CARSON, Calif. -- The LA Galaxy opened their Reserve League slate on Monday with a 1-1 draw with the Seattle Sounders FC reserves.
Eriq Zavaleta opened the scoring for Seattle with a header from a corner kick in the seventh minute of play, but LA equalized in the 29th minute with a penalty kick goal by Hector Jimenez. The penalty was set up by rookie Charlie Rugg, who was brought down in the 18-yard box by Seattle defender Zach Scott.
After starting off the game slowly, LA controlled the run of play for a majority of the match and created several dangerous opportunties. Although LA was unable to find the go-ahead goal, the mood was by and large a positive one after the draw.
"I thought as I looked at this game, my concern going into it was that I thought that we would lack sharpness and physically get tired because we haven't played in so long. Most of these guys haven't played 90 minutes since preseason because of our congested schedule and that's how it's gone. We started out not sharp at all, I thought we had a very slow start," Assistant coach and Reserve League head coach Curt Onalfo told reporters. "We talked about not giving away unnecessary free kicks and corner kicks away and we give away a corner kick that we didn't need to give away. [On the goal], they had more height than we did and they took advantage of it early. Having said that, we found our feet and we started moving the ball how we like to play. I thought we were really good for the rest of the first half and created chances, but too bad we didn't get more than one goal because I thought we deserved to.
"The second half was kind of choppy, [Seattle] did better job to find their shape and the field was no longer slick and the ball kind of caught up on us and we weren't sharp in the final third where we needed to be. The guys plugged away and fought through it," Onalfo added. "Overall, for the first reserve game with the fact that we haven't played a reserve game in quite while, I'm fairly pleased. We just need to take some things away from it so that we're that much better."
LA resume their Reserve League slate on Sunday April 28 against Real Salt Lake at America First Field in Sandy, UT.
