Galaxy Unscarred as Streak Becomes a Casualty of Fire
Now that it’s over, the great Los Angeles Galaxy winning streak--nine in a row in 1998, 15 in a row in regular-season games dating to 1997--has been reassessed.
“Meaningless,” Galaxy Coach Octavio Zambrano said Wednesday night in the aftermath of his team’s 3-1 drubbing at the hands of the expansion Chicago Fire before 10,520 at Soldier Field.
“The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Galaxy midfielder Steve Jolley said of the regular-season streak, which was interrupted by two rather significant defeats to Dallas in the 1997 Major League Soccer playoffs.
“You don’t win six in a row, lose two, win nine more and call it a 15-game winning streak,” Jolley said. “It never was a 15-game winning streak.”
Official MLS semantics aside, the Galaxy had won a fair number of games in succession, had stormed to the top of the 1998 Western Conference standings at 9-0 and was the league’s last remaining undefeated team entering its first meeting with the sputtering Fire.
But eight of those victories came with Cobi Jones and Dan Calichman in the starting lineup. Without Jones, called up earlier this month by the U.S. national team for World Cup duty, and Calichman, who sustained a broken leg two weeks ago against Colorado, this is now a very different Galaxy side, one no longer capable of overcoming its own shoddy play against an inferior opponent on sheer talent alone.
Wednesday, the loss of Jones’ offensive spontaneity and Calichman’s defensive steadiness was palpable.
The Galaxy’s makeshift backline was shaky and uncertain, especially early. Turnovers in the Galaxy penalty area gifted Chicago two quick scoring chances--wild shots wasted both--before Galaxy defender Robin Fraser did the work himself for the Fire, clearing a ball off the goal line in 37th minute and roofing it into his own net.
“I finished it nicely, didn’t I?” Fraser deadpanned. “Upper corner.”
Without Jones’ creativity up front, the Galaxy attack was rendered comatose. Chicago (4-5) out-shot the Galaxy, 7-2, in the first half and 11-7 for the game--opening a 3-0 lead on goals by Roman Kosecki in the 58th minute and Peter Nowak in the 68th.
The Galaxy avoided a shutout in the 75th minute when the Fire failed to clear a corner kick by Wellington Sanchez, watched the loose ball ping around in the box and then allowed Welton to slot the bounding ball into the net past goalkeeper Zach Thornton.
“We didn’t play a good game,” Zambrano understated. “We were very erratic in the first half, we never seemed to connect on offense. We couldn’t connect even three or four passes in a row.”
Galaxy General Manager Danny Villanueva Jr. said his team “looked tired. We played on Sunday [a 4-2 victory at Columbus], so we only had two days’ rest. Our guys were clearly out of sync. You saw some sluggish legs out there.”
Never more so than on Nowak’s goal. Triggered by two quick passes from Polish countrymen Kosecki and Jerzy Podbrozny, Nowak had the ball on the left side of the Galaxy penalty area, one on one against Danny Pena, and simply blew past Pena to beat a diving Galaxy keeper Kevin Hartman just inside the far post.
Jolley, who spent most of the evening man-marking Nowak, or at least making the attempt, called the Fire midfielder “the most athletic player I’ve seen in this league. In my two years, I’ve man-marked the best players in this league--[Marco] Etcheverry, [Carlos] Valderrama, Preki--and I’ve never played against anyone like Nowak. He was constantly on the run, constantly on the move.”
Eventually, he simply wore out the Galaxy defense, claiming a sizable winning streak with it.
Kansas City 2, Dallas 1--Mo Johnston scored the clinching goal in the shootout before 9,179 at Dallas.
Paul Wright, Paul Rideout and Goran Hunjak also scored for Kansas City (4-6) in the tiebreaker. Brian Haynes, Temoc Suarez and Ted Eck scored shootout goals for Dallas (6-3).
The Wizards took a 1-0 lead in the 84th minute on an own goal by Burn defender Mark Santel. A cross by Wright deflected off Santel’s foot and went into the net from eight yards out.
Dallas tied it two minutes later on a goal by Mickey Trotman, Suarez getting the assist.
