AS BECKHAM BENDS IT - "GORDON GOES TO GOAL"

"You did a good job and good luck with your season." For soccer players, coaches and fans those words are uttered countless times after any given game in any obligatory "lets shake their hands after the game ritual." Now imagine that the compliment in quotes above is delivered to you in person with a handshake and a smile from Chelsea legend Didier Drogba, who you have had the pleasure of marking on set pieces for the last seventy eight minutes.

Welcome to Alan Gordon's world. Alan who? Maybe this will refresh your recollection, do you remember when Galaxy's #23 substituted into the game against Chelsea for Galaxy's #21 during the recent World Series of Football at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California? After Galaxy's Equipment Manager Raul Vargas appears to have provided Beckham with pearls of wisdom on where Chelsea appeared to be weak or vulnerable during the first seventy five minutes of play, and after Beckham made a quick trip to the locker room for the surgical removal of a veritable quill of camera lenses from betwixt his tonsils, it was Alan Gordon who Beckham substituted in for (not a bad player to cover for you when its time for a substitute.)

Alan Gordon appears to have the Drogba nod and the Beckham debut honors to share with his grandchildren some day (by the way Gordon's assignment to mark Drogba on set pieces was only given just prior to kick off.) Gordon took it then and takes it now as a compliment from his coach that Gordon could hang with a scoring machine like Didier Drogba. With respect to coming out for David Beckham, Gordon jokingly added that "if he had not been so focused on the game against Chelsea he would have taken the time to check his hair or wipe a little more sweat from his brow before the moment we've all been waiting for was captured by the thousands of cameras poised to record "David Beckham's American Soccer Debut."

For a league that had been rightly or wrongly criticized by some as one of the "best back passing leagues in the world", Alan Gordon is the other half of the Beckham Solution to that perceived problem. If Beckham (or Donovan) Bends It, then "Gordon takes it to Goal." It was rumored prior to Beckham's arrival that Alan Gordon was intended to serve as a carefully placed piece of the Galaxy puzzle. As point man for service from the Beckham and other very capable servers like Landon Donovan (case in point Lando's room service air delivery to Gordon in the Super Liga game against Pachuca.) If that was in fact the "intent", the "effect" seems to have followed quite nicely thus far.

While no one scored against Chelsea during any of the World Series of Football games, Gordon has essentially amassed three goals in the two games where he was given any appreciable opportunity to do the voodoo that Gordon does in scoring goals. Gordon's goal against Pachuca was signature "Go to Goal Gordon." Pavon lays off a pass to Donovan, who, with ample time and space tees up a Beckhamesqe Ball, perfectly weighted and timed for a crashing Gordon who meets the ball in a perfectly timed run, catches it out of the air on his upper left chest. The ball drops to match his unbroken stride on his left foot for a single bounce "one touch rocket to the low far post pocket." Gordon's Super Liga goals against FC Dallas were equal in effect though different in execution, giving Galaxy that certain something it has been missing this season - goals and wins.

There are some players, and people for that matter, who cave or compromise under pressure and then there are players like Alan Gordon, who seem to feed off of the pressure as an opportunity to measure themselves as they rise to meet the challenge. Currently, Gordon with his three goals in essentially two games has the well earned distinction of leading Beckham's Band of Brothers in goals scored for the Galaxy. Gordon appears to relish the idea of finding his way or making his way to the back of the net and Beckham fits nicely into that picture.

Says Gordon, "David has the vision and ability to see things happen before they happen and not only has the skill to place the ball on a dime but the awareness to read not only runs he can see but to play a ball into space where there will be a run." Gordon says he looks forward to continuing to confuse and confound defenders with a variety of different runs and differently timed runs, a number of which are directly connected to having ball benders like David Beckham (and Landon Donovan) on the other end of play.

Staff Editorial Sports Page Soccer Magazine