MONTREAL – Down 2-0 at the half to Major League Soccer basement-dwellers Montreal Impact, the LA Galaxy were left searching for answers and it was clear once the halftime whistle sounded that a change needed to be made.
With injuries and absences plaguing the Galaxy defense, head coach Bruce Arena opted to play Dan Gargan, Omar Gonzalez and Leonardo as the back three of a 3-5-2 formation against Montreal. The three had performed well together against 10-men Colorado Rapids days earlier, but from the get-go on Wednesday, it wasn’t working as Montreal threatened early and often with their pace and ability to exploit the gaps in the Galaxy backline.
Montreal made the Galaxy pay as the league’s worst side found themselves up by two goals at the half, prompting Bruce Arena to make a change and bring on defender Robbie Rogers for Stefan Ishizaki.
“We switched to a back four because we don’t have the players capable of making the kind of adjustments that I asked them to make with a back three. That’s my responsibility,” Arena told reporters. “I’d like to see that we had players with a bit of a more tactical feel, but it’s obvious that some of them don’t and it’s not the appropriate formation to play so that’s my responsibility as the coach.”
Galaxy center back Omar Gonzalez, who often found himself running across the field covering for others in the first half, agreed that a change was needed.
“3-5-2 is something that we’re not comfortable with,” said Gonzalez. “You need hours and hours of practice on it and we decided to give it a go with only an hours’ worth of practice the day before the game. As you can tell, it didn’t work out for us.”
But what in particular made the formation so difficult to play in?
“You just have to cover a lot of space and Montreal has a very good front five,” Gonzalez added. “We weren’t able to get on [Impact midfielder Ignacio Piatti] and he was able to turn, make the game and run at us. When that’s happening you’re scrambling.”
Those gaps –particularly along the left side of defense— appeared to shrink once Rogers was placed into the match and LA was able to utilize their more traditional formation.
With the 4-4-2 restored, the Galaxy quickly found their groove offensively as Gyasi Zardes and Alan Gordon struck to pull LA level.
“In the second half, we went back to our 4-4-2 and everyone feels comfortable. We’re able to get around guys in the midfield and put pressure on guys so they’re not able to turn and counter us,” said Gonzalez. “We did much better. We had more possession of the ball and we had two good goals that got us the point.”
Said Keane, “It was clear to see that we didn’t have the personnel to play there. Once we went back to the original formation, we got back into the game.”
Although the players and coaches were quick to show their disapproval of the formation on Wednesday night, if the Galaxy decide to use a three in the back formation later in the season, they insist that they’ll perform much better than they did in Montreal.
“We learned our lesson. We didn’t do a good enough job of figuring out how to do it. We’re professionals and guys are intelligent to make it work, but it just wasn’t good enough,” said Donovan. “We’re disappointed in how the first half went but we’re satisfied with the character that we showed to get a result.”
Adam Serrano is the LA Galaxy Insider. Read his blog at LAGalaxy.com/Insider and contact him at LAGalaxyInsider@Gmail.com.
