Quakes drop season finale to Galaxy

The San Jose Earthquakes finished up their season finale 3 game road trip with a 2-0 loss to the LA Galaxy. The win caps the turnaround for the Galaxy as they put up the best record in the Western Conference and now have home field advantage through the playoffs.

The first goal of the match came at the 24th minute. Landon Donovan tried to cross the ball in, but Bobby Burling deflected it. Unfortunately, it turned into a looping deflection that goalkeeper Joe Cannon just could not get to. The good news for Quakes fan who still hate Donovan is that it was ruled an own goal to Burling, so Donovan didn't get credit for the goal. The Quakes were almost able to answer off a free kick moments later, but Brandon McDonald's header was knocked away by the quick reflexes of Donovan Ricketts. The teams went into halftime with the Galaxy up 1-0.

Quakes midfielders Ramon Sanchez and Simon Elliott never really got involved in the play, probably hurting the Quakes chances to really develop offense well. At the 66th minute, the Quakes tried to put some spark in the lineup, bringing in Quincy Amarikwa for Shea Salinas. Amarikwa went up top to join Ryan Johnson, pushing Arturo Alvarez back into Salinas' midfield spot.

Around the 75th minute, the Galaxy's David Beckham found Bobby Convey with a studs up challenge, putting Convey down on the turf for a bit. Becks was not cautioned on the play, but perhaps he should have been. Cannon came out of his goal to exchange words with Becks about the tackle, and while we couldn't hear on the TV broadcast, I could they weren't kind. While you like to see your players passionate, you like to see your keeper stay out of those fracases, especially when they're not in the penalty area. Did this affect Cannon's play on the next exchange? I don't know, but with Chris Klein springing Donovan forward, Donovan was able to touch it past a challenging Cannon for the 2-0 goal.

Beckham was subbed out at the 86th minute with the question still lingering of what will happen at the end of the year? Will he exercise his option to end his contract with MLS and the Galaxy? Will he decide to stay, but they work out a loan again to AC Milan? Beckham wants to play in the upcoming World Cup, but his spot is not guaranteed. Playing for a high level European team would help get him into the best possible form. I would say he has a chance to as he did play in qualifying matches while under the previous loan. The question is if he can contribute enough to be beneficial. I think for him to have any hope of it, any loan would have to be for up to the World Cup. They should work that out after the playoffs, but before the loan starts. None of the "loan until the start of the MLS season" and follow on soap opera of "is he coming back to MLS or not?"

For the Quakes, some lingering questions. Why is our distribution out of the back so poor? Is it that Cannon's not putting the ball where he should be? Or is it our field players not getting to the right spots? I'm not talking the times when the ball is shanked, but when a decent kick down field is done and there's no one near when it comes down. After taking a lot of corner kicks this year, Bobby Convey wasn't taking them, and wasn't anywhere near the box in the game. Why? I would have liked the broadcast to have picked up on that, and said something about it. Was it his lingering hamstring injury? Or, did we want his speed out there to help deal with Donovan as he seemed to be at midfield. But, is that a case of the Galaxy then dictating our offense by forcing us to spend a speedy, should be decent offensive player on a defensive responsibility?

Now it's time for my rant. While I didn't want a lot of Quakes broadcasts this year, part of that is because it's just not entertaining for me. They seem to think that the game isn't interesting and have to spend all 90 minutes talking about something. Or, perhaps John Shrader wants to demonstrate how much he knows by telling us factoids about the players, coaches, etc. Too bad you got a fact wrong last night John. (Kovalenko's time with DC United didn't overlap with Bruce Arena, and you had to correct yourself on air!) It just seems to take away from what's going on. Instead of really getting into the game, I get cheesed off at the broadcast because it's so distracting! The commentary should add to the game, not overshadow what's going on. I'm tuning in to watch a soccer match, not listen to John & Troy Dayak talk about a game. It's only made worse when we can see players get misidentified. Why? They shifted positions because of a substitution, something that should be expected. Instead, the guy that was subbed off was just called out for no one important - just the HIGHEST PAID PLAYER ON THE GALAXY DAVID BECKHAM! Speaking of Beckham, in the open of the broadcast, it was mentioned that it was news that he was starting. Why? Never answered, so I'm left hanging.

The broadcast's problems don't end up in the booth. The truck is to blame too. I know that sometimes they just grab the feed from someone else and put their own commentary on top of it, but that doesn't excuse poor decisions. Someone still made them, and they can be improved. What did I see wrong last night? Lots of shots away from the action. Hero shots on someone, replays, etc. I could not believe that at the 43rd minute they showed the only goal of the game again. I mean, you've got halftime just a fwe minutes away, you're going to show highlights, and a goal is highlights. It's not like you've got more than 17 minutes of highlights, right? One goal. Why, you're probably gonna scramble for 2 minutes worth without showing the goal 17 times. Why show the goal again just before halftime when there's game action going on?!?!?!?

To be fair, it's not just the Quakes or even MLS broadcasts that suffer from poor direction. Broadcasts on ESPN also suffer from this. Another thing though that irks me, especially when a game is on a large network is when they can't pick a start time that works with the sunlight. If the field is partially shadowed, you may not be able to see some of the action. I've noticed the cameras seem to be set to pick up the shadow well (and the sunlit shots are blindingly bright), or the sunlit areas (and when they run into shadow, you're glad they're wearing white socks and the ball is white). It's not like the sun is a surprise. It's there every day, and what shadows are cast should be well know. So, pick a start time that doesn't kill the broadcast. (You TV producers in Europe need to listen to this too!)

As long as I'm ranting, what's up with the Quakes Insider? Did the Quakes stop sending this out after the last home game? Or did they just stop sending it to me? One of my complaints all season long has been the availability and accuracy of information. There were no lineups available from the Barcelona/Chivas game. Sure, there may have been something online, but I wasn't that inclined to go looking. I feel something should have been provided. The MLS game notes are a joke. I think the information is two days old, so the starting lineups aren't always accurate. I know injuries happen, but sometimes the stuff is way out there. Pressure needs to be put on the league to make these more useful, or the team needs to produce something more up to date to pass out.

Yeah, I'm pretty frustrated with the Quakes this year, both on and off the field. That's probably partially coloring my views, but I think the broadcasts can really improve and the availability of information from official sources can certainly improve. They could also get a little luckier in the scheduling. Their last 4 games of the season were a midweek home finale, and three road games. (this after an inexplicable extended break with no league matches for around 2 weeks.)