No Wins, but Plenty of Urgency
After five games of its inaugural season, how hungry is Chivas USA for its first victory?
“We’re starving,” defender Ryan Suarez said. “We’re like the poor little kids selling Chiclets on the side of the street in Guadalajara; that’s how hungry we are.
“But it’s about time we get a win. My theory is if we can’t beat Utah and Colorado, the two teams we’re chasing, then we don’t belong in the playoffs.”
Utah? Playoffs?
Suarez may have been a bit ahead of himself given that Chivas is 0-4-1 and has given up a league-high 12 goals.
But he makes a point. If Chivas is going to find some momentum, why not start tonight against Real Salt Lake?
“It’s as good a time as any other,” Chivas Coach Thomas Rongen said. “We’ve been knocking on the door, but we haven’t been rewarded for it.”
Perhaps no defeat for nascent Chivas was more heartbreaking than last week’s at New England, when Rongen flooded the midfield with a 3-5-2 formation and had Chivas hunker down defensively in hopes of playing the high-scoring Revolution to a scoreless draw.
It almost worked. The Revolution, which entered the match with a league-high 12 goals, broke through in the 88th minute, and Rongen and his staff went back to the drawing board.
Real, in its new 4-5-1 alignment, may not be the juggernaut on offense that New England is, but it does have something Chivas lacks -- two proven strikers in Jason Kreis, the league’s all-time leading scorer, and Clint Mathis, back in MLS after a stint in the German Bundesliga. Real has scored four goals and surrendered eight.
Chivas, which successfully threw caution to the wind in a wild 3-3 draw at San Jose in the season’s second week, figures to play with similar abandon against its expansion brethren. And Rongen, who has already used five different starting lineups, said he may again tweak his starting 11.
Defender Armando Begines, one of seven Mexicans sent stateside from Chivas Guadalajara, has been working with the first team at left back, and Orlando Perez has been working at midfield. Begines was penciled in to start before suffering a broken collarbone in a March 2 scrimmage against the U.S. men’s national team.
While the losses mount, Rongen, who made a brief scouting trip to Costa Rica this week, insists it’s too early to fret -- especially with the international signing window not open until August and Chivas still holding a pair of allocation spots.
“It’s not panic time, and it’s not desperate time,” Rongen said. “But naturally, when you don’t get results you start pressing and that can give you a little bit of an edge.”
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Rongen said starting goalkeeper Martin Zuniga, who has an injured left knee, will play in Chivas’ Reserve Division match on May 15 at Colorado.
Zuniga was injured March 2 and was replaced by rookie Brad Guzan, who lead MLS with 26 total saves but is last in the league with a 2.4 goals-against average.
TONIGHT
vs. Real Salt Lake, 7
FSNW2, Fox Soccer Channel, HDNet
Site -- Home Depot Center.
Radio -- 830.
Records -- Chivas USA 0-4-1, Real Salt Lake 1-2-2.
Record vs. Real Salt Lake -- first meeting.
Update -- To commemorate Cinco de Mayo, a fireworks show will follow the match and fans wearing a Mexican national team jersey will receive $10 off any ticket bought at the stadium.
