Veterans Lead Galaxy Past Seattle

by John Pelini

While Jaime Penedo will grab the headlines for his ten saves, Los Angeles picked up a much needed three points due to veteran performances around the pitch. Dan Gargan made important tackles and was positioned well at right back.

Alan Gordon was combative and scored a goal up front and Juninho helped patrol the center to make it easy on his inexperienced partner, Rafael Garcia.

Both Bruce Arena and Sigi Schmid elected to play a variation of a 4-4-2.

Interestingly, Bruce Arena put Baggio Hasidic and Alan Gordon up front leaving Gyasi Zardes out wide, presumably for his defensive work rate as much as his pace.

Pictured below are on Zardes’ chalkboard are his successful passes and dribbles. His work was all sideways and backwards since he had no options to break forward. Ishizaki was lively down the right but focused more on getting crosses into the two forwards.

The Galaxy had little speed and fewer ideas going forward and ultimately won the match with a 23rd minute set piece. Omar Gonzalez used his height and excellent timing of a jump to send a back post header across the goal to Alan Gordon who used the exact same attributes to slip his marker and finish from close range.

LA was missing Robbie Keane which showed; and Seattle missed Clint Dempsey and elected to place Lamar Neagle alongside Obafemi Martins up front. This worked well and is an encouraging sign for Seattle given the likely many absences of Dempsey.

Neagle was the most lively player on the pitch; mainly working in the channel between AJ De La Garza and Robbie Rogers. Especially in the first half, he received passes in behind but was either denied by Penedo or provided poor service. He pretty much did everything right but score.

Other than the influence of Neagle, Seattle provided little going forward. The second half was especially dire.

The Galaxy were cautious and happy to protect a one goal lead while the Sounders were not urgently throwing numbers forward to try and grab the equalizer. It seemed like they could have played the second half for three hours and it still would have finished goalless in a bizarre aftershock of how they successfully nullified a Houston side showing the same characteristics against them last week.

Arena will be delighted that he took three points on a day his star striker was absent. On the day his side were a little bit hungrier. On the television coverage, Alexei Lalas had a strange tale to tell which may explain it.

Zardes had told him that Seattle was a team the Galaxy had great pleasure in beating. Lalas hinted that this was more to do with the way Sounders comported themselves than any on field prowess. Certainly, RSL have denied the Galaxy more MLS Cups than Seattle who have been playoff fodder.

Sounders players; Brad Evans being mentioned, told Lalas this rivalry was not returned with Portland and Vancouver heading their rivals list. With Portland now coming up on April 26, they will have a chance to show that against the out of sorts Timbers.