Thoughts 10 Days Out From The Galaxy Season Opener

By: NathanHJ | March 12th, 2009

If you are like me, then you have March 22nd circled in red on your calendar, are making plans for a brunch of gumbo at the Creole restaurant in one of the strip malls by the the Home Depot Center, and turning down offers of a free weekend birthday/wedding anniversary combo getaway to Ojai all in anticipation of the Galaxy’s season opener that Sunday.

If you are like me you are a futbol fan, an MLS fan, and a Los Angeles Galaxy fan. And possibly a bit off-kilter, but really that’s between me, my wife, and my pharmacist. Oh joyous pharmacist, how I love the little colored bottles you hand out to me. They really help with the ADD – hey! Shiny!

Where was I?

Right. March 22nd, the first Sunday of the 2009 MLS season. If you are reading this, I certainly hope you have read the Galaxy season preview that Jen labored over for hours, so that you could casually swing by and read it in 10 minutes. That’s how much she loves you. However, she doesn’t love you enough to stop me from posting, so I guess you win some, you lose some.

I read it, because that’s how much I love Jen. She got me thinking about returning players to watch and new impact players. I’ve got two. Bryan Jordan and Mike Magee.

I saw Mike Magee play in the “championship” match of the PanPacific Championship. He came off the bench and had an immediate impact on the game. Of course he was replacing Ely Allen who is no longer with the club, although Laurie at the Seattle Sounders blog says he’s trying to catch on there. Frankly, they can have him. We don’t need another project and its nice to see someone calling the Galaxy personnel shots who can see the same thing.

But Magee, who has started intermittently in New York, is an MLS veteran even though he’s, like, 12, and that experience showed immediately on the field. He was aggressive, he was confident, he made the smart plays, and he showed good vision. He’s also fast and for a preseason game his finishing was pretty sharp. He did score twice, after all. The Galaxy’s recently weak left side can get a tremendous boost with him in the line-up and the thought of him combining with Eddie Lewis is simply glorious. Not that I know how that would work in a 4-4-2 with a healthy Todd Dunivant, but that’s why someone like Bruce Arena gets paid the big bucks while I write this blog.

Speaking of getting people on the field, what about Bryan Jordan? Yes, he’s injured, too. Just like Duni, Lewis, Buddle, and David Beckham (chuckle). But when he was on the field at the end of last year he brought bite, speed and aggressiveness. He didn’t burn up the back of the net, but I got the feeling that if he could get his finishing on track he’d have a breakout 2009. If that happened you could see a Galaxy squad with depth at striker, something I haven’t seen in years. Arena would have to wrestle with getting Landon, Buddle, and Jordan on the field at the same time. If he can adjust to the MLS game.

So what might a starting lineup look like with healthy players but no underwear model? Bearing in mind I have no idea what’s going on regarding the backline it could look like this:

Donovan – Buddle
Lewis – Kirovski/Miglioranzi – Kovalenko – Klein
Dunivant – Valentin/Sanneh – Gonzalez – Franklin

But what about a 3-5-2? Not that we really have the centerback for this, but getting all those midfielders in the game makes me salivate.

Magee – Buddle
Lewis – Donovan – Jordan
Kovalenko – Klein
Dunivant – Gonzalez – Franklin

Going through this is kinda crazy, actually. I’m not used to having so many viable options to plug into so many different positions. I’m sure that those of you who have actually had the chance to see the team train will have ideas about what a viable starting lineup would look like, so you should put those ideas into the comments.

In fact you should feel free to add whatever thoughts you have at this point, 10 days before the Galaxy’s season starts. Add your comments below.