Schmid Wants Galaxy Ready for Stretch Run
Two-thirds of the way through its fourth Major League Soccer season, the Galaxy is in a comfortable position.
With 11 regular-season games left, one of them tonight against the Dallas Burn at the Rose Bowl, Coach Sigi Schmid’s team (13-8) is only a few victories from its fourth consecutive winning season.
A playoff berth is all but assured, since it appears that the San Jose Clash (11-10) and the Kansas City Wizards (6-16) have not the slightest chance of moving out of the bottom two positions in the league’s Western Conference.
So why is Schmid unhappy? Why did he lambaste his players after Wednesday night’s 3-1 loss to the Columbus Crew, which knocked the Galaxy out of the U.S. Open Cup?
Complacency, he says.
“It was not one of our better games,” said the former UCLA coach, who at one point Wednesday had no fewer than six of his former Bruin players on the field. “We gave up an early goal, which was not the best thing to do, and we lost a player, Mauricio Cienfuegos, [to a red card] in the first half.
“That put us on our heels, but we tied the game [and] I thought we would be fine from that point on. But Columbus was just a little bit quicker to the ball. They looked fresher than us and looked hungrier than we did.
“During the first half, we had numerous chances off free kicks and headers, but we just couldn’t finish. And Columbus did. We gave them too much space and that’s something we need to work on. We looked disorganized in the back; there wasn’t enough communication on the field. We lost our shape, and that’s something we have to look at heading into Saturday’s game.”
Six of the third-place Galaxy’s remaining 11 games are at home, and three are against the fourth-place Burn (11-11). The impact of those three games on the conference standings, therefore, is obvious.
The teams that finish second and third play each other in the first round of the playoffs. If the Galaxy can leapfrog the second-place Chicago Fire (12-9) and the first-place Colorado Rapids (15-6), it would gain the advantage of playing the fourth-place finisher.
“I feel confident [in playing] every team in our conference,” Schmid said before last Saturday’s 4-1 rout of the Clash in San Jose. “The only one I haven’t seen live yet is Dallas. So I feel good about our chances.
“We want to finish at least second [to get the home-field advantage], but if we can bag first, that would be great.”
Wednesday’s loss was not caused by lack of fitness but lack of strikers. Carlos Hermosillo and Clint Mathis were sidelined because of injuries and will be again tonight. In their place, Cobi Jones and Roy Myers simply have not clicked.
