LAFC get 1-1 draw with DC United after Dejan Jakovic recieves red card
John Thorrington could be excused if he chose to curse rather than praise the World Cup since the tournament comes at the worst possible time for his Los Angeles Football Club.
The team Thorrington built as executive vice president of soccer operations is off to the best start of any MLS expansion franchise. LAFC is second in the Western Conference in victories, goals and points.
But because MLS is the only major first-division league that doesn’t take the World Cup off, Saturday’s 1-1 tie with D.C. United, a game LAFC finished with only 10 men, will be the team’s last with forward Carlos Vela and Laurent Ciman until July.
Vela left after the game to join Mexico’s World Cup team and Ciman, selected to Belgium’s provisional roster, will begin training with that national team next week. Neither Vela, the team’s leading scorer, nor Ciman, the team captain, has sat out a minute for LAFC.
The club is already without Costa Rican forward Marco Urena and Egyptian defender Omar Gaber, who are with their World Cup teams, making the four call-ups the most from one MLS team in two decades. And that doesn’t include center back Walker Zimmerman, who is with the United States national team and isn’t expected back until mid-June, or outside back Steven Beitashour, who sat out Saturday because of a hamstring injury.
That could leave LAFC without more than half its starting lineup next week in Dallas. Yet, Thorrington considers that more a compliment than a concern.
“We certainly feel comfortable with the guys that will be playing,” he said.
Forward Diego Rossi, who scored LAFC’s goal Saturday, agreed.
“We’ve very confident we’ll be able to make up for that,” he said of the World Cup absences.
Playing in front of a fifth consecutive sellout crowd of 22,000 at Banc of California Stadium, LAFC sent Vela and Ciman off with a tie after Darren Mattocks’ late header matched Rossi’s first-half goal.
Rossi’s goal, his fifth, came at the end of a busy play in which the ball went from Benny Feilhaber to Mark-Anthony Kaye, then off a couple of defenders before falling at the right foot of the LAFC forward, who drove a low shot into the back corner from about 12 yards.
LAFC (6-3-3) wound up having to protect that lead short-handed after defender Dejan Jakovic was shown a red card for a rough sliding tackle that upended Paul Arriola at the end of the first half. But with the finish line in sight, LAFC simply ran out of gas.
Vela appeared ready to double the lead on a penalty kick in the 68th minute but a video review convinced referee Ismail Elfath to wave off a handball call on Zoltan Stieber, who was hit in the arm by a Jordan Harvey shot in the box. That proved costly 16 minutes later when Mattocks headed in the tying goal for United (2-5-3).
“Not with the refereeing, please,” coach Bob Bradley pleaded at his postgame news conference, before going on to talk about the refereeing.
“It ruins the game,” he said of video assistant review system, which was used twice Saturday. “It kills the flow. Nobody knows what gets looked at, what doesn’t. It’s hard to figure out. Right now it’s confusing.”
