The story line was beginning its usual cycle for the San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday Night. Twenty-five minutes in and the LA Galaxy had a commanding 3-1 lead and seemed poised to dominate the Earthquakes suspect backline. But in front of over 50,000 fans on a beautiful night at Stanford Stadium, the Earthquakes had lathered and rinsed, but this time did not repeat as they battled back for a 3-3 draw in another chapter of the California Clasico.
On a night of pageantry and fireworks in Palo Alto, it was the Galaxy that drew first blood just one minute in as a Chris Pontius header found its way into the box in front of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The Swedish legend let the ball bounce before one timing a rocket past a helpless Andrew Tarbell that stunned the Stanford Stadium crowd, many of whom hadn’t even made it to their seats to see the legend do what he does best.
“If you give him one inch, he’ll score.” said Earthquakes Coach Mikael Stahre after the match. “He’s a fantastic player, one of the top players in the world and if you give him enough space he’ll score, that’s for sure.”
Coach Stahre indicated that he had never met his fellow Swede until tonight, but that the two did not exchange any pregame greeting.
It was 1-1 after David Bingham initially stonewalled Chris Wondolowski on a penalty kick, but spilled out a rebound that Wondolowski slammed past his former Quakes teammate, who he had a couple words for in the celebration.
The Galaxy regained control of the match after a pair of free kick goals from Romain Alessandrini and Zlatan beat Andrew Tarbell and 25 minutes into the match, the Galaxy had a 3-1 lead.
The Quakes could easily have packed it in, but on this night with a spirited crowd and a hated rival in the building, there was no way that was happening.
“We know we have to continue, and we knew we have a lot of good players, especially in the offense. We knew we could score, we knew we could turn the game,” said Quakes Midfielder Florian Jungwirth. “The second half was very good, we played very good defense and were a lot more ruthless.”
After a Vako goal cut the deficit to 3-2 heading into halftime, the Quakes energy out of the gate in the second half was rewarded when Wondolowski once again went to the spot against David Bingham after Danny Hoesen drew a penalty. This time Wondo blasted it past Bingham rather easily to level the score and pull within five of Landon Donovan’s career goal scoring record. Wondo almost had a hat trick and some late Cali Clasico magic, but his final shot of the evening banged off the right post in the 90th minute to “preserve” the draw.
“We were more aggressive, more compact,” said Stahre. “We lost too many duels in the first half. We were too weak. We can’t to win all duels against Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but we can still compete, and if we can’t win the first ball we can can win the second ball or the third ball, we were much better in the second half.”
While getting any point in a match is a positive result right now for the Quakes, they have to feel disappointed that they weren’t able to pull three points from arguably their best performance of the season.
“We never thought about giving up, especially tonight in front of 50,000 people,” said Quakes Forward Danny Hoesen. “You want to show some heart and some character and get back into the game, we had a feeling we could score goals against this team and come back.”
The Galaxy are back in action midweek when they welcome DC United to town for a 4th of July showdown between two MLS originals, while the Earthquakes travel to Portland next Saturday to take a crack at the Timbers 12 match (across all competitions) unbeaten streak.
San Jose Earthquakes
LA Galaxy
