CARSON, Calif. – LA Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena spoke to the media on Friday in the club’s final training session before departing for their match against Real Salt Lake.
Arena’s thoughts are below…
(On what he expects in Salt Lake…)
ARENA: “I expect to see a beautiful scenery, lovely mountains, great stadium, and nice fan base. Hopefully, two good teams playing a good game.”
(On what he expects to see from Real Salt Lake’s team…)
ARENA: “They’ve had a good start to the season…they had to redesign their team a little bit and now they’re getting their veteran players back so over the last couple of weeks they’ve played better. Obviously, everyone targets the Galaxy game so we expect them to have a good group of experienced players on the field, probably [Kyle] Beckerman returning, possibly [Chris] Wingert, but a good team.”
(On how RSL is different…)
ARENA: “They’re a good team, they have good centerbacks, they’ve had to rbuild with [Chris] Schuler in place of [Jamison] Olave. Wingert has missed the whole season to date, Beckerman has looked rusty a little bit, [Javier] Morales came in late, so the difference is that they’ve had a few injuries…they still have good players who can step in for them and have stepped in for them so they haven’t missed a beat at all.”
(On whether he expected Landon Donovan to play on Saturday…)
ARENA: “We haven’t made any final decisions at this point. With our lineup with our anything. We will decide that in the next hour or so.”
(On Robbie Keane’s status and the fact he was not out at training during media availability…)
ARENA: “Robbie, we’re expecting him to play…Frequently especially the older players, we’ll keep them in at different times during the week and we’ve chosen to do that with Robbie.”
(On whether Keane’s ankle has been bothering him…)
ARENA: “Among other things. He’s 32-years-old, everything is always bothering him.”
(On whether he could see a situation where neither Keane nor Donovan is available…)
ARENA: “That always happens. It’s happened already this year…We have no comments on our lineup or on our injury status at this point.”
(On whether Jose Villarreal could travel to Real Salt Lake…)
ARENA: “Haven’t made that decision yet. In the next hour, we’ll figure out the team that is traveling, but all our guys are probably going to be in Salt Lake because we have a reserve game anyway. It’s likely we’ll have a full complement of players.”
