Galaxy post-game

A curious game against the Wizards with curious goals naturally led to a curious outcome: the Galaxy have a winning record for the first time since October 2005, according to MLSNet reporter Greg Dario.

Trivia time: Who was the Galaxy coach then? (Answer at end of post).

The Galaxy scored three unanswered goals to snatch their first come from behind victory of the year.

No wonder Ruud Gullit was about as happy as I’ve ever seen him, cracking jokes and then laughing heartily at them.

Best line was on Beckham’s garbage time, yet slightly wondrous goal from fully 70 yards:

“If he was to miss that, his reputation would be gone.”

Landon Donovan had a pretty good line, too:

“Maybe goalies will think twice about coming out of their goals at the end of games like that. It doesn’t help their stats.”

Gullit was effusive in praise of Donovan (calling him the key factor of the game) and unflinching in his reasoning for sitting an out of form Abel Xavier at the start of the season:

“I put Xavier on the bench to stimulate him. He was not happy about it.”

But, he acknowledged Xavier had “responded well” in his second consecutive start.

Gullit said he took Franchino out early because he was having a “difficult time,” BTW.

Aside from Beckham’s goal the two main talking points was Landon Donovan’s suspect-looking penalty kick award and Buddle’s apparently offside goal.

Wizards Coach Curt Onalfo declined comment on the quality of the referee’s decision; midfielder Sasha Victorine jumped right in:

“I don’t think it’s a penalty kick to be honest.”

Donovan disagreed, naturally, saying Tyson Wahl tripped him and observing that the Wizards defender didn’t exactly argue with the decision.

HD telecast commentator Marcelo Balboa said replays clearly showed Donovan was tripped.

However, Balboa also said replays showed that Edson Buddle was a half-yard offside on his goal, something even Buddle didn’t know about.

The Galaxy began the game in “ridiculous” fashion, Gullit said, giving the ball away too easily and looking nervous, should have “buried” the game early, but eventually won a “great victory.”

Hmmmm.

Here’s Chris Klein on why the Galaxy have played much better in the second half of games most of the time:

“It’s a very good question. The bigger question is why we haven’t played so well in the first. We’ve got to start putting 90 minutes together.”

Here’s Donovan on the Galaxy’s outlook this season given the parity/unpredictability of MLS:

“If we focus we can be very good, but if not we’ll be back with the pack.”

By the way. I’ll have more later on this week on Donovan about collecting his 100th cap against England Wednesday as well as comments from Canadian Ante Jazic about playing Brazil in Seattle later in the week.

Game story is here.

The LA Times ripped into the officiating in this one.

Finally, don’t look now, but injury-ridden Chivas USA is riding a two-game winning streak.

Chivas USA was missing eight senior players through injury.

Anaheim’s Jorge Flores had a good night: It was the second goal of the 2007 Sueo MLS winner’s career in as many games, in just his third ever match and first game as a starter.

Trivia Question answer: Steve Sampson.

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