CARSON, Calif. – Much of the publicity from last night’s wild finish to the LA Galaxy’s 5-2 victory over Isidro Metapán will revolve around the controversial red card given to forward Robbie Keane, but midfielder Michael Stephens had a bit of a bizarre moment of his own.
In the 80th minute, as Stephens prepared to come on for David Beckham, the young midfielder was awarded a yellow card—seemingly— for time wasting. The moment was a strange one for the midfielder, but Stephens was able to shake it off quickly as he helped set up Juninho’s second goal capping off a five goal performance for LA.
Below are Stephens' thoughts from the match.
(On what the referee said to him as he awarded a yellow…
STEPHENS: “Nothing. He didn’t even say anything to me; he just gave it and kept on going, but who knows.”
(On the game’s emotional end…)
STEPHENS: “I think that the referee let the game get away from him for a bit and things got out of control there for a second. I thought that overall, we responded pretty well. Obviously, it’s unfortunate that Robbie got the red card, but we scored two goals after and I think that even once we conceded, we scored again so we responded well.”
(On whether the Galaxy were facing the refs and Metapán…)
STEPHENS: "You could say that definitely. There were some bizarre calls, but what are you going to do. We knew that coming into it, but I thought that we got on with it fine.”
(On facing Dallas…)
STEPHENS: “Obviously, we have a game this weekend, a really big game. I don’t think that[the Metapán] game was too physically demanding so I think that we will recover well.”
