LA Galaxy 1, New England Revolution 3
Saturday, March 31, 2012
The Home Depot Center – Carson, Calif.
Scoring Summary:
NE – Kelyn Rowe 1 (Unassisted) 10’
NE – Chris Tierney 1 (Shalrie Joseph 1, Kevin Alston 1) 13’
NE – Saer Sene 2 (Ryan Guy 1) 65’
LA – Robbie Keane 3 (Edson Buddle 1) 78’
Misconduct Summary:
None
Lineups:
LA Galaxy: Josh Saunders; Sean Franklin, Andrew Boyens, A.J. DeLaGarza, Todd Dunivant; Paolo Cardozo (Chad Barrett 71’), Juninho, David Beckham (Michael Stephens 46’), Marcelo Sarvas (Mike Magee 46’); Robbie Keane©, Edson Buddle.
Subs Not Used: Bill Gaudette, Tommy Meyer, Dan Keat, Hector Jimenez.
New England Revolution: Matt Reis; Kevin Alston (Florian Lechner 46’), A.J. Soares, Stephen McCarthy (Alec Purdie 85’), Chris Tierney; Kelyn Rowe, Shalrie Joseph, Clyde Simms, Lee Nguyen; Saer Sene (Fernando Cardenas 70’), Ryan Guy.
Subs Not Used: Bobby Shuttlesworth, Diego Fagundez, Jose Moreno, Jeremiah White.
Referee: Ricardo Salazar
Referee’s Assistants: Peter Manikowski and Jeff Muschik
4th Official: Armando Villarreal
NOTES:
- With the loss, the Galaxy are now 1-2-0 on the season for three points. The Galaxy remain in eighth place in the Western Conference standings.
- All three of the Galaxy’s games this season have been at home. The two home losses are two more than they recorded all of last season.
- Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena made three changes to the team that beat D.C. United 3-1 in their last game on March 18. Edson Buddle returned to the starting lineup in place of Chad Barrett while Paolo Cardozo and Marcelo Sarvas started in midfield in place of Landon Donovan and Mike Magee. Barrett and Magee each came on in the second half while Donovan did not dress for the game because of tightness in his left quad.
- In addition to Donovan, the Galaxy were once again forced to play without Adam Cristman, Omar Gonzalez, Bryan Jordan, Leonardo, Pat Noonan and Brian Perk, who all missed out because of injury.
- With Donovan missing the game through injury, Robbie Keane wore the captain’s armband for LA.
- The Galaxy had not conceded a first half goal this season prior to New England scoring in the 10th and 13th minutes.
- Robbie Keane scored his team-best third goal of the season in the 78th minute, making the score 3-1.
- This was the first time that Keane had scored in consecutive games for the Galaxy since joining the club last summer.
- Edson Buddle was credited with the lone assist on Keane’s goal for his first of the season. That was Buddle’s first assist for the club since May 8, 2010 when he set up one of LA’s four goals in the 4-0 win at Seattle.
- David Beckham saw his consecutive games with an assist streak snapped at two for this season. This was the first time that he did not have an assist in an MLS game (regular season or postseason) that he played in since October 16 last year. Since that game he had tallied six assists in six games for the Galaxy.
- The Galaxy have now conceded two or more goals in four of their five games in all competitions this season, including three of four at home. Only once in 2011 did LA give up more than a single goal at The Home Depot Center.
- Despite conceding the three goals, Josh Saunders tied a career-high with six saves on the night.
- This is the second straight season in which LA lost their third regular season game of the year. In 2011, they fell 4-1 on the road to Real Salt Lake, meaning that they have scored two and given up seven in their third game of the past two seasons. LA last won their third game of the year in 2010, winning 2-0 at Houston.
- For the first time in his MLS career, David Beckham was taken off for a substitute before the hour mark. The only other time that he started a regular season game and did not play at least 60 minutes was on August 15, 2009 when he was sent off 17 minutes into a 2-0 home loss to Seattle.
