My Sandbox

So following on with Kansas City choosing function over form in the playoffs, we have Ruud Gullit promising to bring “sexy football” to America. Remember, you can’t spell “Los Angeles Galaxy” without SEXY GOALS.*

A casual glance at the Galaxy roster reveals that Gullit has a near-total lack of players able to actually play in a way someone would want to make love to. If we define “sexy” as “attacking,” the Galaxy will run into the same problem Kansas City did – disciplined defense patient enough to wait for mistakes, skilled enough to force mistakes and talented enough to exploit them. 1-0 against; repeat. Cover Beckham and Donovan, and the rest of the team will make the bad pass or botch the good one. Our old friend entropy makes it easier to destroy than create, so an attacking team can’t attack as well as the other team defends, it must attack measurably better. The laws of physics are against attacking soccer.

If we define “sexy” as “total football” in the Dutch style, the Galaxy might conceivably have a bigger problem. The number of American players who are acceptable in enough different facets of the game as to qualify as a total footballer can be counted on the fingers of a Weeble. Coaches, by and large, simply don’t teach that style of play. It’s easier to teach a player to do one thing good, and it’s easier to draw up strategy based on players knowing their one role.

So the Galaxy have announced their intention to find the most talented and rarest of players. It’s very easy to picture a conversation along these lines:

Ruud: Here are my tactics; they are a masterpiece of elegance.
Cobi: Here are our players; give them a five minute head start and they can tie their own shoes.
Bravo: Here is our budget; under the salary cap we can buy a set of orange cones.
Ruud: Orange! How thoughtful of you.

Fine, so the salary cap is as mythical as the untapped market of millions of Americans waiting for Premiership level of play from MLS. If DC United can bring in Luciano Emilio and Christian Gomez, and Guillermo Barros Schelotto can be brought in by Columbus, without flexing a DP spot, then better uses of time and resources can be used on the Carlos Pavon spot. (And the Abel Xavier spot, although he still lives on in the Galaxy website’s title bar, so he might not be gone yet.) But even assuming you get outfield spots 1-10 ready, the first substitution or injury puts you back into subtotal football. This might be a longer and more painful process than the Galaxy seem to realize. But Holland wasn’t built in a day.

Oh…and forget about bringing in Dutch players. The one thing a Dutch superstar hates more than anything is a coach, and the one thing a Dutch superstar hates even more than a coach is another Dutch superstar. There’s a reason Holland exports so many wonderful coaches who thrive in foreign clubs and national teams – because they don’t have to deal with other Dutchmen.

EDIT to correct an inelegance – sexy blogging is my goal

*This is a “Greatest Hits” joke from 2002 or so, to replace the “American Pie” joke that WAS here, and which is still my joke so don’t try to steal it, okay?!