Galaxy’s Lack of Depth Could Prove Costly
Whether the hapless New York/New Jersey MetroStars or the woeful Kansas City Wizards are the worst team in Major League Soccer is not the Galaxy’s concern today.
The Wizards bring a 5-13 record to the Rose Bowl for a 12:30 game, but Los Angeles has its own weaknesses to worry about.
Just how vulnerable the Galaxy is was made clear this past week. Exactly what can be done about it is not as clear.
On Tuesday night, the Galaxy played a U.S. Open Cup game for the first time in its four-year history. The opponent was the San Diego Flash of the supposedly inferior A-League. The result was almost an embarrassing defeat.
Playing on the San Diego Mesa College campus, the Galaxy found itself trailing, 2-0, early in the second half.
Antonio Robles put the Flash ahead in the 20th minute, beating Galaxy goalkeeper Matt Reis from close range. Carlos Farias made it 2-0 five minutes later when he faked a cross that drew Reis off his line, then chipped the ball over the keeper.
In both instances, the absence of Galaxy defender and captain Robin Fraser was sorely evident. Fraser, along with forward Cobi Jones, is in Mexico playing for the United States in the Confederations Cup and will not return until early August.
If the defense gives up goals so easily to a second-division team, obviously the depth in the back line is not what it should be.
“We knew it was going to be a battle and we knew that this was going to be the game of the season for them,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said.
Not that other MLS teams have exactly covered themselves with glory against A-League opponents in the Open Cup, a single-elimination knockout competition that has been played annually since 1914. Already this season, the MetroStars have been ousted by the Staten Island Vipers and the defending MLS and Open Cup champion Chicago Fire has been knocked out by the Rochester Raging Rhinos.
The Galaxy appeared headed for the same fate when Carlos Hermosillo was red-carded for a dangerous tackle shortly after San Diego’s second goal.
The team, however, salvaged the game in the second half. Clint Mathis cut the deficit to 2-1 in the 53rd minute after receiving a through ball from Roy Myers, and Danny Pena tied the score with a 20-yard shot off an Ezra Hendrickson pass eight minutes later.
Mathis scored the winning goal in the 85th minute, heading home a corner kick by Greg Vanney to put the Galaxy into the quarterfinals.
“No matter how much you talk to your team and tell them to take the game seriously, they don’t come to the game [against a lesser opponent] with the same intensity,” Schmid said.
The Galaxy coach was still fuming about another sort of loss a few days earlier.
Los Angeles had hoped to land Chris Albright, a prized forward from the University of Virginia who played well for Schmid in the FIFA Under-20 World Championship in Nigeria this spring and had attracted the attention of several European clubs.
Instead, Albright ended up with two-time champion Washington D.C. United.
The Galaxy has never been allocated a Project 40 (developmental) player and believed that Albright’s eventual trade from the Miami Fusion to D.C. United was yet another instance of the undue influence on the MLS competition committee of Kevin Payne, Washington’s president and general manager.
Under the league’s single-entity structure, players are distributed among teams in a supposedly fair manner, but coaches have long complained that the top teams keep getting the top players.
Albright, 20, had said he wanted to play for either the Galaxy, the Fire or D.C. United but was allocated to Miami and then traded to D.C.
During league meeting at the All-Star break, Schmid and other coaches voiced their unhappiness with the way the MLS allows such scenarios to occur. A change has been promised.
