Concacaf

Brazil, soccer's reigning World Cup champion, will bring its full national team to the United States Feb. 1-15 for the fourth CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament, to be played at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Oakland Coliseum and the Orange Bowl in Miami. Details of the tournament, which also features defending champion Mexico, the United States and seven other nations, were revealed at a Los Angeles news conference Tuesday.

Despite being eliminated in the CONCACAF Champions League semifinals, the Galaxy at least knows Landon Donovan, the team's all-time scoring leader, is back to playing a complete game. For the first time since he reported late to the Galaxy after a self-imposed hiatus for mental and physical exhaustion, Donovan played a full 90 minutes in the Galaxy's 1-0 loss to the Monterrey Rayados on Wednesday night in Mexico. Monterrey won the two-leg CONCACAF tournament with a 3-1 aggregate score.

In a result that had 41,103 fans shaking their heads in disbelief, and probably will make soccer fans the world over believe they have seen a misprint in this morning's newspaper, the United States upset Mexico, 2-0, Friday night at the Coliseum. The victory not only earned the U.S.

GALAXY AT MONTERREY CONCACAF Champions League When: 7 PDT. Where: Estadio Tecnologico, Monterrey, Mexico. On the air: TV: Fox Soccer, Galavision; Radio: None. Update: This is the second game of the two-leg CONCACAF Champions League semifinals. The winner is determined by aggregate score. Monterrey won the first game, 2-1, at the Home Depot Center last Wednesday. Landon Donovan might make his first start of 2013 after returning to the Galaxy from a self-imposed sabbatical.

On the eve of the Gold Cup to crown the first champion of soccer's Confederation of North and Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), Alan Rothenberg, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, ordered his new coach, Bora Milutinovic, to win so that the U.S. players could practice their victory lap for the 1994 World Cup. That was evidence that Rothenberg, despite all those years as the NBA Clippers' president, had not lost his sense of humor.

The Confederation of North and Central American and Caribbean Association Football, known by the unwieldy acronym of CONCACAF, has long been considered soccer's Third World. Of 34 countries in the region, only Mexico has been taken seriously.

Adam Frye has an unknown benefactor in Mexico City. That person--possibly Club America Coach Alfio Basile--decided that striker Luis Hernandez would not be made available to the Galaxy for the CONCACAF Champions Cup that started Tuesday night. The reason given was that Hernandez had pulled a muscle in his rib cage. No one at the Galaxy buys that excuse. They believe Club America is being uncooperative over the player the two teams share.

Football returns to Anaheim Stadium tonight, but not the kind between teams of helmet-headed players. After all, the Rams have gone to St. Louis and they aren't coming back. No, this is the football played with your feet, the game the world--and more recently and to a far lesser extent the United States--embraces. Beginning tonight, soccer returns to Anaheim Stadium for the first time since 1981 as the Southland hosts the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

HAMBURG, Germany -- Soccer's North and Central American and Caribbean region has four teams vying for the World Cup -- the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago. The latter two are widely expected to fall at the first hurdle. In tonight's first match, Germany vs. Costa Rica, the German team will go without captain Michael Ballack, who has an injured calf and will sit out at least one game.

In 1901, a group of English miners found themselves working in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, several hours by horse and cart from Mexico City. For amusement, they founded a soccer club and named it after the town in which they lived. They called it Pachuca. Now, 106 years later, Pachuca is arguably the best soccer team in North America.

His self-imposed sabbatical over, Landon Donovan made his first appearance of the year at the Home Depot Center on Wednesday night. The Galaxy's all-time leading scorer entered as a substitute in the 63rd minute in the first game of the Galaxy's two-leg semifinal against the Monterrey Rayados of Mexico in the CONCACAF Champions League tournament. But there was nothing Donovan could do as Monterrey then got the best of the Galaxy's defensive back line and scored two late goals to win, 2-1, before a crowd of 21,745.

GALAXY ON WEDNESDAY VS. MONTERREY CONCACAF Champions League When: 7. Where: Home Depot Center. On the air: TV: Fox Soccer, Univision Deportes; Radio: None. Update: Playing in the CONCACAF Champions League semifinals for the first time in club history, the Galaxy will face the Monterrey Rayados of Mexico, who have won the tournament the last two years. This is the first game of the two-leg semifinals; the second will be played April 10 in Mexico. The Galaxy's outlook has improved markedly with the return of the team's captain, Landon Donovan, from a self-imposed sabbatical.

