Galaxy-Dallas Postgame
Jeff Cunningham and FC Dallas were flying Saturday at Home Depot Center. (AP Photos).
An aberration? Or something we should have seen coming given the Galaxy's 11 ties and eight one goal victories? The Galaxy have spent the season operating on a knife edge and on Saturday that facade collapsed spectacularly.
A slow back four was brutally exposed. David Beckham labored like the part-time player he is, clutching his right hamstring on occasion and looking uncomfortable for the most part. And what to say about the ancient Gregg Berhalter, ripped apart time and time again and looking sadly similar to Abel Xavier, Eduardo Dominguez, Gregg Vanney and other out of their element Galaxy defenders of recent vintage.
The only thing Becks had a stranglehold on in the game was Dallas' Daniel Hernandez.
Here's Coach Bruce Arena on the Galaxy's lack of speed:
"If we get into track meets we're probably not going to win a lot of the races. Our objective is to try and get into soccer games. And tonight we never gave ourselves a chance."
Arena on the long-term implications of the loss:
"We played bad tonight. ... There's no reason to use this game as a means of evaluating what we do well and what we don't do well. This is just a bad game and if we analyze it too much and dwell on it too much we're not going to do very well in our last five games. We're going to learn from what we did wrong tonight and make sure it doesn't happen again."
Here's a sarcastic Arena on the Galaxy's record setting performance:
"It's great to get in the record books, I guess. It's nothing I'm proud of I'll tell you that. ... I'll be honest with you: we got away with murder tonight getting out of here with six goals - it could have been worse."
Here's Gregg Berhalter on the loss:
"It could be helpful if we channel it the right way. It was an absolutely dreadful performance by us basically all over the field. We can look at it two ways: it was a one-off and we're going to learn from the game and it's good that it happened now toward the end of the season and it's not going to happen again. Or we can say 'listen, this is our team right now.' And I don't believe that. I really don't believe that. We're a better team than that. And we've shown a lot more discipline in the past in terms of our tactical formation and i think we have to just keep that going."
Here's Edson Buddle on why it took him so long to come back from a broken toe:
"I didn't realize I needed my toe as much as I do now. It takes a while to heal before you can do anything."
Quote of the night from Arena to sum things up:
"We just got our asses kicked."
Yup.
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About 100 Percent Soccer
Sportswriter Nick Green has written the 100 Percent Soccer column since 2005 for the Daily News, Daily Breeze and other Los Angeles area newspapers. The blog of the same name began in 2007. 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 and is married to a long-suffering soccer widow. Join Nick on FaceBook and follow him on Twitter.
Arena took the blame for this loss in the LA Times report and I agree with him 1000%. Allow me to expand as he did not and as none of the reporters locally have the balls or know-how to press him on the subject.
Arena has stayed with this problematic line up for the last several games and has just barely gotten by with some fortunate results. Throw in 2 travel-weary players in midfield, mixed in with 2 pedestrian strikers, another 35+ year old midfielder and a 5th string midfielder with a girl's name and this result was begging to happen. No defense can survive very long with that bunch in front of them.
I couldn't help but wonder why Bruce made no tactical adjustments after the half. The team was fortunate to tie the game up in the first place.
Beckham is an defensive liability in the middle and Miglioranzi was having an off night. Not to mention Berhalter was getting torched throughout the first half.
A very disappointing loss, but I'm not ready to sound the alarms just yet...