Galaxy needs big turnaround to survive playoff opener

The surest sign the Galaxy is in trouble heading to Seattle for Wednesday’s elimination-round playoff game isn’t the team’s 1-4-2 record over the last two months, its fall from second to fifth in the Western Conference standings in the span of two hours Sunday or even the loss in the regular-season finale that precipitated that tumble.

Instead it’s the fact that the team’s performance in that 2-1 loss to Sporting Kansas City was actually being taken as a sign of progress.

“It was a step in the right direction,” said defender Omar Gonzalez, whose half-step in the wrong direction opened the way for Dom Dwyer’s game-winning second-half goal.

Added associate head coach Dave Sarachan: “We can take a lot of positives.”

And while it’s true the team did improve on its previous game, that wasn’t exactly a high bar to get over since that game saw Portland score five times in a span of 25 minutes. The Galaxy is going to need a lot more positives than that in Seattle, where it hasn’t won a playoff game since 2010.

In what was a must-win game for both teams in Kansas City, the Galaxy was outshot, outhustled and outplayed. The punishment for that is a quick turnaround in which the team will spend about 30 hours in Southern California before leaving for Seattle, where on Wednesday it will face a large, hostile crowd, a punishing artificial-turf field and a Sounders team that hasn’t lost in two months – and hasn’t lost at home since Aug. 1.

And if the Galaxy doesn’t come out of that knockout-round game with a win, its season will end earlier than it has since 2008. That’s a scenario the team could have avoided by earning just one more point in any of its final seven regular-season games.

“If we can’t win our last two games, we deserve to be put in the play-in game,” Galaxy Coach Bruce Arena said.

But Arena, too, saw signs of improvement in the regular-season-ending loss.

“We played pretty well,” he said. “Our finishing could have been a little better. We had a few plays where [if] we’re a little cleaner, we should get another couple goals.

“That part of it, which is our strength, we didn’t do particularly well.”

History may offer further solace. Wednesday’s game will mark the fourth time Arena’s team has met Seattle in the playoffs since 2010. And though the Galaxy has lost its last two road games there, it has never lost a postseason series with the Sounders.

“Heading into the playoffs we have a very experienced team—one that shows up for the playoffs,” defender A.J. DeLaGarza said.

It sure didn’t show up for the end of the regular season. But some insist they saw signs Sunday that things could be turning around.

“There was a stretch in the second half, we were just all over them,” Sarachan said. “We didn’t put them away. And that’s frustrating.

“[But] when we analyze the game and look at it, we had our chances. I think there were a lot of plusses.”