CARSON, Calif. – A clean sheet provided a silver lining for the LA Galaxy’s defense in the club’s scoreless draw with Sporting Kansas City.
Los Angeles’ backline has been uncharacteristically leaky in 2016, but they racked up their second clean sheet of the season on Thursday. Amid a frustrating night that saw the Galaxy’s much vaunted attack come up short, the shutout provided some solace to the team.
“The positive we can take out of it is we got our second shutout of the year,” A.J. DeLaGarza said. “Obviously, we’ve got guys who can score goals, but we haven’t had a team on the field that can get shutouts. That was a big thing tonight.”
Neither side created many chances in what was a dull draw between the two clubs, but it was Sporting that looked the brighter side throughout the match. Particularly early on, KC were able to put pressure on the Galaxy’s defense, but Los Angeles’ back four held firm and kept Kansas City off the board.
After a difficult outing in the last-minute loss to the Montreal Impact, Galaxy goalkeeper Brian Rowe put in a vintage performance on the night. After what he described as his worst night at the office a week earlier, Rowe was pleased with the defensive performance on Thursday.
“I put the last game behind me. What happened, happened. This one I focused on it like it was just another game,” Rowe said. “I was happy with the team; I was happy with defense fighting to get the clean sheet. It’s been a while for that. Little disappointing we weren’t able to get a win or any goals.
“A win would have been icing on the cake, but we’ll take the shutout and the defensive stop at home.”
As the team prepares to head into the second half of the season, the Galaxy insist that they’ll have to begin to rack up more shutouts—and turn some of these draws into wins—once play resumes.
“These ties are starting to add up and we hope that it doesn’t cost us late in the season,” DeLaGarza said. “We need to come back and hopefully, go on a run like we did before we had the last break. We need to take advantage of this [break] and come back a lot better.”
Adam Serrano is the LA Galaxy Insider. Read his blog atLAGalaxy.com/Insiderand contact him atLAGalaxyInsider@Gmail.com
