot for American soccer.  Although I'm not a huge fan of his very public discussions about how he might retire after this year, if this is his last season with the Galaxy I don't begrudge him a trophy.

As for the actual game, I wasn't all that into it this year...I had picked my team but it was hard to get too excited to watch the same teams that played in the Cup final last year.    Still, it was a good game to watch.  And although most people still predicted the Galaxy would win, it had to be (and was) noted that this was a different Houston team from the one that played in the Cup final last year, with the most noted differences being the availability this year of Oscar Boniek Garcia and a healthy Brad Davis.  I think it added something extra too that this was a rematch and I'm sure that gave Houston a little extra fire.  In the first half, Houston definitely went at LA and looked good to possibly to win the game.  They scored first and did so at a great time too, shortly before the end of the first half.  Despite all the talk about Brad Davis, Boniek Garcia, and Will Bruin, I would argue that Calen Carr was the player causing  the most trouble for LA - even beyond the fact that he was the goal-scorer for Houston.  In fact, Davis, Garcia, and Bruin really didn't have much impact on the game at all.  And in the second half, Houston's luck finally broke, starting with an injury to Calen Carr that took him out of the game.  Without Carr, Houston just wasn't the same threat to LA that they were in the first half.  And once LA began scoring, starting with Gonzalez's header in the 60th minute, it always leading towards a Galaxy win.  Give Houston credit for a great effort, but I think this was always the Galaxy's game to win.  True, the next two Galaxy goals came as penalty kicks (scored by Donovan and Keane, respectively) rather than run-of-play goals, but they came from the offensive pressure that LA was putting on Houston for the majority of the second half.

And so it went that LA were crowned the champions for the second consecutive year.  Don't hate them for it.  They earned it.  Yes, they have always had an advantage in terms of the money they have to spend.  And yes, there's something to be said for a team like Houston that can find a way to get results even though they can't afford world-class players like Beckham, Donovan, and Keane.  But it's become clear after watching the Red Bulls this season that a championship team isn't built on money alone.  The Galaxy have shown that mutual understanding between players is just as important as individual talent.  Individual brilliance certainly plays a role in their dominance, but it is the way that the players work like the parts of a well-oiled machine that has made them champions two years in a row.  It may not have the drama and excitement of a victory for the underdogs, but it is no less deserving of respect and awe.