Galaxy Hopes Quietly Slip Away to Wizards
So much for 2004.
The Galaxy, ailing for much of the Major League Soccer season, was finally put out of its misery Friday night when it was beaten, 2-0, by the Kansas City Wizards in the Western Conference final.
At game’s end, with 11,931 fans chanting in the background, Coach Steve Sampson rose grim-faced from the Galaxy bench at Arrowhead Stadium, thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets and walked over to congratulate his counterpart, Kansas City Coach Bob Gansler.
The disappointment was keen. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Gansler’s comments a short while later may not have helped either.
“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Gansler said of Sampson, “and my mind on this hasn’t changed. Coaches lose games, players win games. It’s easy for any coach to put Xs and O’s on paper and blackboards and all of that. These guys [the players] have to flesh it out. They’ve done that.”
It was the speed of forwards Davy Arnaud and Josh Wolff and the prowess of the Wizards’ impenetrable back line that thwarted the Galaxy.
Arnaud scored both goals, the first after an exchange of passes with Wolff in the 24th minute and the second from a near impossible angle in the 69th minute.
Los Angeles had no reply. Kansas City went into the game without having given up a goal at home in 666 minutes. That streak now stands at 756 minutes.
It also came in knowing that it had lost to the Galaxy only once in the last eight regular-season games. Confidence was not in short supply.
“We’ve been dominant against them,” said Wolff, amid the celebrations in the Kansas City locker room. “We emphasized that this week. I knew coming into this game the way that they play that there’d be room underneath, and Davy and I have done pretty well against these guys as far as linking up and creating some chances. Tonight was just another good example of us doing that.”
Things were a lot more somber in the Galaxy locker room.
“The season hasn’t worked out like we hoped,” admitted Doug Hamilton, the Galaxy’s president and general manager. “We have a clear vision of what we want this club to be and I think we’ve got it going in that direction. We’ll continue on the course.”
It was Hamilton who changed coaches in midstream, firing Sigi Schmid in August -- although he said they remain close -- and hiring Sampson. He was not about to second-guess that decision.
For his part, Sampson recognized Kansas City’s superiority.
“Anything less than an MLS championship would have been disappointing,” he said. “We played against a very good team tonight. Kansas City is very well organized defensively. They got out very quickly [on attack]. I think they played an outstanding game and shut down Carlos [Ruiz] quite effectively. The speed of Arnaud and Wolff was constantly causing us problems.”
Instead of thinking about MLS Cup 2004 at the Home Depot Center on Nov. 14, the Galaxy players now have to contemplate the MLS expansion draft and subsequent trades and wonder just who will be back next season.
“Everybody’s a little distraught over it as this point,” goalkeeper Kevin Hartman said of the loss. “I’m sure these guys aren’t going to be together next year. It’s just the reality of the sport.
“Coach Sampson’s going to put together a different team. Obviously, this is Sigi’s team. Steve didn’t really have the option to change it. So we’ll see what we’ll start the preseason with. It’ll be a different group of guys.”
The Galaxy played hard and never stopped trying, but it was clearly the second-best team, something defender Danny Califf recognized.
“They deserve it,” he said. “They’re a good team. Well coached, well organized. They know how to play against us. More so than any other team in the league.
“They do their homework. They step up on our outside backs and they just play us man-to-man in the back. It forces us to play long ball for the most part. They have big backs, they can head the ball.
“They just know how to play against us and we don’t have the solution, as of yet, even at home.”
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No Goals, No Victories
Midway through the MLS season, the Galaxy was the toast of the league. But starting with a stretch of five consecutive road games in July and August, the goals that had come so easily earlier in the year barely came at all. A look at two halves of a season:
THE FIRST HALF
*--* W L T Games Goals 9 5 3 17 32 THE SECOND HALF 3 6 7 16* 12
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* includes three playoff games
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Today’s game
* Eastern Conference final: New England at D.C. United, 4 p.m., Fox Sports World (winner to face Kansas City in MLS Cup at Home Depot Center, Nov. 14)
