Chivas USA Gets the Clear Picture
The pregame entertainment in the Chivas USA locker room Saturday evening featured televised coverage of the Galaxy’s rout of D.C. United.
Yes, the Chivas players were paying attention.
So much so that they went out an hour or so later and defeated the Houston Dynamo, 3-2, to stay five points ahead of the Galaxy in the race for the Major League Soccer playoffs.
On a night when newly acquired Mexico youth international Jesus Morales made his debut for Chivas -- and showed immediately that he will be an impact player in the league -- it was two goals by Ante Razov that paced the victory.
But it was an incident in the third and last minute of injury time that caused the biggest furor and sent Houston Coach Dominic Kinnear sprinting onto the field at the final whistle to launch a tirade at referee Alex Prus.
Dynamo goalkeeper Pat Onstad had to physically restrain Kinnear.
The cause was plain to every person in the Home Depot Center.
With time almost expired, midfielder Dwayne DeRosario ran into the Chivas USA penalty area and was chopped down by defender Jason Hernandez.
It was clear to even the most neutral of observers that a penalty kick could -- and probably should -- have been awarded, one that almost certainly would have tied the score, 3-3.
Instead, Prus made no call.
With the defeat, second-place Houston (9-7-8, 35 points) failed to close ground in the Western Conference on first-place FC Dallas (12-7-3, 39 points), which plays at Kansas City today.
Chivas USA, meanwhile, improved to 8-6-10, doubling its victory total of last season with eight regular-season games remaining, and climbed to third place in the West, one point behind Houston.
Colorado, which lost to the Chicago Fire, 1-0, slipped to fourth, two points ahead of the Galaxy and Real Salt Lake.
It was a wide-open game, with both teams willing to attack from the outset.
Chivas USA came within inches of scoring in the seventh minute when midfielder Brent Whitfield sent in an excellent cross from the right and Morales, signed Friday, threw himself at the ball only for Onstad to get there a split second ahead of him.
The goalkeeper’s luck deserted him one minute later, however, when Chivas tried the same play again, with Morales this time feeding the ball in from the right and Jonathon Bornstein on hand to bundle it past Onstad.
It was the sixth goal of the season for Bornstein, a legitimate rookie-of-the-year candidate.
Houston tied it in the 28th minute on a penalty kick by DeRosario that was awarded by Prus after goalkeeper Preston Burpo upended forward Chris Wondolowski as both went for the ball.
DeRosario’s shot was well struck and earned the Canadian international his ninth goal of the season.
Prus influenced the game again five minutes later when he ejected Houston midfielder Ricardo Clark for a seemingly innocuous shove on defender Orlando Perez, who went down as if he’d been hit by a nine-iron.
That left Houston to play the last hour or so a man down.
A Razov goal off a corner kick by Bornstein restored Chivas USA’s lead in the last minute of the first half, and Razov completed an exceptional display of passing by Chivas with his 14th goal of the season in the 57th minute.
Houston made it 3-2 when DeRosario scored his second goal, 10 minutes later, but it was the non-call in the final seconds that the Dynamo will remember from this game.
