Galaxy, Toronto FC struggle to a 0-0 tie
TORONTO -- Fishing for positives in a sea of negatives, the Galaxy came up with a modest catch Sunday night. For instance:
* The team was outshot, 14-2, by Toronto FC, including 5-1 in shots on target, and yet still managed a 0-0 tie in front of a sellout crowd of 20,562 at BMO Field, Major League Soccer’s newest stadium.
* Not just once but twice Galaxy players saved the day by clearing Toronto shots off the goal line -- first when defender Ty Harden hooked an Andrea Lombardo volley clear in the sixth minute and later when Kelly Gray headed away a goal-bound header by Tyrone Marshall.
* Los Angeles did not leave Canada empty-handed, although the point it earned did not prevent it from falling further behind in its quest for a spot in the playoffs. That was because of D.C. United’s 3-0 victory over New England earlier Sunday.
D.C. United, the Galaxy’s opponent Thursday in Washington, holds the eighth and final playoff berth and is 13 points ahead of the Galaxy, which has played four fewer games.
* Finally, the team introduced David Beckham to Toronto amid a blaze of publicity and with only a modicum of anger at the fact that the injured England star spent the entire match in a suit on the bench, without as much as a wave to the fans.
“We struggled to get to grips with the game, to be honest,” Galaxy Coach Frank Yallop said. “What I will say is that we might have been outplayed in the game but we weren’t outfought. They had some great chances to score but they didn’t, and that was important to us.”
Toronto’s locker room in recent weeks has looked more like a casualty ward, and Coach Mo Johnston had six key starters who were sidelined by injury -- Greg Sutton, Jeff Cunningham, Danny Dichio, Marvell Wynne, Ronnie O’Brien and Andrew Boyens.
Matters were so bad that midfielder Jim Brennan played his third game in a row despite suffering from two broken ribs.
Nevertheless, Toronto (5-9-5) controlled the play from start to finish and only some determined defending and a couple of key saves by Galaxy goalkeeper Joe Cannon kept the home team off the scoreboard. It wasn’t the way the Galaxy players had imagined it would turn out.
“I would say we’re more dissatisfied than satisfied,” midfielder Kyle Martino said.
“We definitely believed that we were going to get out of here with three points, so the goal that we set for this trip wasn’t achieved. But we showed some determination, some will at the end, to make sure that we got out of here with a point, so that’s positive.”
The Galaxy, which scored six goals against FC Dallas in a 6-5 SuperLiga victory in Texas on Tuesday, was unable to conjure up a single dangerous attacking move Sunday.
“Whether it was Toronto or us I’m not sure,” Yallop said, “but we didn’t really create anything, to be honest. Did we have any shots? One? Two? We didn’t play well at all tonight.”
But in the end, it was a point gained on the road, and the goal-saving heroics of Harden and Gray perhaps hinted at a coming change of fortunes for the Galaxy (3-5-5).
“It’s about time we had a little bit of luck, because it didn’t really seem like luck’s been going our way,” Martino said.
