Result: Houston Dynamo 3 Galaxy 1
No Home Depot Center Wi-Fi meant no blogging from the game tonight, but frankly that was a blessing.
This was another insipid, uninspired display from a Galaxy team numerically and qualitatively short on players committing the same old problems and saying the same old things.
There were fans with brown paper bags on their heads at the game.
Coach Frank Yallop is sick of it too.
"Just start the questions," he said as he walked into the post-game press conference. "I've got no opening comments."
If I hear someone from the organization use the word naive one more time I'll have world champion boxer Ricky "The Hitman" Hatton (sitting next to David Beckham tonight in the AEG suite) give 'em a belt).
A sign one fan held in the stands tonight said it all: "Sampson never lost to Chivas." Ouch.
Yallop pulled no punches of his own tonight.
"Our confidence level tonight was piss poor, especially at the back," he said. "Anybody attacks us, we (soil) ourselves."
It's hardly worth discussing the game from a Galaxy perspective (although it should be noted the Dynamo clinched a playoff spot tonight).
Lets just say the tone was set when the Galaxy was forced to clear a ball off their goal line in the 10th minute. It went downhill from there.
It's safe to say the "Peanuts" theme music used for the kids' games at half time would have been appropriate for the main event.
Still, Alexi Lalas, president and general manager (for now) refused to guarantee Yallop his job as Toronto FC has done for Mo Johnston.
"We're not going to discuss technical staffing at this point," he said. "There's a much bigger picture we have to assess when we look at the staffing of the organization."
I'm not sure I even know what that means.
One possible translation: "I don't have the authority to guarantee Frank his job. (Especially when mine is in jeopardy)."
Game story here.
Updated: The Houston Chronicle had a telling quote Monday from Dwayne De Rosario:
“"The old Galaxy team was definitely a little more hungry," he said adding that his team exploited the Galaxy's lack of cohesion. "The team that doesn't work together is basically destruction waiting to happen. They're going to get down on each other and start yelling at each other. Then you start picking them apart. That's what we did.”
Columnist Nick Green has written 100 Percent Soccer
since 2005. A
native of England, he began writing about soccer in
the mid-1980s and in 2000 permanently exchanged a seat
in the stands for one in
the press box. He lives six miles from Carson's Home
Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chivas
USA and the training headquarters for U.S. Soccer.
Married to a long-suffering soccer widow, he has a cat
named Pele.