Font ResizeSeattle » When Real Salt Lake and the Los Angeles Galaxy meet for the MLS Cup championship at Qwest Field on Sunday, many of the coaches and players will take the field having shared close friendships and mutual experiences with their opponents on the other side.
And promptly try to forget them.
For while the Major League Soccer championship game features what seems like an unusual amount of inter-franchise crossover -- no fewer than four players were traded from one team to the other in the past couple of years, and the coaches have a long history -- everybody involved insists that none of it will matter once the game kicks off.
"When you get to this point, it's really about winning a championship," the Galaxy's Chris Klein said.
The former national-team midfielder is one of the players who have traded sides recently, joining the Galaxy in a deal for forward Robbie Findley shortly after coach Jason Kreis took over RSL about 21/2 years ago. Kreis and Klein remain close friends, and none of the swaps has generated any animosity.
Midfielder Dema Kovalenko moved to the Galaxy last offseason, for example, when RSL accommodated his request to trade him to a team in a larger city with a more diverse population, and midfielder Clint Mathis last reached the championship final while playing with the Galaxy a decade ago. When RSL wanted to sign Mathis again last year, it had to acquire his
"At the end of the day, you're going out there to win, whether you're playing friends or not," Mathis said. "Before the game or after the game, it might make a difference -- saying hello and things of that sort -- but at the end of the day it doesn't matter who's across the field. You want to go out there and win and try your hardest."
Any of the familiar faces could play a decisive role on game day.
Mathis has been instrumental at times for RSL this season, and Kovalenko -- though he was unavailable for interviews Friday -- has been widely heralded for the dirty work he's willing to do in the defensive midfield for the Galaxy.
"He's on the borderline crazy out there," RSL's Kyle Beckerman said, admiringly.
Of course, Klein is a supreme talent whose rapport with superstar David Beckham in the midfield has proven critically important for the Galaxy, and Findley has blossomed into one of the premier strikers in the league.
He led RSL with a career-high 12 goals in the regular season, with another pair in the playoffs, but insisted his past with the team that picked him in the second round of the 2007 MLS SuperDraft "doesn't mean anything to me. It's just another game."
"A lot of guys know a lot of different people on other teams -- guys who had been together, been traded and stuff like that," he added. "So that's not even an aspect going through our heads right now. We're more focused on getting ourselves ready for the game."
Funny, that's what Kreis said, too.
"We're at the MLS Cup," he said. "I don't think we need to be talking about any other motivation. It's the biggest game of guys careers. You get very few opportunities to play in these matches, and it probably doesn't even cross players' minds who they used to play for.
"All these guys have friends on other teams, and those are calls for good times maybe the day before the game or the night after the game," he added. "But when they step on the field, I know there's no friendships and no love lost."
