Galaxy prepared for showdown with Chivas
LA looking forward to SuperClásico match this weekend
"You have bitter rivalries all throughout your career," veteran Galaxy midfielder Chris Klein said. "Rarely do you share a stadium with one, and I think that's what makes this one more special and more intense.
"As players you look forward to these games. And with us walking around the stadium and seeing those guys, you want to feel like it's your place. Whether it's said or not, there's that inherent feeling of `This is ours.'
"This turns it up a notch. It's a fun game to play in and a fun game to be a part of."
Midfielder Stefani Miglioranzi, a veteran of the English lower divisions when he was a member of Swindon Town, said games against Oxford always were played at another level.
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"There wasn't a lot of soccer," he said with a grin. "There was a lot of kicking. You usually needed three or four days to recover from those games. And sometimes you didn't have a chance ... sometimes in England you're playing three times a week.
"That made it tough."
Rookie Galaxy defender Omar Gonzalez said games between his college team, the University of Maryland, and the University of Virginia were heated, to say the least. And he attributed much of that to the actions of Terrapins coach Sasho Cirovski.
"I remember games when Sasho would be banging on the walls, trying to fire us up as much as he could," Gonzalez recalled. "We knew it was going to be an all-out battle, and that's exactly what they were.
"We just hated them. Everyone was buzzing."
Veteran midfielder Eddie Lewis said he experienced similar emotions while playing in England with Derby and Leeds, especially the latter. Leeds, Lewis pointed out, seemingly had enemies everywhere.
"They're the team that picked fights with almost everybody," he said with a laugh. "I remember when Derby would play Nottingham Forest. That was right up there. You don't cross the M1 (England's major highway) if you don't have to."
The Galaxy's Landon Donovan has played in more than his share of rivalry games, and occasionally on the opposing side. Games between Los Angeles and his former team, the San Jose Earthquakes, were especially noteworthy for their intensity, not to mention their surprises. There was, for example, the 2003 playoff game in which the Earthquakes stunned the Galaxy 5-2 in the second game of the two-game series and advanced in postseason on a 5-4 aggregate.
"That was like a classic Northern California-Southern California things," he said of those games. "Just bitterness in all sports toward each other."
Donovan also has experienced first-hand the ill will that exists between the U.S. men's national team and their counterparts from Mexico. The 2002 World Cup quarterfinal, a 2-0 U.S. victory, was nasty, he said, but another game stands out even more.
"Maybe the worst one was when we played them in a friendly in Arizona a few years ago," he said. "After I scored, Oswaldo Sanchez took a run at Eddie Johnson and tried to kick him. As far as one of the dirtiest plays that was probably up there."
Larry Morgan is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
