Galaxy Fails to Take Advantage
The slumping Galaxy, despite playing with a man advantage for more than a half, was shut out for the third time in four games, losing to FC Dallas, 1-0, Wednesday night in Pizza Hut Park at Frisco, Texas.
Former Galaxy standout Carlos Ruiz scored when he turned and fired the ball past goalkeeper Steve Cronin in the 20th minute.
Dallas managed to make that lead hold up even though it had to play the last two minutes of the first half and the entire second half a man down after Bobby Rhine was ejected by referee Andrew Chapin for a hard foul on midfielder Ned Grabavoy.
Grabavoy had gone into the game in the 28th minute after forward Herculez Gomez was forced out because of a sprained right knee.
In a sloppily played game, the defending Major League Soccer champion managed only three shots on target compared to two for Dallas. The closest Coach Steve Sampson’s team came to scoring was when a Grabavoy header was cleared off the goal line by Rhine in the 35th minute and when forward Joseph Ngwenya fired a shot that rebounded off the crossbar midway through the second half.
The loss dropped the Galaxy to 2-4-1 heading into Saturday night’s game against Real Salt Lake at the Home Depot Center.
First-place Dallas, unbeaten and untied at home in 2006, improved to 4-1-2 and leads the Houston Dynamo by two points in the Western Conference. The Galaxy is fourth, behind the Colorado Rapids, and ahead of Chivas USA and winless Real Salt Lake.
Wednesday night’s game was to be the last for Landon Donovan and Chris Albright before they leave today to join the U.S. World Cup team in camp at Cary, N.C., but Albright had to sit out the game because of what he called a hamstring “twinge.”
The Galaxy was already without forward Cornell Glen, who has scored two of the team’s six goals, because he left to join Trinidad and Tobago’s World Cup team, and when Gomez was injured, the Galaxy was scrambling for help up front.
The Galaxy, which was coming off a 4-0 loss at New England, will have to play a minimum of seven games without the trio.
In an effort to shake up things, Sampson on Wednesday dropped veteran goalkeeper Kevin Hartman for the second time in three games, left midfielder Marcelo Saragosa on the bench and played newly acquired striker Thiago for only the last dozen minutes.
The moves had little noticeable impact.
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Toronto, the league’s first Canadian team, today will unveil its name -- reportedly Inter Toronto -- and logo. It begins play in 2007.
Jones reported from Los Angeles.
