If it’s Wednesday, this must be New York

It’s a busy week for soccer here in the Bay Area, with Buck Shaw Stadium hosting three matches in the next five days. Tonight sees the Earthquakes take on Los Toros Rojos de Nueva York in a U.S. Open Cup play-in match, on Saturday they take on Chivas USA at Buck Shaw, and on Sunday FC Gold Pride looks to rebound from last week’s loss against Washington when they play Sky Blue FC. That’s 270 minutes of soccer, plus stoppage time, coming to a stadium near you.

As for tonight’s match, don’t expect to see San Jose fielding a lot of the usual starters. The team is banged up a lot already and, as head coach Frank Yallop told our own Jeff Carlisle for a story published on MLSnet.com, “We need to make sure we get through this game unscathed.”

Even if the Earthquakes weren’t fighting off injuries, though, it’s unlikely that Yallop would be fielding his strongest team. As he mentioned on last week’s Center Line Soccer Podcast,  he sees the Open Cup as a potential distraction from the team’s goal of success in MLS.

“It’s a good game for some of our players to get some minutes who maybe haven’t played,” he said. “You know, you want to take the competition seriously, but in another way, you want to give guys a chance to play so they’ll be ready to play for you whenever. It’s a good, competitive game against New York — I’m sure they won’t bring everybody of their starters. We’ll have a strong unit out — I think we’ve got a strong 16, 17 players out here anyway. Quincy Amarikwa, I’m looking forward to seeing him play 90 minutes, you know? I want to see what he does against MLS competition and not in a reserve game.

“The Open Cup is great when you win it. If you don’t, and you go through a few rounds, it sometimes kind of  gets in the way of what you’re actually ultimately trying to do, win MLS Cup.”

In addition to Carlisle’s pre-game piece, you can find stories covering the New York angle by Michael Lewis in the New York Daily News and by Dylan Butler on MLSnet.

In other news, the opponent for this year’s MLS All-Star Game has been announced, and it’s Valencia Villareal Everton.  The match will be played on July 29 at Rio Tinto Stadium, home of Real Salt Lake.