Plenty on the Line in Galaxy Finale
There’s no question that the Galaxy understands what’s at stake when it takes on San Jose tonight in a season-ending, Western Conference-deciding match against its Bay Area rival.
If the Galaxy defeats or ties the defending Major League Soccer champion Earthquakes, it will win its fifth division title in the league’s seven-year history, clinch the No. 1 seeding top seed for the playoffs and have home-field advantage throughout.
But if the Galaxy loses at intimate Spartan Stadium, where the Earthquakes boast a league-best home record of 12-0-1, Los Angeles falls to the No. 3 seed, with the prospect of losing home-field advantage in the second round to a team with three fewer victories. The Eastern Conference champions automatically get a top-two seeding.
“We’ve fought long and hard to try to get back into a position where we could make this play,” Galaxy captain Cobi Jones said. “Now that we have this chance, we want to be strong in this match and have all the pluses going into the playoffs and into the final.
“The team’s pretty confident right now but I think we’re still at a point where we can still play better than we have. In the playoffs, we need to continue to be in an area where we’re improving more and more with each game.”
After trailing the Earthquakes by as many as 11 points this season, the Galaxy has turned it on of late, winning five of its last six league games and going unbeaten in its last 10 home games to pass San Jose.
“You can call it peaking but I call it a little more believing in themselves,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said. “I think the team right now is really believing in their ability to win games, even when they’re not on their best game, that they can still find a way to get a result.
“There’s just a lot of faith and confidence in themselves.”
Especially since the Galaxy beat San Jose last Saturday, 1-0, on an injury-time goal by Carlos Ruiz, a victory that moved the Galaxy three points ahead of the Earthquakes in the standings. But because of the goal differential tiebreaker, San Jose will get the No. 1 seed if the Earthquakes beat the Galaxy tonight and finish with the same record.
Schmid expects a face-paced game on one of the smallest fields in MLS and will not instruct his team to sit back and play it safe.
“Because they’re at home and have to win, we also know they’ve got to come at us, so hopefully that will open up some spaces for us to counterattack,” Schmid said.”You know that San Jose has to come at you, so you’re going to make sure that you get behind the ball and you defend well. You’re going to leave a couple of guys high so that you can play balls into space for them and give them the opportunity to counterattack and take advantage of that.”
San Jose is missing two key players, Richard Mulrooney to a season-ending broken ankle and Jimmy Conrad to caution points accumulation. The Galaxy may be without Peter Vagenas, who is nursing a strained right hamstring.
