So the Galaxy get Beckham and Donovan back, at home, against an expansion team that can't keep possession. What could go wrong? You're right, not much.
The Galaxy grabbed this match by the balls right from the get go. Portland looked out of their depth away from home. In the 4th minute Chad Barrett sliced up the Portland back line and welcomed Troy Perkins back to MLS with a nice goal, 1-0 to the Galaxy. Could Portland respond?
No.
A couple of minutes later, LA deftly moved the ball up the pitch. I mean, it was effortless. They tried a flick in to Landon Donovan at the top of the 18, but apparently, somebody breathed on him, and he was awarded a PK. Rodney Wallace received a yellow on the play. Looked soft to me. That's beside the point though. Donovan slotted home the PK and put LA up 2-0 in the 8th minute.
So again we waited to see if Portland could respond. Could they show any of that fire that they showed at home? Unfortunately, no. The rest of the half pretty much played out like a shooting gallery for LA. The lone bright spot for the Timbers being that Perkins made several nice saves that kept them in sight of Galaxy. PDX started to move the ball a little bit better right at the end, but the half time whistle brought a stop to that.
The second half wasn't very pretty either. You could tell LA took their foot off the gas a little bit, and Portland just had nothing for them. Juan Pablo Angel checked in, and he did make his presence felt tonight. In the 68th minute he served a gorgeous ball across to Donovan, who headed it in to an open net to give the Galaxy a 3-0 lead. That was pretty much all she wrote.
Portland did show some character though. They refused to give up. Some of it was probably LA relaxing, but PDX did get some nice shots on goal in the closing minutes, particularly from Kenny Cooper. However, Ricketts was stout in net and earned the clean sheet as LA won the match by that 3-0 score.
Obviously this one was full of positives for the Galaxy. This was the best they've played so far, and as much as I kid Donovan with the Landycakes thing, he looked great, notching two goals. Beckham was Beckham, delivering first class service. Still couldn't keep his mouth shut though. He did manage to avoid a yellow tonight. I would say a better night from Angel coming off the bench and a top notch performance from Ricketts in goal.
For Portland, they might be tempted to go back to the drawing board. I'm not sure that would be a great idea though. The best thing might be for their team to actually just get the minutes together on the pitch. That might help them avoid some of the bonehead mistakes that they made tonight. Again, they have to figure out how to get possession of the ball and keep it. Maybe then they can start to be more consistent between road and home matches.
No comments:
Post a Comment