VANCOUVER, B.C. – Nothing went right for the LA Galaxy Saturday night in Vancouver.
Not their vaunted offense, not their normally stout defense and not even their jersey printing.
In front of a capacity crowd at BC Place, Galaxy were walloped 2-0 by an up-and-coming Vancouver Whitecaps FC side. Vancouver dominated from start to finish and out hustled the Galaxy from opening whistle.
“They just played better than us; they were the better team all around. They kept the ball, they counter attacked very, very well and at the end of the night they scored two goals,” Galaxy forward Robbie Keane said. “You just have to hold your hands up and accept we weren’t good enough tonight and they were the better team.”
Relying on their speed and energy, the Whitecaps overwhelmed the Galaxy as their blistering counterattack kept LA pinned down for wide stretches of the match.
With the Galaxy’s midfield unable to keep possession, the forward pairing of Keane and Gyasi Zardes—whose jersey was misspelled ‘Zardez’— were left isolated.
Although the Galaxy’s defense and Vancouver’s poor finishing kept the game scoreless for the opening 55 minutes, the excellent Kekuta Manneh and Octavio Rivero soon broke LA’s resistance scoring twice in 10 minutes to seal the victory.
And as bad as the match was, had goalkeeper Jaime Penedo not come up with several stops late, LA’s deficit could have been higher.
“Usually we outplay teams, we don’t let other teams touch the ball, although tonight we let Vancouver catch a rhythm,” Zardes said. “This team is very fast on the counter attack, when we lost the ball they were already running away with it.”
Even Zardes couldn’t help but find a silver of truth in the notion that the jersey misprint was somehow symbolic of the Galaxy’s listless showing.
“Everything was just off,” Zardes said knowingly. “We were just off.”
Postgame, Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena had one message to his squad: Don’t let this type of showing happen again.
“Personally every player can look at their performance and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Arena said. “We didn’t do anything well tonight, no excuses.”
In order to follow their coach’s words and prevent another performance like Saturday’s disappointment at BC Place, Galaxy defender Omar Gonzalez believes that LA must learn from the result, but forget the particulars as soon as possible.
“We just have to learn how to play in away games. We can’t play with the same tactics as we do at home. Obviously, we haven’t won an away game in a while so we have to figure something out,” Omar Gonzalez said. “This was just a one off [performance], one that you want to forget as quickly as possible, move on and worry about the next game.”
Adam Serrano is the LA Galaxy Insider. Read his blog at LAGalaxy.com/insider and contact him at LAGalaxyInsider@Gmail.com.
