Chelsea's tour of the US came to a winning end in the early hours of this morning at the Home Depot Center home of LA Galaxy and a certain David Beckham.
The capacity 27,000 crowd turned out in expectation of Beckham making some sort of appearance and with twelve minutes to go his entrance duly arrived, to appease the home support, the TV companies and the watching and no doubt agitated sponsors who had forked out millions of $'s to bring Beckham to the world of MLS football.
Despite reports that Chelsea 'would go easy' on Beckham that message didn't seem to register with new boy Sidwell. A couple of minutes from time, Beckham and Sidwell chased down a 50/50 ball and after the fair challenge it appeared that Beckham came off worse. OUCH!!
For the length of his appearance Beckham did not look entriely happy although he did produce one of his trademark 70 yard passes which found his man, but the opportunity came to nothing.
For Chelsea - A low left foot strike from John Terry in the 48th minute sealed the victory for the Blues, but as in the Bluewings game Chelsea created and missed a hatful of chances.
There was one wonderful passage of play a few minutes after Chelsea took the lead. Wonderful one touch passing saw second-half substitute Andriy Shevchenko whip in a low cross for Didier to pass the ball in the net. However the effort was ruled out for a dubious offside decision.
LA Galaxy seemed galvanised right from the kick off and didn't look like the side that were comprehensively beaten by Tigres a few days earlier. Galaxy created at least three decent chances which were woefully wasted by misplaced headers.
So Chelsea head home and pre-season preparations continue at Cobham from Monday and there are two more games to come this week. Feyenoord on Wednesday and Glasgow Rangers next Saturday and now we will be back to watching football at a decent hour.
Chelsea:
Cech (Cudicini 45), Ferreira (Mikel Obi 45), Carvalho, Terry (c), Ben-Haim (J Cole 45), Wright-Phillips (Shevchenko 45), Essien, Lampard (Sidwell 73), Malouda (Johnson 73), Drogba (Hutchinson 88), Kalou (Makelele 60).
LA Galaxy:
Cannon, Roberts, Xavier, Harden, Jazik, Jones (Kirk 55), Gray, Donovan (c), Martino, (Glinton 71), Pavon (Vagenas 60), Gordon (Beckham 77).