Don't stop believin' The PA played that tune by the 80’s Bay Area Wimp Rockers at Half-time of the match Saturday night in San Jose, but it could have been more for the visitors than the home side. The Journey tune seemed to spur on the Galaxy more than the Quakes. Ya gotta love it.

Ok, I know the Smurfans will come back with comments similar to Dominic Kinnear’s

"One team wanted to play tonight, and the other team wanted to get out of here with a result," Kinnear said Saturday night at Spartan Stadium after the Earthquakes' 1-1 tie with the Galaxy that ended San Jose's season.
[…]
"They [the Galaxy] just punted the ball long, they had two speedy guys [forwards Landon Donovan and Herculez Gomez]. That's the way they wanted to play. It's effective on this field. They were trying to kill the clock, guys were faking injuries, diving.

"I'd rather be with my guys. We take it on the chin and stand there. We don't crumble."

You may be surprised by my comment, but he’s right. Only one team did come to play on Saturday…only one team needed to because the team who only needed to lose by 1 goal got the result they wanted last weekend. That match 2 years ago that everyone has been talking about last week probably had as much to do with Saturday’s result as anything else. San Jose were probably feeling pretty confident in their ability to come back from a two-goal deficit, yet LA players were even more egar to insure they didn’t repeat the collapse they had in that match.

No, the playoff format isn’t fair, but those are the cards you are dealt. San Jose allowed themselves to get too far behind in the first leg…it’s that simple. And LA fans are loving the revenge.

How nice of “Fish” Ruiz to miss that penalty in extra time which allows my boys to come visit me next Saturday in Denver. I couldn’t have asked for a better matchup. Dallas still can’t kick the curse of their home record….it’s becoming as big an albatross as LA’s road record since moving to the HDC. Hopefully after that result in San Jose on Saturday, LA will now have kicked their albatross. Colorado have been getting their act together the second half of the season and are a good side…and they did the business on Saturday—did you take note San Jose?

Who says soccer can’t be played in the winter here? That was snow on the pitch Saturday night in Foxboro right? Yeah, not many showed up to the match, but look at the attendance for most of the other matchups, it wasn’t much better elsewhere. Great match though. I actually wanted the Metros to hold on, but the Revs looked sharp and deserved the victory—did you take note San Jose?

What the heck happened in DC? Did all the Adu distraction create that mess? They sure weren’t much of a team on the pitch. That was just awful…but props to Chicago for showing up to play—did you take note San Jose?

Anyway, I’m not making any predictions for the Colorado-LA match. I’m still not convinced that Steve Sampson knows what he’s doing (though he his team did knock San Jose out of both the Cup—on the road—and the playoffs). He made some strange substitutions…and I’m not sure knocking high balls into the box with Donovan and Gomez as your strikers is really a great game plan.

But knock them all you want, the playoffs gave us some entertaining football this weekend…and the one match we didn’t get (my local team) even went to penalties. MLS seems to have got what it wants. I'm still not a big fan of the playoffs, but if it means my team can come away with a double after having such an awful season.

But before you can achive, you've got to believe.  ¶ 2:17 PM