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October 10, 2006

My Name is AEG

We at SSV enjoy NBC's program, "My Name is Earl" not only for the excellent soundtrack and great comedic acting of Earl's brother, but for its underlying theme of karma. Do unto others what you would have done unto yourself. Or something like that. For those of you who don't watch the show, its about a good guy named Earl who was once bad. After winning $100,000 in a lottery after stealing the ticket, Earl promptly gets hit by a car. So he decides its time to stop his bad ways. He needs to get better karma.

We see AEG kind of like we see Earl: a good guy whose made some poor decisions. So when we saw that AEG's prized L.A. franchise missed the playoffs this year, (see http://soccernet.espn.go.com/report?id=195924&cc=5901 ) we couldn't help but think of Earl. Could it be karma?

Last year the future-secured Galaxy were one of the worst teams in MLS and barely made the playoffs. Yet they had one good game against us future-in-the-balance-need-to-win-MLS CUP-or-its-off-to-Houston Quakes, and were able to ride it all the way to an MLS Cup.(There were rumors that our manager-less Supporters Shield winners were housed not at the usual comfy Marriott, but at a less prestigious and more inconvenient locale the night before the match.) Amid all of these distractions, the best team in MLS lost to the worst team to qualify for the playoffs. The best team didn't win the MLS Cup and then got moved to Houston. And the fans suffered.

The move was made despite recent reports confirming what everyone here already knew, that San Jose had a (relatively) large and loyal fan base. (See http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/soccer/20060927-9999-lz1s27goal.html . Yeah, LA has more fans, apparently. One would hope so with a new stadium and 10M people from which to draw them.) So while in many ways, AEG's golden franchise is fast becoming San Jose South, what with its former star player Landon Donovan, its former star head coach Frank Yallop, and former star manager, Alexi Lalas - it remains to be seen if they can recapture the magic that was the San Jose Earthquakes circa 2000-2005. We at SSV believe that until the Quakes return to MLS, any LA victories will ring false, because their true rival is gone. Perhaps there was a bit of karma then, to this failure of the mighty LA Galaxy.

Posted by Colin at October 10, 2006 12:29 PM

Comments

Posted by: Anakin at November 11, 2006 10:40 AM