I've been wondering, and speculated a little, about why the Gold can't field a full team? I understand that the team isn't doing great this season, but even then, I'm sure that there are still a ton of willing players looking to play. Some players that played Friday in BYU, didn't play in Salt Lake.

Ulises Mendoza-Magallon & Aaron Billington played against Utah, but not BYU and Mitchell Watson played vs BYU, but not Utah. While Mitchell & Billington are both keepers, I would think that you'd still have both of them out there to at least have another body on the field.

Is it the coaches idea? What?

Many reasons may be to blame for the Gold not being able to field a full team..... Many players have played for them this year, the only problem has been they have never been at the same game.. My only explanation would be injuries or work.. My question is, why does this happen every weekend?

Ulises Mendoza & Aaron Billington may have been suspended due to yellow cards that is why they didn't play on friday night but did on saturday...

I felt bad for the Gold in their match against the Blitzz. The team's been in the D3/PSL Western Division (formerly were the Stanislaus Cruisers) since before Utah joined in 2000. Hopefully the team will survive these tough times and remain in the league in the coming years.

To their credit, the players they had on the pitch Saturday played their hearts out. Most of them played 9 against 11 on Friday and 10 against 11 against a rested team on Saturday. (Not to mention being at 4500 feet elevation for both matches and not being able to make any substitutions.) They never gave up and kept playing hard. Most of Utah's goal came from patiently passing the ball around until they found the unmarked (extra) man. The gold showed a lot of heart, courage, and determination under very difficult conditions and are to be complimented for their efforts. 5-0 sounds like a blowout, but if the Gold had simply given up, the results could have been worse. (As I mentioned in another thread, Utah beat a 10 man team from Tucson a few years ago by a score of 8-1.)

Hopefully the Gold Will stick around.
Good Luck with the rest of your games.

I agree that those players that played, played very hard. Mendoza and Billington were both suspended for accumulation of yellow cards in the BYU game. I don't know why they only had 10 the night before.

I am finally going to answer some of these questions after watching this site for many years now, i played for the former stanislaus cruisers for years before they were the gold, we had fans, sponsors and always many players, you must go after players in order to have them. Real players that is, no dis-respect to the current 8 or nine players. but these kids could not have played in this division when i was there. We had, vince martinez, gabe eastman, fadi afash, manuel brasil, michael descombez, joe owen, we brought in strong players from washington, los angeles, oregon, bay area, such as john cairel. Marek nowinski , polish player playing in germany , but came from milwakie rampage. Tayler from the roadrunners was here (short mls stint). Very good locals such as mario tamayo, jose ramos who played for the original earthquakes before mls, and the only all american ever from stanislaus state. We had JO JO stewert, ex-rook at one time not to mention players who came in camp and played at one time from Sacramento area and from the fresno area. it was about pursuing the best players available from all over and looking at resumes from around the world. Some were too expensive to ever keep but that works that way even at the highest levels of any sport. excuse my spelling mistakes, i type terribly

I miss the Cruisers from a few years ago. They and the Blitzz always had good matches together. Not sure what the future holds for the Western Division now. In 2000 it had 6 teams and this year there are just 3. The Blitzz are rumored to be moving to A-League or PDL, but will be challenged to succeed in the shadow of the new MLS franchise, the Gold appear to be on life-support, and San Diego is also rumored to be changing divisions. Likely the PSL Western Division will become a thing of the past.

Who were the six teams in 2000? I didn't get into Blitzz soccer until 2003, but I hear stuff about Arizona Sahuros and Northern Nevada Aces. But they're in the MPSL now.

The 6 teams in the west in 2000 included
Stanislaus Cruisers (now the California Gold)
Riverside
Chico Rooks
Arizona
Tucson
Utah Blitzz

Northern Nevada was added in 2001. Both Chico and Northern Nevada are now in a different league that isn't part of the USL family.

Arizona joined the MPSL too, along with Chico and Northern Nevada. Both Chico and Arizona have done very well in that league, Chico winning the regular season title both seasons while Arizona has been in the MPSL championship game both years, losing and winning one each. But Northern Nevada has pretty much done nothing in that league.

Yeah, that's getting a little off topic.