Galactic Collision

The LA Galaxy of MLS faced one of the toughest matches in their 10-year history last night, taking on Spain's Real Madrid at the Home Depot Center. Madrid is basically an international All-Star squad with seven massively famous players known as "The Galacticos" (including France's Zinedine Zidane, pictured in white) and they put on quite a show for a sellout crowd as they rolled to a 2-0 victory. The L.A. Times' Grahame Jones, ESPN's Jen Chang, and even Madrid's English striker Michael Owen were quick to praise the Galaxy for putting up a good fight and not embarassing themselves, but it was pretty obvious that Madrid was not playing at full-steam. Even in early preseason form (the Spanish League begins at the end of August), Madrid moved the ball in an incredibly fluid manner for most of the game. Any MLS team would kill to pass the ball like that for 10 minutes. At one point, Madrid completed 26 consecutive passes which ended with David Beckham drawing LA 'keeper Kevin Hartman out and chipping the ball over him, but just wide of the goal. LA did have a few decent scoring chances and defended rather well for most of the game, but against a team of Madrid's quality, two brief defensive lapses are enough to cost you the game. MLS can feel good about how far the league has progressed in 10 years, especially with upcoming matches between DC United and Chelsea of England and the Chicago Fire and AC Milan of Italy in the next two weeks, but the league office should also be breathing a sigh of relief that Madrid was not in mid-season form. Otherwise, at least one of the many dipping, knuckling 40-yard shots off the foot of Roberto Carlos goes in instead of straight into Hartman's hands.

Latest band I'm digging: Athlete. I debated going to see them with Snow Patrol in Chicago earlier this year, and now I'm regretting that I didn't get up there. "Wires," from their latest album, Tourist, is an amazing song.