2009 MLS Season Preview: Chivas USA

By: travis | March 5th, 2009

Starting March 4, and continuing up until March 19, I’ll be previewing every team prior to the First Kick of the 2009 season. I’m going in alphabetical order, with a final season prediction coming at the end of everything. My goal? To make sure that every team is covered here at MLS Offside, with each team blog going into much further detail than I will.

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Chivas blogger needed! Our Chivas blog is currently unmanned and looking for love. This is an unpaid position, but a lot of fun and a way to share the love of your team. If you worship Chivas and like to write about soccer, please email Daryl, daryl[at]theoffside[dot]com.

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Today’s entry is a team that few people know about and few others seem to care about. Despite this, they’ve managed a couple of successful years — well, at least in the regular season. Here’s hoping that with the loss of Beckham the Goats can conjure up some of that fanbase out in LA and put together another respectable season. Let’s take a look.

2008: 12-11-7, 43 pts, second in the West, lost in conference semifinals.

Services acquired: Ante Jazic, Michael Lahoud

Left the building: Raphaël Wicky, Francisco Mendoza

Coach: Predrag Radosavljević, Предраг Радосављевић, or just Preki to us. Entering his third season with the club.

All Eyes on Me: The big question that will follow around Chivas — at least for the first half of the season — is whether or not midfielder Sacha Kljestan will stay for the whole season, or leave in the summer during the European transfer window. He looked to be on his way out over the offseason but a move to Celtic stalled because of the transfer fee. Needless to say, with another successful year under his belt, it’ll be surprising if he’s here the whole season, but if he is, Goats fans will be very happy.

Player(s) to Watch: Can Maykel Galindo stay healthy? Is Ante Razov still reliable enough to start on a weekly basis? The players to watch will be those going forward — last year it was no secret that this team had trouble scoring goals. Their leading scoring was Kljestan, managing a modest five in 22 games. They don’t have to turn into a goal-scoring club overnight, and with the way Preki keeps the defense organized, Chivas tends to be stingy. However, Galindo needs to stay on the pitch and find the back of the net to help ease things on. The last position to keep an eye on is the starting goalie. After Brad Guzan took off to Villa last season, Dan Kennedy and Zach Thornton each got a long look with neither a standout. Kennedy has the gloves heading into the season but Thornton isn’t a bad choice coming off the bench.

Young Guns: The Sueno MLS winner, Jorge Flores, will look to play a bigger role this season. His latest achievement was a call up to the U20 national team — not a bad gig for someone discovered via a reality TV show. Justin Braun, in his second year in the league, will challenge for a starting role right from the get go — he started 12 games last year and chipped in four goals.

Bottom Line: They didn’t really do all that much aside from drafting Lahoud and bringing in Jazic from LA. Whose to say that acquiring a defender from the Galaxy is a good thing after the season they had. Depth could be a concern, as a series of injuries really hurt the Goats last season. They still managed to hold things together and finish with the second-best record out West. Preki continues to do magical things with limited resources, although you might wonder how things could go if they stayed healthy an entire season. If Kljestan stays for the entire year and the key cogs stay fit then you could be talking playoffs for these guys. Even if Kljestan leaves and injuries hit them once again I wouldn’t be surprised to see Preki hold everything together once again. We’ll see what unfolds.