Although CONCACAF remains officially silent, details have begun to leak out about this summer's Gold Cup soccer tournament. The U.S. is expected to be placed in a group with Belize, Costa Rica and Cuba. The Americans, who lost the 2011 Gold Cup final to Mexico at the Rose Bowl, will play its first game with Belize in Portland, Ore., on July 9, then meet Cuba in Salt Lake four days later before closing group play against Costa Rica in Hartford, Conn. Group A will include Canada, Martinique, defending champion Mexico and Panama and will open the tournament at the Rose Bowl on July 7 with Canada meeting Martinique and Mexico facing Panama.

Galaxy VS. CS HEREDIANO When: 7. Where: Home Depot Center. On the air: TV: Fox Soccer, Univision Deportes Network. Records (in CCL): Galaxy 3-0-2, Herediano 3-0-2. Update: This is the second and deciding game of the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal series after the Galaxy and Costa Rican champion CS Herediano played to a 0-0 tie March 7 in Costa Rica. The Galaxy would advance to the semifinals with a victory, but if Herediano wins or earns a tie by any score except 0-0, it would move to the next round under the competition's tiebreaker procedures.

AT CS HEREDIANO CONCACAF Champions League When: 5 p.m. PST. Where: Estadio Eladio Rosabal; Heredia, Costa Rica. On the air: TV: Fox Soccer, Univision Deportes; Radio: 1330. Update: After an impressive win over Chicago to open its Major League Soccer season, the Galaxy flies to Central America for the first match in a two-leg CONCACAF quarterfinal series with Costa Rican champion CS Herediano. The second game will be played at the Home Depot Center on March 13. The Galaxy won this tournament in 2000, when it was known as the CONCACAF Champions Cup and played under a slightly different format.

GALAXY AT ISIDRO METAPAN CONCACAF Champions League When: 7 PDT. Where: Estadio Jorge "Calero" Suarez, Metapan, El Salvador. On the air: TV: Fox Soccer, Univision Deportes. Champions League records: Galaxy 2-0-1, Metapan 1-2-0. Record vs. Metapan: 1-0. Update: This match is all but meaningless because the Galaxy has already won its group and qualified for next year's CONCACAF Champions League semifinals. As a result, it is sending a team heavy in reserves; of those players making the trip to El Salvador, only midfielder Marcelo Sarvas and defender Tommy Meyer started Sunday's MLS game in San Jose.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. - Bruce Arena doesn't recall much about the last time the U.S. faced a must-win game in the semifinal round of World Cup qualifying - which is odd because he was the coach. "I don't even remember who was in our group," Arena says. It was the fall of 2000. Arena had taken over a ramshackle U.S. program two years earlier, and after a stumble early in group play he needed to beat Barbados in the last match to be certain of advancing to the regional finals. The U.S. got the victory, wound up winning the group, then advanced to the 2002 World Cup, where it made the quarterfinals - the best performance ever by an American team.

Here we go again. The Galaxy and Washington D.C. United, which have played each other twice with the championship of Major League Soccer on the line, now meet with something even more significant at stake. How about a million dollars and a place in the third FIFA World Club Championship this summer? Both MLS teams managed to salvage victories Wednesday night in front of 5,153 fans on a bitterly cold night at Cal State Fullerton's Titan Stadium. They'll meet Friday night at the Coliseum.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. - Bruce Arena doesn't recall much about the last time the U.S. faced a must-win game in the semifinal round of World Cup qualifying - which is odd because he was the coach. "I don't even remember who was in our group," Arena says. It was the fall of 2000. Arena had taken over a ramshackle U.S. program two years earlier, and after a stumble early in group play he needed to beat Barbados in the last match to be certain of advancing to the regional finals. The U.S. got the victory, wound up winning the group, then advanced to the 2002 World Cup, where it made the quarterfinals - the best performance ever by an American team.

They played in the same stadium as the Galaxy and they wore the same uniforms. But that's pretty much the extent of the similarities between Major League Soccer's defending champion and the 11 impostors who started Wednesday in the CONCACAF Champions League win over the Puerto Rico Islanders at the Home Depot Center. Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane were there, but they watched the game in street clothes. And although David Beckham put a uniform on, he also was a spectator, marking only the third time in more than a year that all three of the Galaxy's brightest stars sat out together.