The LA Galaxy earned a scoreless draw in the opening leg of the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals, but the MLS club could do little to prevent Santos Laguna from scoring on Tuesday night.
Four goals from Santos Laguna were more than enough to send the Galaxy packing from the competition, as the Mexican club sealed a lopsided a 4-0 victory in Mexico to advance in CCL action.
Entering Tuesday’s clash, the Galaxy were regarded as the MLS side in the best position to advance, but the team’s hopes took a major beating in the opening half.
Santos Laguna’s Martin Bravo got the scoring started in the 19th minute when the Galaxy failed to defend a corner kick. Just four minutes later, Bravo set up Uli Dávila for the Liga MX club’s second of the evening. The real backbreaker came in the 36th minute as Djaniny headed home from another set piece, leaving the Galaxy in a nearly insurmountable hold heading to halftime.
Another goal in the 65th minute gave Bravo his brace, while dooming the Galaxy to a resounding defeat and elimination.
The Galaxy played without fullback Ashley Cole, who was in Rome for the birth of his child. With Cole’s absence, the Galaxy lineup featured just one change from the side that earned a scoreless draw at the StubHub center in the opening leg.
Following the loss, the Galaxy look to kickstart the team’s MLS campaign on Sunday when they host D.C. United in their league opener.
The sky is falling! =/
The sky isn’t falling, but for all the talk we’ve been hearing about the improvements and great strides MLS has made, these results continue to be the norm, and CCL cup runs like Montreal’s last year continue being outliers.
No excuses, this is certainly a terrible loss. Everything that could go wrong did. But good luck if you’re burying the Galaxy this season. The Quadruple may be off the table, but they’re still on track for the treble.
Thank God the Galaxy “upgraded” their defense or they could have had an embarrassing loss. Two of the SL goals were from headers, so I guess the Galaxy could use somebody good in the air on defense. You know, somebody like Omar Gonzalez. Well, not to worry, they still have that high powered offense that has scored 0 goals over these last 2 games. I remember a few years back when they were playing Monterrey in the knockout round and had the home game and match won until they gave up a couple of goals in the last 10 minutes. So, this time they avoided all suspense. The Galaxy seem to be going backwards, not progressing.
“…we want Major League Soccer to become one of the top leagues in the world by 2022. That’s still our goal.” – Don Garber
Time’s ticking.
Garber deserves a lot of credit for expanding the league but his obsession with expansion fees/growing the league far too large and parity driven mechanics will continue to leave MLS in the dust within actual competitive (not friendlies) matches outside MLS play.
As others have said: can’t be a top league if you can’t compete with anyone outside your own league. Preseason or not, 0-0/0-4 with this LA Galaxy roster indicates something is very wrong. The mid-season friendlies, playing during international breaks/competitions, and starting the season in March are just tip of the iceberg issues that highlight a disconnect between the league being legitimate or just carnival act.
There’s no denying it, this loss was the MLS version of a canary in a coal mine. Something is disturbingly wrong and until MLS stops trying to be the NFL and actually adapts to the world’s game the trend will continue.
If you like parity, even outside of MLS competition, Garber is your man.
Your comment about following and replicating NFL is spot on. If you want to be a parity driven league, fine. But if Don Garber cites the NFL (quite possibly the most isolated professional sport in the world; certainly one with the least global competition) as an example for why MLS continues to do things a certain way, we’re going to continue seeing results like the above.
Garber needs to at least acknowledge that some of the reason our teams continues failing in international competition are due to certain MLS rules and practices.
I presume there will be an absence of soccerhorn’s (apparently new SBI writer) puff piece for LA Galaxy this week?
I’ve said it since they started making these ridiculous roster moves (pre-CCL embarrassment): If LA fail to raise one or two trophies this year Arena should lose his job. Anything less would be a managerial disaster and warrants replacement.
Not a good start and may be a sign of things to come.
Galaxy=MLS “Super Club”??? LOL
Yes, if you could time travel and subtract 10 years from all of their marquee players: Keane, Gerrard, Cole, De Jong, etc.
will continue*
MLS’s ratings drop because results like these. I lost interest watching MLS opener, and why watch a league being mock by majority soccer of media, and MLS refuses to be elite in North America, will
to be viewed as third rate by soccer market like South Florida.
I love MLS and do my best to support the league (unlike a lot of my eurosnob friends), but this has become embarrassing. MLS either needs to change its own structure (which needs to happen if the league wants to accomplish its goal of becoming one of the world’s top leagues) or do more to pressure Concacaf to change the Champions League format. To have only 2 teams reach the final stage since 2011 is ridiculous and it’s hard to argue that MLS should be taken seriously on the world stage if its teams can’t even come close to being the best in the region.
Why should CONCACAF adjust itself because MLS decides to use an alternate schedule? Hate to break it to you, but this embarrassing showing is all on LAG.
This is the same excuse Matt Besler used at the January camp last year “we’re coming off of preseason”. WTF, you know these things are coming. Take some pride in yourself, who you represent, act like a damn professional club, and prepare yourself accordingly. Montreal did it.
