a season preview without developmental checkpoints
No fan likes facing the possibility that the upcoming year could already be a lost season, one of many building blocks for the future, maybe; definitely over from the beginning, a pre-determined mulligan.
Among a litany of issues with the Galaxy identified even before the season began, roster turnover would be the best reason: nine players in, ten players out. Cap space still hamstrung by the presence of two DP compensated players, but fewer egregious wastes of hundreds of thousands of dollars (Alvaro Pires comes to mind). While most criticism of the too-small salary cap is spot on, it doesn’t absolve coaches and GMs of their share of criticism either. While there are some legitimate questions about the salaries paid to decidedly injury-prone players (Kirovski, $80,000; Dunivant, $109,974), there are less than last year. Better cap and player management is the first step to finding success again.
The formula of the past few years hasn’t changed though. It’s still a pair of marquee players, a handful of expensive and hopefully stable veterans, and a smattering of volatile rookies called into action from day one. Like any number of chemical reactions depending on reagents from a set group of families, with the same two catalyts, the data will never skew far from the expected. Maybe, just maybe, you might bear witness to unexpected results, inexplicable phenomena, but considering the breadth of our knowledge, the odds are against us.
In one respect though the experiment may yet bear fruit. So much is made of results and quantifiable data, without examining the methodology. Just as important to publishing a paper as the data and the implications gathered, is the experimental format. And in that area, is where Bruce Arena will have the greatest impace. He’s not looking from something groundbreaking, but for something expected, something we all know, something he knows especially. The only thing left to find in this case is the perfection of experimental technique and procedure. The product on the field will not be groundbreaking, there will be no revelatory creativity, but more often then not there will be hard work, some bite, and the reestablishment of a long-lost culture of self-sacrifice.
And in spite of all that, the burdens are tremendous. What about the locker room when B****** returns from his Italian vacation By all accounts, the locker room the past two years wasn’t poisonous place. But the presence of a congenial but distant superstar obviously didn’t allow it to become the mythlogized sacred space of American sports lore. The perceived restriction on expressivity showed on the field eventually did show on the field, and towards increasingly mediocre results.
Will the same thing occur when he returns? Will Arena even play him if the Galaxy has found a vein rich with cohesion and form? How will some of the newer blue collar players deal with someone of his stature? How will they deal with the trappings that follow celebrity? The B***** circus is clearly only taking a temporary break.
Not to mention that other MLS teams haven’t been standing around. The West looks to be weaker than the East again, but the Galaxy will still be hard pressed to compete with the rest of their conference. The list goes on, and really, a year of rebuilding would be helpful to bring the Galaxy back to the level of dominance they displayed during the first decade of dominance. There obviously are no quick fixes to bring back that level of class and performance.
If any year qualifies, it should be 2009. But this is Los Angeles, unfairly made into the standard for MLS by an overzealous owner and his right hand.
There are no lost seasons for this team.
