It’s just an international friendly, but the biggest star on each side want to participate. Wayne Rooney said he hopes to start the very first game of the Louis van Gaal era as Manchester United begin their preseason at the world famous Rose Bowl to take on the L.A. Galaxy. Landon Donovan, the leading scorer in MLS history and ESPN talking head said that he hopes he gets the chance to take on United.
The match is tomorrow night, and both are way too valuable to their teams to see extensive time in this contest. Or at least playing them should not be the highest priority.
United Assistant Manager Ryan Giggs said: ‘Everyone will be involved in the first game. Wayne looks really good. Actually all of the World Cup lads have come back looking really sharp.
‘The World Cup boys are a bit behind in terms of their fitness, with the other lads who have been back 10 days or so, but no, Wayne looks good, along with the rest of the lads.
‘Wayne really wants to play.’
So perhaps the man with the richest contract in English football history, and the likely next captain of the Three Lions will indeed play. As will the player deemed the greatest in American history by ESPN, well until Tim Howard came along.
It is exciting’, Donovan said ahead of the game. ‘I think for our guys we don’t often get the chance to play against a team like this, we don’t get to play in front of 60,000-70,000 people all the time so it will be exciting.’
‘As everybody knows nowadays you don’t get friendly matches anymore and obviously with a new manager and some new players for them they’re going to be ready to go and we’ll do the same.’
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports and Yahoo! He’s been a guest on news talk shows all across the world. Banks has been featured in numerous media outlets including NFL.com, Forbes, Bleacher Report, Deadspin, ESPN, NBC, CBS, the History Channel and more. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)