Final Result: Real Salt Lake at Galaxy

The power of two. The Galaxy scored two, conceded two and were without star players Landon Donovan and David Beckham for Saturday's game against Real Salt Lake. Here Head Coach Bruce Arena directs operations as Associate Head Coach Dave Sarachan looks on.

Photo by Sean Hiller

Full disclosure: I did not attend the game, opting to stay at home and watch on TV since I was technically on vacation.

Notable:
*The final score was 2-2.
*Bryan Jordan, recalled earlier this week from the USL Portland Timbers, scored in his first MLS start.
*The Galaxy winless streak hit 11 games, a team record.
*The Galaxy slumped to dead last in MLS.
*Salt Lake City striker Fabian Espinola scored a goal that was disallowed and broke a bone in his leg while spectacularly flipping during his celebration.

Galaxy beat writer Phil Collin kindly sent along some quotes that did not make it into the print edition.

Here's Real Salt Lake Coach Jason Kreis on the disallowed goal:

It was a little bit mind-boggling there. I'm not exactly sure how it went down. We all kind of thought he may have been in an offside position and we were all looking at the linesman and everybody on the field was as well. The linesman was running back indicating a goal and there was some discussion there between (Galaxy Coach) Bruce (Arena), the linesman and the fourth official and the referee. They came to a collective agreement that it was offside.

My initial indication from upstairs was that it was offside so I can't complain too much about the call. I wish it had been a little quicker because then my player wouldn't have celebrated the goal and broken his leg.

Here's Kreis on whether he has seen injuries from overly-exuberant goal celebrations before:

"Yeah I have. I used to do the same thing and came very close to injuring myself one time and I know there was another player in Dallas who did a flip after a goal one time and hurt his back and had to miss the next match," yet he added he won't curtail them. "No, absolutely not. That's what the fans come to see. They come to see the goals, they come to see the passion and the emotion the players have after they score a goal. It's a fluke accident and he could just as well could have broken his leg walking down the stairs this morning."

Actually, Jason fans come to see healthy players playing to their potential for their team so they get to see the best possible game of soccer they paid good money for. They don't come to see some flashy foreigner stupidly injure themselves.

At least Espinola was embarrassed by his dumb move even if Kreis wasn't: as far as I could tell he spent the rest of the game hiding behind his towel no doubt hoping the ground would open up and swallow him.

By the way, Kreis sounded like a coach who knew this result was a missed opportunity:

"I think in our locker room we're a bit disappointed with that result. We came into this game knowing they're missing a lot of key players, a lot of important players. We were confident enough to come in here and think we could take away the full three points. Having said that, we haven't been very good on the road this season so I think we do have to take some positive stuff out of tonight."

Here's Arena on the ever-lengthening 0-5-6 run:

"Am I worried about the streak or the length of it? No. I can't worry about that. I guess if they wouldn't have that streak, I probably wouldn't be here either."

Fair enough.

Here's Arena on Jordan:

Certainly he had a great effort tonight. I don't want to single out any one two or three particular players - it sticks out in my mind right now that the performance of Bryan Jordan was excellent.

"In terms of Bryan getting continued minutes we'll have to wait and see, but that performance tonight certainly doesn't hurt his cause at all," Arena added. "We were thin at a bunch of positions tonight and Bryan was having a good year at Portland and I'm aware of him from our coaching staff from preseason and he had a good week of training. We had not a whole lot of choices. Bryan certainly showed that he's a player that belongs on the field."

Arena sounded considerably less convinced about the latest contribution from Eduardo Dominguez:

"He did OK. He hasn't done much here and we knew the position would be challenging. By trade he's more of a center back. We put him in a new position and we knew fitness would be a problem as well. He gave us 55 minutes we needed because Brandon McDonald just came back from injury."

Finally, here's Jordan on the likelihood of getting back on the field once the likes of David Beckham and Landon Donovan return:

"I've been waiting for the opportunity and now that I got it I feel I did very well. I know we do have key players missing who might take over my role again but I'll still be fighting hard and trying to get out there."

Game story.

Highlights: