I am disappointed. I really thought this would be the time that Chivas would finally do it. I really thought, at last, the Galaxy would get what’s coming to them. And until those last few awful moments I had good reason to believe that it was all going to go as I wanted. But I guess you’ve gotta hand it to Landon Donovan. He robbed Chivas of the win they deserved.

I attended the first ever Super Clasico between CD Chivas USA and the LA Galaxy. The atmosphere at that game is deservedly the stuff of MLS legend. But there was a certain of tarnish on the game, and not just because the SkyCam fell from its wires.

Although I will argue to this day that the first glimmer of El Guzano’s goalkeeping prowess appeared in the second half of that game, Chivas as a whole was embarrassingly outclassed that day. And they’d be outclassed again and again by the Galaxy that season. It was a rivalry only in name.

All that may change tonight.

Los Angeles is in bad shape. They’ve played two games thus far, both at home, and they weren’t able to win either one of them. In the first they allowed New England to hold onto a one goal lead, in the second they allowed Chicago to notch a goal and tie the game. It wasn’t that they were unlucky, it’s that they were poor. In fact, they were so poor that Landon Donovan recently lashed out against his teammates for their high-schoolish decisions and their lack of fitness. The underlying issue, an issue actually insinuated by Donovan, is the sense that last year’s success was lucky and without genuine merit.

“Last year we got away with it because we played four games at the end of the year. Eventually you see what you are made of and we are seeing that right now and we have to figure it out.”

Right now, from where I’m sitting, Los Angeles appears as a team perched on the edge of a meltdown. Sharing a table with Real Salt Lake and Colorado means no meltdown is completely fatal to their playoff chances, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get ugly - real ugly.

Were they playing any other team this moment of reckoning with the legitimacy of the Los Angeles Galaxy as a quality, first tier MLS team wouldn’t be at stake. But they are playing Chivas. However bad LA was during the last year’s regular season, as long as they were beating Chivas they could still say they were the best team housed at the Home Depot Center.

But if LA loses tonight they will no longer be assured this reassurance. If they lose it’ll be the start of a whole new rivalry.

Legitimacy. That’s what’s at stake for LA, and that’s also what’s at stake for Chivas. Chivas will never be a legitimate team until they beat the Galaxy. In fact, I will amend that. They’ll never be a legitimate team until they beat the Galaxy in a big game, in a game that matters immensely for both teams. Chivas can massacre Real Salt Lake, bad luck can rob them of a point or three against DC United, but none of that really matters in comparison to what’s at stake for them tonight.

Tonight is the perfect opportunity for Chivas USA to put its stamp on the MLS landscape. It is the perfect opportunity for them to step up and announce their arrival as a team that commands respect. It may be quite a while before they get another chance like the one they have tonight.

Bob Bradley understands this. That’s why he said “This is the most important game that Chivas USA has played so far in its history.”

There aren’t a lot of big games in MLS. And not every possible big games actually becomes a big game; sometimes things end indecisively. But most games don’t even have the possibility because the stakes simply aren’t there. Nothing is at stake for the ten other MLS teams today except three points. But for Chivas and the Galaxy the stakes are much higher.

It may yet be that after 90 minutes we have to admit this would-be big game turned out to be a dud. A draw would perhaps leave that impression. But if we’re lucky after 90 minutes we might smile and know we saw something unusual in Major League Soccer: we may yet see a big game that people will talk about for years to come, a game that truly merits the title Super Clasico.

Here it is, the second installment of my occasional series on simple and cheap things Major League Soccer could do to improve the league. A couple things led to this latest idea.

First, I read Bill Urban’s column about Major League Soccer’s “Embrace the Colors” ad campaign. I always seem to read his columns a week late for some reason, but I always find them well worth reading. I appreciate his shoot from the hip style.

Anyway, like him I thought the campaign was ill-conceived and bizarre from the day I first saw it. I’m not sure to whom it’s supposed to appeal (not me, I guess). And, truth be told, this whole “embrace the colors” stuff sounds like an ad campaign for the Bloods and Crips. In fact, whenever I see that commercial Ice-T’s “Colors” lodges in my brain.

I agree with Bill Urban that MLS usually seems all but clueless in trying to appeal to the younger set and that the ad fails in its attempt to be edgy and cool – concepts which are probably overrated in MLS marketing anyway. (Note to MLS: Landon “used to take a teddy bear on road trips” Donovan and Pablo “likes to garden” Mastroeni are not edgy.)

And I agree if MLS were smart it’d focus at least some of its marketing on selling “being a fan” of Major League Soccer by focusing in on the supporters groups and the fanatics. Urban suggests in the end that MLS embark on a new marketing campaign with “spots centered around the ‘core’ supporters.”

Of course nothing in the column suggests the author has any confidence in Major League Soccer either taking the advice or being able to execute it effectively. Invariably some knuckle dragging marketing wonk who’s probably never actually seen a soccer game would say that MLS needs to “embrace the colors” and appear “edgy” and “cool” to appeal to the twenty-somethings and that perhaps the teams should be called Clash and Burn and wear teal uniforms. Maybe he’d even suggest that it’d be really edgy if they made ads featuring lone soccer players hanging around in empty stadiums.

