An Introduction from Christopher Dwyer

Hi folks. I’m Christopher, and I’ll be covering the LA Galaxy for Total-MLS. I’ve been a Galaxy fan since July 4, 2002, when after watching a team full of MLS players go to the quarterfinals of the World Cup, I decided to give our little domestic league (and club soccer in general) a chance. I was living in San Diego, so my local club was the Galaxy. Two Carlos Ruiz goals later and alongside 55,000 of my new closest friends, I was hooked like a junkie on smack. Finding the Galaxy was a happy accident for me; being a lifelong Yankees fan, I revel in rooting for Evil Empires. So please, hate on the Gs. Don Garber and AEG really do like us best, and everything they do is a conspiracy to help us win the MLS cup every year.

I suppose someone else who’s followed soccer longer, maybe played a little, and knows something about tactics or whatever could write a lovely column each week breaking down Xs and Os, talking about how Arena’s decision to go to a 4-3-2-1 from a 4-2-3-1 was what won the game for us. That’s not me. I’m a fan, a horribly, horribly biased fan, and I’d be doing a disservice to readers to try to be anything else. So unless they do something spectacular, I’ll not give much space to the Galaxy’s opponents. I’ll use nicknames for players, and hate on the Galaxy’s rivals: San Jose (the @#$%ing Smurfs), Houston (the Orange Smurfs) and Chivas USA (not worth a nickname). I’ll carp on the refs and the announcers, and critique the supporters groups.

Problem is, I’m not native to SoCal. I’m from Jersey, and I’ve moved back there since becoming a Galaxy fan. So I’m able to get to one, maybe two Galaxy games a season, if the Philadelphia game is on a weekend. I get to watch most games on TV, listen to others on the radio, and some, well, it’ll be me and a matchtracker, someone live-tweeting, and a thread on BigSoccer. I’ll talk about that some, too – the lengths that a fan of a team 3000 miles away will go to follow his club. That’s all just part of the fun of being a soccer fan in the USA.