- The loss snapped LA’s three-game home unbeaten streak against the Revolution.
- The attendance for tonight’s game was 21,324 despite heavy rains throughout the game at The Home Depot Center.
- The Galaxy will be back in action on Saturday, April 7 when they hit the road for the first time to take on Sporting Kansas City at Livestrong Sporting Park. Sporting are currently in first place in the Eastern Conference with a 3-0-0 record for nine points heading into Sunday’s game with Chivas USA at The Home Depot Center. Their game against the Galaxy kicks off at 1 p.m. and can be seen live on ESPN and ESPN Deportes.
- The Galaxy open their MLS Reserve League schedule on Monday at 11 a.m. when they take on Chivas USA at The Home Depot Center.
QUOTES
LA Galaxy Head Coach Bruce Arena
On the team’s performance:
“We were certainly beat tonight from the opening kickoff. We were very poor and deserved to lose the game.”
On the halftime changes:
“I felt we needed to make a change in the midfield. Purely a coaches decision.”
On the team’s mindset:
“I think that you always have to be careful about not labeling things that clearly off of one game. I thought that our second half saw a lot more spirit and determination than there was in the first half. The first half was poor, I think that some bad communication in the early going cost us a couple of goals and we were never sharp on any play in the first half. Sloppy in every aspect of the game on both sides of the ball.”
LA Galaxy Forward Robbie Keane
On the defeat:
“We did the exact same thing we did in the first few games and that’s concede sloppy goals. Every goal that we’ve conceded so far has been very, very similar. It’s stuff that you do when you’re a kid defending and we didn’t do it properly tonight. We’ve only got ourselves to blame so we can’t point the finger anywhere else but at ourselves and we have to take it as a team and try to move on to next week. It’s never good when you lose a game, especially when you’ve got a week until the next game and there isn’t one in a few days time. You have to get your head around getting yourself focused. It’s going to be a long week for the boys so it’s up to everyone to pick their heads up and be men and get on with it.”
On what the team needs to do better:
“If we knew that we would have sorted it out a few games ago. I don’t know whether it’s a lack of concentration, I’m really not too sure but it’s something that we have to rectify very, very quickly because we’re conceding too many goals.”
On how the team will react:
“We have to take this on board as a team and as a group of players. It wasn’t good enough from any of us so we have to accept it and keep our heads down and be babies about or just get on with it, be a man and make sure we’re ready for next week.”
LA Galaxy Defender A.J. DeLaGarza
On the defeat:
“We’ve had some difficult ones this year so far. You come back into the locker room and it’s just different than last year. Obviously it’s a rough start to our season but we still have 30 plus games so we can’t hang our heads, we have to get back and we have a big game next week in Kansas City.”
On what’s different between this year and last:
“What’s different is that we’re not scoring and we’re not keeping the ball out of our net. We’re not clicking. They had three crosses and three goals and that’s unacceptable. That’s something that we’ve been working on in practice for the last two weeks because we know that we haven’t done well with that the first three or four games.”
On how the team will recover:
“We’re all professionals and we’re going to bounce back. It’s a tough loss. I’m pretty sure everyone thought that we were going to win but that’s why you have to play the game and we didn’t in the first half.”
LA Galaxy Defender Sean Franklin
On tonight’s game:
"We dug ourselves a hole going down 2-0 at halftime. We had a chance after the first goal. I thought we came out strong in the second half. We created chances we just didn’t put them away. They get one chance and they basically killed the game off. It is hard to come back from 3-0. We got a goal late. I thought we picked ourselves up but there are things we need to work on. We need to get better defensively. We need to go back to X’s and O’s."
On what Bruce Arena said at half time:
“He pretty much lit a fire under everyone. You go out there and see who wants to fight. He is passionate about this game and we know how much it means to him and our team and that is all we can give him in the second half. Go out there and work our butts off and I thought we did in the second half but we didn’t do that for the full 90.”
