Galaxy hope to carry momentum into Red Bulls’ match
The Galaxy didn’t win a game last weekend. But they may have turned a corner.
And for coach Curt Onalfo, that counts as major progress.
“I think we became a team,” he said after Thursday’s early afternoon training session at StubHub Center. “I felt it. You could see it, see the energy.”
Whether that momentum carries over to Sunday’s match with the New York Red Bulls in Harrison, N.J. (3 p.m. PDT, FS1, Fox Deportes) remains to be seen. Although the Red Bulls (5-5-1) have lost twice on the road this month, they’re unbeaten in their last 19 games at home, going 16-0-3 with 12 shutouts over that span.
The Galaxy, meanwhile, are winless in their last four outings and are 2-5-2, their worst start through nine games since 2006. But Onalfo said something changed in the second half of last Saturday’s match, when his team rallied from a 2-0 deficit to earn a draw with the Chicago Fire.
Afterward, the Galaxy locker room, which has been funereal for most of the season, was giddy.
“It was a galvanizing moment for our group,” Onalfo said.
And some veterans were privately crediting Onalfo for righting a sinking ship.
The Galaxy have clearly been dysfunctional this season, with players sniping both at one another and at their coach. So Onalfo’s decision to pull poorly performing captain Jelle Van Damme from the game in the 33rd minute was seen less as a tactical move and more as an effort by the coach to put his stamp on the team.
Onalfo didn’t disagree.
“I felt like my personality started to come out a little bit for the first time,” he said.
Van Damme, who did not return to the field for the second half Saturday, said last week he had apologized to the team. However, Onalfo hasn’t decided whether that is enough to win Van Damme back the captain’s armband — or even a starting spot — Sunday.
“I have to decide what our lineup is,” said Onalfo, who added that his “message is heard loud and clear.”
One player who surely won’t be in the lineup is Jermaine Jones. The veteran midfielder is out at least a month with a Grade II sprain of the MCL in his right knee, sustained when he fell awkwardly in the closing minutes of the first half against Chicago.
The Galaxy, who had gone 2½ games and 230 minutes without a goal with Jones on the field, scored twice in the first 22 minutes after he left.
And there could be other changes going forward. The Galaxy’s decision to place defender Robbie Rogers on the season-ending injury list last week clears a roster spot, and the team, which says it has money to spend, is believed to be seeking a right back.
“[We’re] potentially looking at players that can fill that role,” Onalfo said.
In the meantime, the coach will try to build off last week’s second half.
Yet as good as those 45 minutes were, they can’t erase the fact that the Galaxy entered the weekend with more victories than only two of the 22 teams in MLS. And both of those wins came against teams that were playing with 10 men, leaving the Galaxy winless against even-strength opponents this season.
“Nobody wants to start the season the way we started it,” Onalfo said. But, he added, “some time in that second half we just began to click. And I believe it will just continue.”
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