Galaxy puts up poor defensive effort in loss to Chicago Fire
Perhaps the Galaxy thought Nery Castillo was on the field, but he wasn’t. The Chicago Fire’s newly signed Mexican international midfielder wasn’t even in town.
Perhaps the Galaxy thought Freddie Ljungberg was on the field, and, yes, he was. But the Fire’s newly signed former Swedish international midfielder was on the bench for all but the last half-hour.
So there was really no excuse other than sloppy, inexcusably poor defense that caused the Galaxy to fall two goals behind within the first five minutes at the Home Depot Center on Sunday afternoon.
Even Galaxy Coach Bruce Arena said as much, calling it “poison.”
In fact, things were so bad that Chicago was ahead, 3-0, within 19 minutes and the announced 20,348 fans were booing Arena’s suddenly porous team.
By the end, the Galaxy had been beaten, 3-2, suffering only its third loss of the year in MLS play and “falling” to 12-3-4, still good enough for a league-high 40 points and first place in the West. Chicago, fourth in the East, “improved” to 5-5-5.
It wasn’t really a one-goal game. Only two penalty-kick goals by Landon Donovan, both on somewhat dubious calls by fussy referee Silviu Petrescu, made it close. The final margin was deceiving.
Arena must be wondering what is going on. On Tuesday night in Carson, his Galaxy team allowed the unheralded Puerto Rico Islanders to put four goals past it in a 4-1 CONCACAF Champions League qualifying loss.
On Wednesday night in Houston, Arena coached an MLS all-star team that saw Manchester United score five times in a 5-2 victory. Now this.
“I’ve had better weeks,” Arena admitted.
The game was barely three minutes old when Marco Pappa put the Fire ahead, taking a pass from fellow midfielder Baggio Hasidic and slotting the ball past Galaxy goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts.
One minute later, Ricketts had been beaten again, this time by Fire forward Collins John, who latched on to a Patrick Nyarko pass and blasted a shot that beat the Galaxy ‘keeper at the right post.
In the 19th minute it became 3-0 when Chicago’s Mike Banner hammered home the rebound of a shot by Pappa that Ricketts had done well to block.
The Fire took a total of four shots in the game, none in the second half, and scored three times. The Galaxy took 19 shots but lost.
“There’s not a team in the league you can spot three goals and expect to win the game or get a point,” Arena said. “Certainly, they earned their goals and capitalized on our mistakes. But we could have scored five goals. So we failed on both ends of the field.”
Arena said complacency might be to blame.
“Players can get a little comfortable when they look at the league standings and see that we’re out in front, and I think that’s been the case with a number of players,” he said.
“If we’re going to make mistakes, we have a little bit of a cushion to do that, but when you forget about the things that got you where you are, it can be harder to get back to that point.
“There’s nothing good about this in my view, whether we have 40 points or 15 points. I’m not pleased with where we’re at at the moment.”
