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Diop’s Struggles Lead To Galaxy Defeat

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Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson the LA Galaxy took on Sporting Kansas City for the Galaxy’s 4th game in just 10 days.

The tight schedule forced the club to make some changes to their normal lineup leaving a typical starter like Joao Pedro on the bench. Meanwhile the club is still waiting for the returns of Jermaine Jones, Sebastian Lletget, Bradley Diallo and Brian Rowe from various injuries and for Giovani Dos Santos to return from his Confederations Cup trip with Mexico.

Even with those absences and the hectic schedule, this is still a Galaxy team with an 8-game unbeaten streak entering Saturday night.

Sporting is by far the best team LA has played recently sitting currently in first place in the Western Conference. Giving away goals to a team like this one can lead to a poor result. Galaxy keeper Clement Diop seemingly wanted to put that hypothesis to the test.

In the 22nd minute Diop made a massive mistake on a long shot from Roger Espinosa as he appeared to try to punch the ball out and at the last second realized he made the wrong choice.

Diop’s night didn’t get much easier after his blunder. In the 35th minute Sporting defender Ike Opara decided he didn’t want to defend anymore and charged up the field. A lapse from Dave Romney and Jelle Van Damme in the middle left him with a lane but Diop didn’t help matters by charging off his line and not getting to the ball in time.

Credit to Opara for what potentially could be a goal of the year candidate but the Galaxy defense didn’t do themselves any favors on that one.

LA was left in the difficult position of trying to comeback down two goals against one of the best defenses in the league going forward.

Finally in the 77th minute Galaxy supporters got what they came to the stadium for. A well contested couple of shots for LA finally saw the ball bounce over the line off of a header from defender Dave Romney narrowing the Sporting lead to just 1.

The substitution of Bradford Jamieson IV brought some energy into the game for the Galaxy while he, Romain Alessandrini and Emmanuel Boateng made some great runs forward trying to knot this game up before the final blow on the refs whistle. However it wouldn’t be enough as that stout Sporting defense held on to that 2-1 lead and that would be your final.

The mistakes by Diop in goal will haunt this team as they look back on this game and have their unbeaten streak snapped at 8.

Coming up next for LA is a matchup with Sacramento Republic FC in the US Open Cup Wednesday back in Carson before the club comes back to MLS play next Saturday taking on San Jose in the Cali Clasico. Hopefully the team gets back to their winning ways after this tough defeat.

Thanks for reading along Galaxy fans!

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