Galaxy Stops Fusion Cold, 3-0
Phil Anschutz was at the Rose Bowl on Saturday night, unnoticed as only a billionaire owner of the Galaxy could be.
He was there as a fan, of course, just another guy in a crowd of 16,207 hoping to see the Galaxy dismantle Major League Soccer’s most powerful offensive team, the Miami Fusion.
And, like the rest of the fans, Anschutz got his wish. The Galaxy prevailed, 3-0, on goals by Luis Hernandez, Adam Frye and Greg Vanney to maintain a share of first place in the Western Division.
But it was defense, not offense, that won this game.
That and a large dollop of good luck.
“We can take a licking like this because we’re bigger than this,” said Miami Coach Ray Hudson, whose team lost for only the third time. “No way they’re three goals better than us.”
The score was 1-0 until only five minutes or so remained, and in many ways Los Angeles was fortunate to have even that lead.
The Fusion entered the game with a league-high 36 goals and four players among the top 10 in league scoring.
But after the Galaxy had scored an early goal--on a header by Hernandez off a Cobi Jones pass in the eighth minute--it was left to the defense to keep Miami at bay.
Goalkeeper Kevin Hartman did his part, stopping a penalty kick by Preki in the 33rd minute after Danny Califf had handled the ball.
Califf and his fellow defenders, Vanney, Ezra Hendrickson and Paul Caligiuri, did their part too, time and again foiling the Fusion forwards and midfielders with crunching tackles or timely headers.
Even the woodwork contributed, with the left post foiling another Preki shot in the 68th minute.
“When you look at Miami, they’re unbelievable,” Hartman said. “They have unbelievable players throughout the attack and people who were able to put us under pressure.
“We were in kind of disarray. The way that they play, it forces you kind of out of position. I think that’s why they’ve been able to exploit so many other teams [while going 11-3-3]. But we held it together.”
Fusion forward Diego Serna and Alex Pineda Chacon had scored 20 goals between them coming into the game, but they were shut out. So was Preki. So was Chris Henderson. So was Jim Rooney.
Each fell victim to the Galaxy’s fine defensive effort.
“They’re by far the toughest team in the league to pick up [defensively] because they have guys who place-change and they attack from all different angles,” Vanney said.
“It’s hard to say, like, you have a guy [to mark] because you’re never sure where anybody’s coming from. We wanted to have certain match-ups, but you just can’t do that.
“They’re good individually one on one and they play one-twos. They’re a good attacking team. So I thought we did a good job of eliminating their [scoring] chances.”
The Galaxy (9-5-5) scored twice in the final few minutes to make the game appear lopsided.
The second goal, in the 85th minute, came when Jones looped a cross toward the far post and Fusion goalkeeper Nick Rimando reached up to try to gather it under pressure from Hernandez and Frye.
Rimando couldn’t hold the ball and in the tussle Hernandez apparently handled it--an infraction that went unseen by referee Alex Prus--before Frye poked the ball into the net from a sharp angle.
Vanney closed out the scoring by firing a penalty kick off Rimando’s fingertips after Carlos Llamosa had shoved down Jones in the penalty area in the final minute.
Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid applauded the victory, but Hudson also was upbeat.
“We played some tremendous, attractive, entertaining football and we took the game to them, but it just didn’t go our way,” he said. “We’re big boys. We can accept that.
“What surprises me is everybody thinks Rome’s burning all of a sudden because we’ve lost a couple of games.
“We’ll bounce back. If we couldn’t pass the ball, if we couldn’t attack, if we couldn’t defend, I would be really concerned. But we did all of those things tonight and it just wasn’t in the stars.”
