{"id":29727,"date":"2014-12-06T22:11:12","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T03:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=29727"},"modified":"2014-12-06T22:13:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T03:13:45","slug":"davies-wants-to-send-friend-ld-out-on-losing-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=29727","title":{"rendered":"Davies Wants to Send Friend LD Out on Losing Note"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 In a perfect world, Charlie Davies wouldn\u2019t be trying to send friend and former U.S. teammate Landon Donovan into retirement on a disappointing note. But that\u2019s a luxury the Revolution striker clearly doesn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

The reality is, of course, that Davies and his Revolution teammates will be doing all they can for the chance to lift the MLS Cup trophy at the expense of the LA Galaxy and Donovan, whose final game coincides with Sunday\u2019s championship tilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I have to send him out with a loss,\u201d Davies said, with a laugh. \u201c(It\u2019s) is not the best for him because he\u2019s been so instrumental for U.S. Soccer, and me, personally, because he pushed all of us in the younger generation to reach these new heights.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new heights that Davies is alluding to is the elevated success of the U.S. Men\u2019s National Team, as well as some of its star players, many of whom are either plying their trade in top-flight European football or earning millions stateside in MLS.<\/p>\n

But before the U.S. the U.S. survived the Group of Death in 2014, salvaged a point from England in the 2010 World Cup, or even reached the Confederations Cup final in 2009, Davies was just another young player trying to impress the American icon himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget my first cap was with Lee Nguyen (in 2007), coming into the locker room and then you see Landon Donovan walk in and you\u2019re like \u2018Oh my God, this is crazy!\u2019\u201d Davies said. \u201cI was so excited to finally get a chance to play with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long thereafter that Davies and Donovan had become attacking partners on the pitch. In the Confederations Cup final, Davies fed Donovan on the opening goal, while Donovan\u2019s service to Davies at the Azteca two months later gave the U.S. a rare measure of success at the legendary Mexican venue.<\/p>\n

Though Davies\u2019 National Team future was derailed by his well-documented 2009 car accident, his impressive postseason strike ratio has him knocking on the door for a possible call-up. But if he does get another\u00a0opportunity to wear the U.S. crest,\u00a0the\u00a0truth is that\u00a0Davies won\u2019t get the chance to combine one more time with Donovan.<\/p>\n

Whatever the future may hold for both, Davies is looking forward to sharing the pitch with his friend one more time, albeit as adversaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be great to play against him in the final in his last game,\u201d Davies said. \u201cBut I hate to say it: I hope that we beat him, and that he doesn\u2019t do so well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlie Davies recently spoke about his friend Landon Donovan, whom he hopes to send into retirement on a losing note in Sunday’s MLS Cup final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29727"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29732,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727\/revisions\/29732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}