Mutiny’s Diallo Has Galaxy on Alert
Out of Africa, quite literally, comes tonight’s Galaxy opponent.
The Tampa Bay Mutiny has a striker who can cause Los Angeles’ defense all sorts of worries.
He is Mamadou Diallo from Senegal, a large and imposing forward with the physical style of former Galaxy striker Eduardo “El Tanque” Hurtado, but faster and far more mobile.
Were it not for U.S. immigration laws, Tampa Bay might have featured a pair of African forwards tonight. The team recently signed Manuel “Tico Tico” Bucuane from Mozambique, but he is awaiting his work visa and the Galaxy will not have to face him until the teams meet again in Tampa, Fla., July 22.
Bucuane, 26, is the Mozambique national team’s all-time scoring leader, with experience playing for pro teams in Portugal, South Africa and China.
The Mutiny acquired him last week after Major League Soccer engineered a dubious deal that took El Salvador’s Raul Diaz Arce away from Tampa Bay to bolster a faltering D.C. United attack in Washington.
It has been that kind of year for Mutiny Coach Tim Hankinson, who spent the early part of the season hoping to lure forward Roy Lassiter from the Miami Fusion but was ultimately rebuffed.
Hankinson then had the extraordinary luck of landing Diallo, who comes into tonight’s game as the leading goal scorer in MLS this season. The Senegalese striker, acquired from Lillestrom in Norway, has 12 goals for the Mutiny.
“He’s a horse,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said. “He’s a physical presence. He’s got size, he’s got speed.
“They’re a team that to me is a little bit like K.C. [the Kansas City Wizards], where the parts of the puzzle fit together really well right now.
“They’ve got Diallo, who is a big horse up front; they’ve got [Manny] Lagos, who’s having a good season, and [Steve] Ralston, who are sort of the runners in the wide channels, getting up and down for them. [Carlos] Valderrama is covered wide and is covered inside by [Josh] Keller and [Dominic] Kinnear, so he can sort of just stay in the middle as a playmaker.
“A lot of teams have trouble playing against their system.”
For a while, with both Diallo and Diaz Arce on his roster, Hankinson was set. Or so it seemed. But in the 4-5-1 formation that Hankinson favors, one striker always was left on the bench.
When it was Diallo, he was unhappy.
When it was Diaz Arce, he was unhappy.
Ultimately, MLS solved Hankinson’s problem by simply taking Diaz Arce from the league-owned team and reuniting him with Bolivians Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno in D.C. United’s once-vaunted triangle offense.
That left Hankinson fuming. He was about to try playing both strikers in tandem. Now, at least until Bucuane is cleared, he has to stick with the four-defender, five-midfielder, one-forward [4-5-1] formation.
“I’d almost call it more of a 4-2-3-1,” said Schmid, “which isn’t a bad way to play.”
Diallo, of course, is the key.
“Obviously, his speed is something we have to worry about, and his size,” Schmid said. “He’s a good player.”
Schmid said the Galaxy probably will assign one player to shadow Diallo, with cover help behind that.
“We’ll probably keep one of our big defenders inside on him,” he said, “and we have Robin [Fraser] there for cover.”
The Galaxy’s defensive task is compounded by the absence of Ezra Hendrickson, who must serve a one-game suspension for a red card, but the team’s main worries might come at the offensive end. The Galaxy still is not scoring as freely and frequently as it once did, and the combination of Luis Hernandez and Cobi Jones has yet to fully click.
Hernandez has played four MLS games and one U.S. Open Cup game for Los Angeles but still is seeking his first Galaxy goal.
Tampa Bay’s four-man defense with two defensive midfielders in front of it will make his challenge even tougher. Diallo might show him how it’s done.
But Hernandez first will have to get past Mutiny defender Joseph Addo. He’s the former captain of Ghana’s national team. In other words, he, too, is out of Africa.