On comparing last season to this season:
“It is frustrating. We knew how good we were last year. We knew that team spirit in us last year. I think no one fears us this year. Teams are coming in here to our home which they didn’t do last year and beat us. That is something we can’t do. The positive about it is that we still have 30 something games left in the season. We have to get things right now before the end of the season.”
LA Galaxy Midfielder Juninho
(Translated from Spanish)
On what was said at halftime:
“He told us that we need to play. We are playing at home in front of our fans we need to win. We can’t give up two goals like that. We need to try to play better.”
On allowing two goals early in the game:
“We took it hard, conceding a goal at the beginning of the game. It complicated everything for the team. It is difficult to come back from it. New England played well and got the result.”
New England Head Coach Jay Heaps
Overall thoughts on game:
“For us it was a good start. We came out, we executed our game plan, which was we wanted to: possession. We know LA is so good on the attack, and the old the cliché, the best defense is a good offense and we wanted to keep the ball as long as we could at times and take our chances and that’s we did.”
On getting behind the Galaxy’s backline:
“It was a combination of just keeping the ball, kind of getting them a little bit stretched, and then trying to find the holes. I thought (Lee) Ngyuen and Kelyn (Rowe) did a real nice job of finding good spots and when they were able to turn, that’s when we find and get space in behind.”
On Kelyn Rowe’s performance…
“Kelyn has been excellent for us. And tonight getting in front of his home crowd, his family, I think his family was here, but all of his college friends for sure, it was good for him. He wanted to impress and he wanted to get a goal and you could see he was real excited for it.”
On Ryan Guy:
“Ryan was excellent, all over the place. Won all the first balls, was there for the second ball and created a great little bit of space down on the side for the first goal and again for the third goal. Ryan was a player this week where we gave him a lot of opportunities up front. Assistant coach Remi Roy was, like, hey look it, he does well up top let’s give him a chance. So, we trained him up top this week and he was flying.”
New England Midfielder Ryan Guy
Overall thoughts on the win:
“I think last week was a big confidence booster for us. It showed that we can play well as a team. We’ve been working hard on our shape and also our team chemistry is really coming along. So, we had confidence coming into the game, we knew our game plan and I think the right rub of the grass was there for us and we finished off our chances— which was fantastic.”
On playing up top this week:
“I felt great. Saer and I have a good relationship, on and off the ball. And I think with the players that we have, Jay made a decision and it’s my job to go with that decision. Hopefully with the result today it’s proof that both the personnel and the coaching staff are doing stuff right.”
New England Defender Chris Tierney
On starting road trip with win:
“Three points against the champions, huge. Good result for us and, you know, we’re not going to hang on it too long, we’re obviously happy with the result, but we’re going to look forward to playing Dallas on Thursday.”
On his goal:
“Just a great combination to put Kevin in, and I just took a chance coming into the box late, and kind of slip through and didn’t have that much to do. Just a good set up and just got lucky with a run in the box.”
On his team scoring two goals in span of three minutes…
“That second goal is important. We got the early one, great run by Kelyn, and then getting the second in and then once we got the third that was the killer instinct we need to have going forward. We can’t be happy dropping back looking for the shutout after we score one so I think we’re all happy we went for it and tried to get more.”
New England Midfielder Kelyn Rowe
On first career goal in MLS:
“We got it back defensively. Shalrie Joseph, great with his left foot, all the way across. I just tried to put it on frame and luckily it bounced right back to me and I put it in.”
On his team’s attacking play:
“I thought we did well, especially going forward. When we were on defense we won the ball back and when we went forward we found those spots. The forwards, myself, Lee Nguyen, Clyde and Shalrie definitely found those spots between the midfield and the backline. I thought we played a great game overall.”
On returning to LA:
“I went to college two years, well, I guess a year and quarter, but it was great to play in front of family and friends and to get that first goal in front of those people it’s really fun.”
