LA 2-2 Seattle

The Galaxy played an absolute six-pointer against the Seattle Sounders at Dignity Health Sports Park last night. I came into this one with a good feeling but knew that we couldn’t get too cocky as this Seattle team is good.

The game started off weird as we wore our away jersey and attacked the opposite direction of how we normally start the game. The jerseys I understood, as Seattle’s green could look similar to our white and their white would obviously look like our white. Even then I felt if we wore our away kit Seattle should’ve worn their away as well. I didn’t really have much of an issue with that though. The attacking the opposite direction I actually preferred since they wore going towards me in the 2nd half instead of the 1st, but I still didn’t get why they did it.

Getting into the actual game, we started off fantastic. Good chances coming early as inside the first five minutes Diego Polenta and Cristian Pavón both had fantastic chances to score that sadly went begging. This time though, I knew that as long as we could keep on playing how were we would win 4-0 or so.

On the counter attack, after Cristian Pavón missed his chance, Raúl Ruidíaz ran right by Daniel Steres who then fouled him not far from the halfway line but since he was the last defender he was shown a red card for denial of a goal scoring opportunity (DOGSO). It hurt to see as it happened only six minutes into the game, but, it was DOGSO so we have to accept it. We were now to play with 10 men for 84 minutes, uh oh.

Just three minutes later however, Favio Álvarez would square a ball to Jonathan Dos Santos who would seemingly be tripped in the penalty area. Penalty kick! Or so I thought. After a check upstairs the call would go to VAR and be overturned. No penalty. I still after watching it many times am confused. Was the original infraction a handball or foul? There was contact with Jona, enough that it certainly seemed harsh to overturn. There was also contact from the ball with a Seattle players arm, and his arm was out. So all around it just seems like I’m missing something in why the call was overturned.

From there most of the half we looked good, great for playing with 10 men, but it was tight and Seattle were probably slightly better. The biggest issue was that it seemed we had pushed up too high leading to our defense getting easily spread out.

That high line and spread out defense would come back to bite us in the 42nd minute when Jordan Morris was held onside by the midfield line and darted down the left wing before weaving through our spread defense only to get the knocked over by Jørgen Skjelvik. That wasn’t enough to stop the attack however as the ball would fall to Harry Shipp who slid the ball through for Raúl Ruidíaz to easily put in the net. 1-0 Seattle. I can not express just how sloppy the defense looked on this play. There was no communication or organization. It was just extremely poor!

We clearly didn’t learn from that play though, as just a minute and a half later our high line would nearly prove to be even easier to beat as a ball would be played out wide again to Jordan Morris who would play Nicolás Lodeiro right outside of the box who would play another through ball for Ruidíaz, but this time the ball would hit David Bingham’s ankle and go out for a corner. We got lucky. Still 1-0, barely.

In the 45th minute despite being a man down we struck. Sebastian Lleget whipped an out swinging ball to Zlatan Ibrahimović who did what Ibra does, head it in for a goal, 1-1. We could not lose this game so seeing that go in just to change momentum as well as tie the game was massive.

Half-time 1-1. We really could use three points here, but being a man down it was far more important to NOT lose! Against a team like Seattle we could not afford to give up three points in our house. We were playing well, however Seattle were still the better side thanks to their man advantage. If we had 11 guys we would’ve been far superior in the opening 45.

Seattle continued being the better side to open up the 2nd half until the 65th minute when a cross came into Zlatan Ibrahimović who was brought down by Kim Kee-hee. Penalty! This time it would stand. Every time Zlatan steps up to take a penalty now I get nervous, he has a 100% conversion rate for the Galaxy and obviously that can’t last forever. So, every time I think “oh man, this is it, this is the one he’ll miss” and so far I’ve been wrong each time and that didn’t change this time. He put the ball past Stefan Frei and in. 2-1 LA. It was time to lock down the win, not too hard though as the creativity of Lodeiro and Morris definitely could’ve opened us up to level the score if we gave them too many chances.

In the 71st minute Zlatan had the chance to get his hat-trick and kill off the game when Uriel Antuna played him a ball that left Zlatan with an open goal but he somehow missed it leaving the score 2-1. Yes, Zlatan had a good game today and did his job, but once you do your job you can’t just ignore easy parts of it, such as putting in open nets. We can’t be livid at him thanks to his earlier moments but it is still reasonable to be annoyed and or disappointed. This play did really scare me though as it felt like that was it, that was the chance to kill the game and we’ve now allowed Seattle the chance to tie it up instead of finishing it off.

In the 82nd minute disaster would strike for LA as our high line again burned us. A through ball was sent to Jordan Morris that forced David Bingham to come way off of his line to stop the break, the issue was that Bingham didn’t have much of anywhere to direct his header where it wouldn’t hit somebody and go back toward our net. He went for the header and sure enough it hits Skjelvik straight in the face and goes in our goal. 2-2. That was truly one of the most unlucky own goals I’ve ever seen and it sucks for David Bingham in particular as he honestly had kept us in this game for large parts of it.

After that, Seattle kept pushing and kept pushing for that 3-2 goal but luckily for LA it never came.

Full-time 2-2. I was furious after this match about the way we dropped these points but the bottom line, is we tied in a six-pointer when we were a man down almost the whole game. Yes, the taste left in my mouth after that game isn’t good at all but we must remain positive. Imagine if we had 11 guys all game, we would’ve obliterated Seattle. Could we have tied in a worse way than a Zlatan missed open net and a horribly unlucky own goal in the 82nd minute? No, not really, but at least we didn’t lose.

Best performer: David Bingham (We would’ve lost if it weren’t for him, no doubt about it)