Major League Soccer has seldom demonstrated any aptitude for marketing. And you know as well as I who points out this fact most often and most vociferously: the core fans. That was my thought this morning over coffee.

Second, this evening I happened upon news that Mozilla’s “Firefox Flicks” ad contest is coming to its conclusion. As the press release states: “The Firefox Flicks Ad Contest is focused on promoting the creation of innovative 30-second ads about Firefox. The best … Ads will be incorporated into Mozilla’s global marketing campaign for Firefox.” Apparently yesterday was the last day for new submissions.

Now here’s the brilliant part: the ads are being produced by Firefox users themselves. The prize if they win the contest is $5000. It’s sheer brilliance; Firefox has harnessed the creative power (and the time, effort and money) of their biggest fans, the fanatical users of the Firefox web browser, to create new commercials for the company. And they’re getting all that for corporate pocket change.

And it’s not just that they’re getting a few ads basically for free. They’re getting brand exposure through contest and through the viral distribution of the contest entries across the internet. That’s how I found out about it.

I watched a bunch of the ads and they were all very good. And although I’ve been a Firefox user for some time now, after watching the ads I must admit feeling somehow cooler (perhaps even edgier). Yes, I know. It’s stupid and irrational to feel that. But isn’t that what marketing is about? Making you feel stupid and irrational things. It’s like love.

So there it was, Bill Urban’s column and the Firefox Flicks ad contest. Do I really need to spell this out for you? Well, I know some people from Major League Soccer read this blog so I guess I should connect the dots. MLS should hold an ad contest modeled after Mozillas Firefox Flicks. It would focus on the core supporters (as Bill Urban suggests), but the content would be produced by the core supporters themselves. That means there’d at least be a sliver of hope that the ads would be competently produced and effective.

It’s obvious MLS hasn’t a clue about what makes the core supporters tick. It’s obvious they haven’t a clue about how to get more core supporters for the league. So why not steal Mozilla’s idea and hold an ad contest. Let the core supporters market the league themselves. At worst MLS would learn a thing or two about the core supporters. At best they’d get some high quality advertising almost for free. And if they’re really supremely lucky one of the videos might go viral and take the internet by storm.

Now that I think about it, MLS wouldn’t even need to offer a $5000 grand prize. The real core supporters would do it for beer.

Ever since I helped design the AAXI I’ve had blog envy. See, that website looked so much better than this one. I had been frustrated by the old template for some time anyway. I thought it was cluttered and hard to read, and there were design limitations with the template that irked me. Two column designs are less cluttered and easier to read. Though, truth be told I actually considered a new three column design because I still like the architectural look, and may give it a whirl again if this design doesn’t grow on me. As it stands now, I don’t know if everything is completely optimized. I think it all works in Firefox (which you really should be using) and I’ve verified that it looks alright on Safari (whether it all works is a different matter). The IE rendering is a little off, but I think that’s the fault of IE, not the fault of my coding. IE has issues.

I know soccer is a cruel game. It’s not something they like to publicize in “Happy MLS-World,” but no honest fan can deny it.

Sometimes, of course, the margin between winning and losing really is wide. And those are the games fans live for when it’s their team that wins, and those are the games fans dread when it’s their team that loses. But most games are not like that; most games are won and lost at the margins.

When I was kid I once had a British ex-pat as a soccer coach. Unlike with most of my coaches, I actually remember what this guy said. “Football is a game of mistakes.” He said it just like that, and he said it often. Very often. The point was, when it’s played well, in soccer you don’t make that many mistakes. But goals only happen when one team makes a mistake and the other team punishes that mistake. There aren’t that many goals in soccer.

I suspect if I had known enough then to press him on the issue he’d have admitted it’s more complicated than that, but it’s hard to deny a certain truth in what he said. Most games are won and lost at the margins; they’re won and lost on little things, things that didn’t have to happen, that shouldn’t have happened.

That’s why when it’s your team that’s playing most soccer games are not, in the ordinary sense of the word, fun to watch. And so when we’re lucky enough to be in the stands we distract ourselves from our nervousness with cheering and chanting, yelling and screaming, and no small amount of intoxicants.

I wasn’t in the stands today so it was hard for me to distract myself from the fact that my team was playing a game that’d be won and lost at the margins. It’d be won and lost by some stupid small thing that shouldn’t have happened.

I will readily accept a game decided by some small mistake when it’s one of those twenty-two men running around in funny shorts who makes the mistake. That’s what soccer’s about. “Football is a game of mistakes.”

But I find it very hard to accept a game decided by some or another mistake when it’s the referee who’s made the mistake. I suppose the video of Juan Pablo Garcia’s freekick isn’t entirely conclusive, but to my eye, if I’m honest, it sure looks like a goal.

DC United, my team, benefited from a very questionable call today. That is the result. It will stand. I’m sure at some point in the season I’ll look back and say thank goodness for those three points. And, yet, it’s hard for me to accept that we won. It doesn’t feel like a win because Chivas didn’t make the mistake.