MVN - Most Valuable Network

Landon’s Century — Donovan followed in Galaxy teammate Beckham’s footsteps Sunday night

Landon Donovan started for the USA on Sunday night, in an international friendly at Giants Stadium, his 100th USMNT appearance.

He became the ninth USMNT player to reach the milestone, and the youngest to do so.  Team USA played to a 0-0 draw with Argentina in front of the largest crowd ever to witness the USMNT play at Giants Stadium.

His LA Galaxy teammate David Beckham just recently attained this rare summit himself; he received his honorary century cap from Sir Bobby Charlton in a ceremony just prior to the USA v ENGLAND friendly at Wembley 10 days ago (he has now played 102 matches for England). Donovan did not play at Wembley; it was the first of the two international matches he missed due to a groin injury.

from MLSNet,

“It was the perfect scenario for Landon Donovan. The all-time leading scorer in U.S. history was set to earn his 100th cap at Wembley Stadium against England, but then a groin strain sidelined him from not only that match, but the U.S. national team’s next highly anticipated match, as well — at Spain on Wednesday.”

“Candidly I was looking forward to playing those two games more than any other game I’ve looked forward to in a long time,” Donovan said. “Maybe in hindsight I probably should have just stayed back and let it rest the whole time, but the idea that I could play at Wembley against England and play in Spain against Spain was exciting and I wanted to do everything I could to make that happen, but it just didn’t happen.”

The USA lost both of those matches without Donovan - they may well have anyway with him - but his club team also suffered without him the past two weeks. However, even without the all-time USA scoring leader with them still on Saturday night (as he was resting for Sunday), the Galaxy did pull out a 3-2 win over the Colorado Rapids - and Beckham was back from his England duty to great effect.

Beckham, who just turned 33, is only the fifth Englishman to reach the century milestone. Donovan is seven years younger, and reaching his century so soon speaks to his dependability and availability during his career as a key player since his days as a teenager. Truth be told, a player of that skill level stands out far more on the USMNT - and has fewer true peers with the same skill level at the same playing positions - than an English counterpart like Beckham.

The level of talent has truly increased during the Donovan era, and it will be much more difficult for younger players - who have much more competition for roster spots on the senior team every time - to attain such a height of a century milestone in so few years.

CONGRATULATIONS, Landon !

Read the quoted MLSNet.com article here

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.