CaliSports News

Salt Lake Pummels Galaxy 6-2

Galaxy

Coming off of a difficult loss to rival San Jose Saturday, the Los Angeles Galaxy would take on Real Salt Lake in LA’s annual Fourth of July game.

Coming into this matchup Salt Lake was sitting at dead last in the Western Conference standings and have really struggled to find any consistency after bringing in new head coach Mike Petke early on in the season.

Los Angeles on the other hand has been straddling playoff position for the last few weeks. Injuries and national team responsibilities have left the roster near barren, giving younger players time they probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

The absence of one player in particular was glaring for Los Angeles on the defensive end. Captain Jelle Van Damme was suspended for this one due to yellow card accumulation and the back-line for the Galaxy struggled mightily without his commanding presence.

In the 36th minute Salt Lake capitalized on the lack of leadership and youthful errors made by that Galaxy defense. Defender Bradley Diallo turned the ball over in a bad position allowing Salt Lake to catch the defense out of position. Albert Rusnak would be able to coast in and glide the ball by Clement Diop.

However one of those Galaxy defensive players isn’t youthful and isn’t inexperienced, Ashley Cole. Cole played far up the field in the 41st minute allowing Jose Villareal to find him with a clever chip pass then all Cole had to do was slip the ball to the left of RSL keeper Nick Rimando for the goal. Knotting things up at 1.

The first half of action wasn’t over yet though as Salt Lake had another exclamation point to add to what was a good half of play from the team struggling to find their form. A corner late in stoppage time finds the head of an unmarked Kyle Beckerman for another RSL goal.

Things only got worse for the Galaxy in the second half.

The team appeared to give up entirely on both side of the ball and would allow four more goals. Jefferson Savarino picked up a second half brace while Yura Movsisyan and Joao Plata each picked up one of their own.

Bradford Jamieson IV hammered home a shot on a free kick from Romain Alessandrini to make this one 6-2 and that scoreline is where this one would end.

An absolutely disastrous performance from a Galaxy squad that seemed to be climbing out their rough start to the 2017 campaign. While absences certainly played a role in the team losing this matchup, there is no reason whatsoever for a team with playoff hopes to get blown out in a manner like this to the last placed team in the Western Conference.

Hopefully Galaxy manager Curt Onalfo realizes the only reason there were any fans left in their seats by the time this one wrapped up was for the fireworks display happening right after the final whistle.

Might be time to try something different if he wants to start getting the right results in front of his home crowd.

Thanks for reading along Galaxy fans and happy 4th of July!

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