Atlanta 3-0 LA

An MLS regular season record 72,548 people came to watch the LA Galaxy repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot at Atlanta United. It was awesome to see that many people come to see this game and I’m glad to see that the Galaxy got to be a part of it, but boy do I wish we didn’t self destruct so easily in front of that many people and on national television.

I said yesterday that I hoped my 2-0 loss prediction would be wrong, but I didn’t mean like this! Not to instead lose 3-0! This morning my soccer coach asked me about my prediction for the match, to which I replied “we’re gonna lose,” and he said something like “come on, no fan ever predicts a loss” and I just told him that without Zlatan in Atlanta we would definitely lose. This LA team is just so very easy to predict when Zlatan isn’t there, it’s the same almost every time, chances get created but there is no one there to finish them, there are players who get to the chances they just don’t put them in the back of the net.

That lack of killer instinct was the story of the game for the first 20 or so minutes. The best chance we had all game came the man who wasted the most chances, Uriel Antuna in the 5th minute. Favio Álvarez slid a through ball in for Antuna who took it first time but put it straight at a sliding Brad Guzan. Antuna did not have another clear missed chance, however he had a lot of moments where instead of going to goal he would take it wide or fall in an effort to get free kick. Antuna is not a striker and that must be learned.

During the Galaxy’s good beginning of the game they did give up a lot of counter attacks to Atlanta and in the 23rd minute that came back to bite us as Pity Martínez played a cross on the ground in from the right flank that Dave Romney put into the back of our net for an own goal, 1-0 Atlanta.

In the 27th minute things nearly got worse for LA as a completely open Ezequiel Barco smashed a shot from the top of the box off of the bar and over, Bingham was totally beat here, LA were lucky to not go 2-0 down.

The Galaxy’s only real moment of ambitiousness came in the 35th minute when Favio Álvarez hit a low shot from around 25 yards that went just wide of the bottom left corner. Favio was one of the only players today who it looked like played with any desire to win and the willingness to take that shot demonstrated it well.

As bright as that moment was just eight minutes later in the 43rd minute Justin Meram would put another low cross into the Galaxy’s box that this time Giancarlo González would put in his own net making the game 2-0 Atlanta off of two own goals, what a joke.

Half-time 2-0 Atlanta. If we had anyone who can score I would’ve been really hopeful for the second half as we got a lot of chances in the first, but the reality is our entire 11 players on the field have only combined for eight goals all year, in other words we had no one who can score. Therefore I was pretty sure we were in for more of the same, losing the ball constantly and getting pressure on us for most of, if not all of the half. My pretty easy to make prediction was correct.

In the 69th minute a Josef Martínez volley was parried by David Bingham with the rebound falling to Emerson Hyndman who was then taken out by Giancarlo González right on the 6-yard box, a VAR decision ensued that ruled this a penalty. The penalty was converted and Josef Martínez tied the MLS record for most games in a row with a goal, nine. 3-0 Atlanta.

From then on there were still a couple more Atlanta chances but not one in particular that really scared me. They were all just Atlanta running through a tired looking Galaxy team with an already slow back line.

Full-time score, 3-0 Atlanta. This game was almost identical to the Portland game in terms of low quality effort with even lower quality finishing. In both games the first bit of the game was mainly LA’s, but as we failed to convert we got punished and from there we just stopped playing well and never really got back into it. The score was at least one goal better in this game but the game wasn’t better at all. As I said in the beginning of this article we shot ourselves in the foot and I mean how can it get more shooting yourself in the foot than scoring two own goals and giving up a penalty. I just have so many questions from what I saw out there, why was Daniel Steres, our possible best defender and 2nd highest scorer all year benched in a game where our leading scorer is suspended? Why are our subs always the same each game despite them seldom working? Why don’t we have a viable striking option aside from Zlatan? Why are our subs always made so late? The game was horrible and we need to get our act together before that playoff line starts looming closer and closer! Cristian Pavón better be a scoring machine because right now if Zlatan isn’t scoring then no one is making our final stretch of the season look grim.

Best player: Rolf Feltscher (I’m aware I never talked about him but his defensive work was solid)