Galaxy Will Try to Work Magic Against Wizards

The Galaxy faces the most dangerous of all possible opponents tonight, a team with nothing to lose but yet another Major League Soccer game.

For the Kansas City Wizards, this has been the bleakest of seasons. The team is 0-7 and has scored only two goals while giving up 12. It has lost goalkeeper Tony Meola because of a knee injury for most of the year, has fired hall-of-fame coach Ron Newman and has seen its already feeble fan base shrink some more.

So what’s owner Lamar Hunt to do?

For a start, he has hired the man who led the United States to its first World Cup in 40 years. Tonight’s game at Arrowhead Stadium marks the MLS debut of Bob Gansler, the coach who took the U.S. to the Italia ’90 World Cup--thanks to that memorable goal against Trinidad and Tobago by Galaxy defender Paul Caligiuri.

And Gansler already is playing the positive-outlook card, telling the players to consider this a new beginning.

“He told us the first day, we’ve got to act like L.A. is our first game of the season,” Wizard midfielder Brian Johnson told the Kansas City Star. “We’ve got to act as though it’s a 25-game season. We can’t battle that we’ve got a losing record, because we’re seven games down. We’d be forever digging out of that. We’ve got to start from here.”

The Galaxy had its new start a week ago, defeating the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, 1-0, in a shootout in Sigi Schmid’s first game in charge.

The former UCLA coach knows he has a lot of work ahead of him if Los Angeles is to approach last season’s playing standard.

Tonight’s game won’t be made any easier by the suspension of striker Clint Mathis, who was tossed out of the last game because of a flagrant rough tackle from behind.

“I thought the foul was unnecessary, for sure, and I definitely thought it was a yellow card,” Schmid said of Mathis’ ejection. “I thought it was a bit harsh for it to be a red, but that’s the referee’s call. It’s a judgment call and that’s the decision he made.

“Clint has to be a little better in his decision-making.”

The scoring duties probably will fall to Cobi Jones, assuming his bruised left big toe has healed enough for him to play, and to Welton, whose future with the team hangs in the balance. The Miami Fusion has expressed interest in acquiring the Brazilian forward.

The Galaxy (4-3) has scored only four goals, but Schmid said improved defensive play league-wide has as much to do with that as his forwards’ lack of form.

“I think everybody’s playing better defense, everybody’s more organized defensively.” he said. “So now we just have to get to the next evolution on offense. I think what that means is, we have to play a little quicker. We have to make our decisions faster as we go at people and get behind people.

“That’s a thing we want to work on and we want to become better at.”

The eventual return of Carlos Hermosillo also will help.

“Right now, if you watch our team, we’re playing with Cobi up front and Clint Mathis, so we’re not going to scare anybody with our size up there,” Schmid said. “It’s not like their strength is to get on the end of crosses or hold the ball.

“So right now we do need a forward who can hold the ball a little bit for us up front, just like El Tanque [former Galaxy forward Eduardo Hurtado] does for the MetroStars. I mean, he’s a force, he’s a presence, and we feel that Hermosillo can give that to us as well.”

But it could be a month or more before Hermosillo returns after the Mexican playoffs and a possible break.

“We certainly want him to do well in Mexico with Necaxa, but I really don’t think he’ll be here until the end of May at the earliest, and probably more likely the middle of June,” Schmid said.