CCL will continue to be a side show, as long as MLS cannot be competitive in it. CCL organizers know it. Liga MX knows it. Scheduling change will only do so much. If MLS will not take it seriously enough to improve their quality and increase squad depth, then they shouldn’t bother playing in it. It’s an embarrassing joke. MLS is letting the tournament and the region down. It’s MLS holding CCL back.
20 years and mls still Sux. When r u #bushleaguemls fans going to figure this out?
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Where is the money going, b/c the results sure as hell aren’t on the field.
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Support your local independent soccer clubs!
Here in Portland, we are primarily supporting a club. I think it’s similar for other supporters, too. It’s just that our clubs association is currently governed by men who don’t understand world football.
One problem is that clubs are treated like franchises, not clubs.
Dude, you’re not supporting a club. Timbers win the title, next step – the team is broken up b/c of league rules. That’s how franchise leagues work, they call it parity, but it is just cost control to benefit owners. Not trying to pick on you or Timbers, but – as Garber stated – mls franchises are not clubs, that is the ethos of franchise leagues -> profit for owners, nothing to do w/product on the field.
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Only difference b/w soccer and other big 4 leagues is that mls has to compete w/rest of the world. It’s all marketing, and no substance.
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Introduce the free market to US soccer if you want independent clubs to succeed. #ProRelForUSA
Re: “Dude, you’re not supporting a club… ”
I know and I hear what you’re saying. But we don’t all see it that way here. We’re still supporting what we regard as a club, that is temporarily being run like a franchise. When does that change? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Club/Support > Owner’s Preferred Business Entity and League. Trust me, not everyone here likes MLS. But we’re not abandoning the team, just for that reason.
Anyway, who else in the Portland area should I support? There is no other team. No, nobody around here is going to start a club from scratch although it has, on occasion, been bandied about. And going from one busch league to another, really doesn’t solve anything. I like to actually watch games in peson, so Timbers in MLS is what it is right now. I support Portland Timbers since they were in USL. I will ride out MLS, FWIW.
If results tonight go as expected, Liga MX 4- MLS 0. Ouch!
Santos gracefully took their foot off the pedal. MLS needs to think seriously about dropping out of the competition officially. Keane was rubbish once again.
Keane did what he does best: Beatch to the referee about every single little thing.
Why would MLS drop out of the CCL? Most european league never win the UCL but they aren’t dropping out.
Yes, dropping out – because in life when adversity is a road block the best option is to quit.
On to the tourney – MLS sides are getting better but we are still a ways off from winning this thing. The one thing I saw the Liga MX teams do well on the road is disrupt play as much as they can amd pick the points when they thought were best to strike and bug their opponent. They foul like the best of them, yes, but it’s when they chose to foul that mattered – especially since the refs let all kinds of stuff happen. MLS sides need to learn to be nastier at home and disruptive on the road – they need to end that absorb pressure nonsense that most use on the road.
folks… its still pre-season for MLS teams. Remember when Chelsea lost to RBII during preseason tour and other EPL teams lost to MLS and NASL teams?
LA… 9 new starters this year. They still are NOT a team. Will take time to become a good team.
If the CCL tourney was two months from now, games could be much more entertaining, though still think MX teams advance.
MX teams with much less yearly turnover??
That argument is getting tired pretty fast here. While it’s true that the disadvantage is there, it’s not as though MLS teams don’t know the games are coming up and these aren’t meaningless friendlies. They could do a lot more to prepare for them and try to take away that advantage, similar to what Montreal did. The teams just don’t want to, so they find an easy out by saying “preseason man”. Yes, that’s part of it, but it doesn’t tell the entire story.
Yeah I am tired of the “pre-season” argument as well especially since Santos laid a serious beatdown on the Galaxy. It’s one thing to be in pre-season and have a few passes that miss and timing off…it’s completely different when you are getting absolutely beat down and have zero answers….if Santos pushed in the second half like they did in the first it would have been 8-0…losing only 4-0 is really the only flattering this for the Galaxy for this game.
False equivalency. The Chelsea lost to RBNY was…wait for it…A FRIENDLY where Chelsea was not fielding its first team.
Also look at the state of Chelsea. Looking back, that loss isn’t nearly as impressive (still a good showing by RBNYII)
Dan, that’s just sounds like an excuse for the short comings. Even the south American teams can’t handle mx squads. They lost every game to Mexican teams. When you bring in players that don’t have drive or are washed up this is what happens. Galaxy invested more money in talent than Santos but Santos has talent.
That goofy looking racist they signed to play CB was horrible
Whats even the point of putting the league through this anymore?
If LA has to play Dos Santos up top then Zardes is going to be benched soon. He’s just not a very good midfielder. Lletget, Villareal, and Magee are all probably better options there.
D@ck-ride much?
Wow that falls squarely into the complete collapse category. The Galaxy are an embarrassment to MLS.
so that narrative that Bruce was going for CCL in signing all of these veteran stars, are people still going with that?
Apparently Bruce is the first one off the bandwagon. His quote after the game “I didn’t see any starts show up for this game”