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Bruce Arena succeeded Ruud Gullit as the manager of the LA Galaxy on August 18, 2008 ( press release ). In his first game in charge, he inherited a team from which he picked the following line-up against Chicago on August 21st. It was a home game that was lost 0-1. Beckham and Donovan were both away on national team duty.

G Steve Cronin
D Greg Vanney
D Troy Roberts
D Ante Jazic
D Sean Franklin
M Chris Klein
M Peter Vagenas
M Pires Alvaro  (Josh Tudela, 50)
M Ely Allen     (Mike Randolph, 67)
F Edson Buddle
F Alan Gordon   (Israel Sesay, 86)

The next match, which included both Donovan and Beckham, was August 30th, a 2-2 draw at New England. This was a particularly interesting line-up, seeing Greg Vanney in the midfield. Bruce was starting to bring in some fresh faces, with Eddie Lewis being the first.

G Steve Cronin (Josh Wicks, 45)
D Chris Klein
D Troy Roberts
D Ante Jazic
D Sean Franklin
M David Beckham
M Greg Vanney  (Mike Randolph, 65)
M Eddie Lewis  (Eduardo Dominquez, 81)
M Peter Vagenas
F Landon Donovan
F Edson Buddle

From this pool of 18 players, 11 are no longer on the official Galaxy roster: Cronin, Vanney, Roberts, Jazic, Alvaro, Tudela, Randolph, Vagenas, Sesay, Dominquez, and Allen. Over the past year, Vanney has retired, some have been traded and others let go. The rebuilding culminated, in my opinion, with the signing of Gregg Berhalter in April of 2009.

This team surely needed some senior leadership and Arena could trust some old-timey Nationals to provide it. He already had Chris Klein. Lewis signed the same day as Arena’s first game in charge, in August 2008. He brought Jovan Kirovski into the mix in October 2008. With the new season starting, Tony Sanneh and Berhalter came on board. The team started to look like the US National Team circa 2002, especially if you include Donovan and assistant coach Cobi Jones.

As a bit of trivia, I tried to find a U.S. National Team match when all 8 guys (Kirovski, Donovan, Lewis, Klein, Berhalter, Sanneh, Arena, and Jones) were involved but I couldn’t find any. I only looked at FIFA sanctioned matches so there could have been a friendly where all were there. Kirovski, Klein, Berhalter, Sanneh, and Jones (no Donovan or Lewis) all played for Arena in the World Cup Qualifier against Mexico in Azteca on July 1, 2001. Kirovski, Donovan, Lewis, Klein, and Berhalter (no Sanneh or Jones) played for Arena on June 21, 2003 in the Confederations Cup match against Brazil in Lyon, France.

The point of all this is just to say that we’ve finally got a good mix of players: a group of senior players, some established players (Dunivant, Magee, Buddle, Gordon), some promising new faces (Chris Birchall, Donovan Ricketts), and a couple of up-and-coming youngsters (A.J. DeLaGarza, Omar Gonzalez). I don’t know how all those salaries are staying under the cap, but we could make a serious run to the MLS Cup final. Its just amazing to me how the team has changed and how anyone thought that that team against Chicago a year ago, could do anything but stumble.

Just to give some perspective, here’s the lineup from the New England game again lined up against the team from the most recent match, July 16, 2009, at New York. Quite a contrast, me thinks.

G Steve Cronin                       G Donovan Ricketts
D Greg Vanney                        D A.J. DeLaGarza
D Troy Roberts                       D Gregg Berhalter
D Ante Jazic                         D Omar Gonzalez
D Sean Franklin                      D Todd Dunivant
M Chris Klein                        M Eddie Lewis (Chris Klein 85)
M Peter Vagenas                      M David Beckham (Christopher Birchall 70)
M Pires Alvaro  (Josh Tudela 50)     M Stefani Migilioranzi
M Ely Allen     (Mike Randolph 67)   M Landon Donovan
F Edson Buddle                       F Edson Buddle
F Alan Gordon   (Israel Sesay 86)    F Alecko Eskandarian (Mike Magee 74)

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