SANDY, Utah – The LA Galaxy’s 3-0 defeat to Real Salt Lake was so comprehensive that head coach Bruce Arena borrowed a line from Shakespeare to describe the loss.
“Well, it was a comedy of errors today,” Arena said afterward borrowing the title of one of the Bard’s most legendary comedies.
Much of the capacity crowd of 21,004 at Rio Tinto Stadium was still trying to get in their seats when Salt Lake took the lead. The goal came when a poor clearance off a Javier Morales cross fell to Devon Sandoval, who beat Donovan Ricketts for the early goal.
Despite being second best all evening, the Galaxy nearly equalized twice less than 20 minutes later when both Robbie Keane and Steven Gerrard forced saves from Salt Lake goalkeeper Nick Rimando.
Before the Galaxy could find their equalizer, the hosts doubled their lead off a Morales penalty kick that was won through a late challenge by Juninho in the penalty area on Juan Manuel Martinez in the 28th minute.
Sandoval gave Salt Lake a third in the second half, but the Galaxy understand that their mistakes in the opening minutes did them in.
“The second half doesn’t concern me as much as the poor play on defending the corner kick, and obviously, we need better judgment in conceding the penalty,” Arena said. “Then we had our chances but give them credit, their goalkeeper made some saves in the first half. Then we go down to 2-0 and need to come out in the second half, and get a goal back. By conceding the third goal, the game was effectively over.”
Added captain Robbie Keane, “It was difficult. We give full credit to Salt Lake; they were certainly the better team tonight, there’s no question about that. When you concede early, it’s certainly going to be difficult, and then the penalty. As a group and as a team, we just have to take responsibility for this, and quickly move on.”
While Arena and Keane are quick to turn the page, defender A.J. DeLaGarza stressed that the Galaxy defense must learn from their errors at Rio Tinto.
“We were not marking well on the first goal. The second goal, we gave up a penalty. It just started off bad, and you can’t do that on the road,” said DeLaGarza. “We have four games left, and we were a position today to move back into first, and we needed to take advantage of it. We’ve got four games left to win a supporters’ shield and start winning some games before the playoffs. Hopefully, we make that.”
LA will look to keep their dreams of the Supporters’ Shield alive next week when they host FC Dallas in a match with playoff implications. With the Galaxy still holding Supporters’ Shield aspirations, DeLaGarza says that the time is now for LA to turn their fortunes around.
“We know how dangerous Dallas is,” said DeLaGarza. “We’re going to be at home, and we need to bring some energy which we don’t bring on the road for whatever reason. We’ve got four games left so something has to start clicking.”
Adam Serrano is the LA Galaxy Insider. Read his blog at www.LAGalaxy.com/Insider and LAGalaxyInsider@Gmail.com
