Nice win for the claret & cobalt. On the road versus a talented team and 3 yellow jerseyed assistants. Good to see Grabs with his rested legs. I can see why Garth has been so upbeat about the new guys on the radio in recent weeks.
On a side note, seemed like Gonzalez had Sabo's number all game long. I'm interested to watch that matchup next meeting cause I think Sabo is gonna be fired up.
I saw Plata playing the target man more than Sabo, which was so odd. Why are they kicking the ball down field in the air when it's Plata versus Gonzo? We did get possession a few times so I wonder if it was strategy.
According to MLS.com, "Rimando, who had several spectacular stops among his nine saves, dived to deny Robbie Keane from the penalty spot in the 93rd minute after Tony Beltran undercut Rob Friend as he leapt for a ball into the box from Omar Gonzalez." I definitely did not see that but oh well. Another interesting note is this was Rimando's 109th career shutout, just three off Kevin Hartman's league record.
I like how Plata attacked. How many times have we seen the other 10 guys try to get Sabo to score. I like the fact that despite the fact Sabo was on the field, other players tried to score. Too often it seems like they expect Sabo to be the goal scorer. I think the less pressure on Sabo, the better Sabo will be.
I can tell you now, Rimando will not win keeper of the year honors. It will go to Penedo because 1) he is really good (though not better than Nicky), 2) he will have a full season, and 3) (most importantly) he plays for LA.
Are you Kidding me MLS? "GOAL: Joao Plata scores controversial winner vs. Galaxy | LA Galaxy vs. Real Salt Lake"
Mullholland Goal! Disgusting. http://www.mlssoccer.com/video/2014/03/09/no-goal-mulholland-finds-goal-whistle-blows
That reminds me of the time a Crapids video was talking about how one of our stoppage time equalizers was offsides , but they pause the video some 3 seconds after the pass was hit to show how "they had like, 2 or 3 guys offsides". Because if your players don't react fast, the other team is cheating.(I'm pretty sure UP wrote a nice rant on this)
Rimando certainly got a yellow for something of that nature, but I am fairly positive that Rimando was discussing the current Crimean crisis with the Ref ... or tell him to buy a clue and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Then MLS should change the byline on the website to reflect this. During the game, they might have later shown that it was on-side, but the website has not been updated.
Plata's run on that goal was as perfect as you could time it. Dead even with the last man as he made the run. Mulholland was onside, and there was no foul. I honestly don't buy the pk. Dude jumps with his arms immediately flailing since the pass was too high to reach. Some nervous moments, but good play all around. Jordan Allen already looks like the real deal. I hope he's able to keep improving. Agreed that Mulholland seems a bit slow, but during preseason he had a lot of good pinpoint passes, and his set piece service is really good. I hope he gets to feature in some more games over the season. We'll have to see how the next weeks go, but if we keep playing like we did tonight, we should have a good season. It did look like we were pressing as a team more than usual, and higher up the field. While it did backfire at times, it was really paying off more as the game went on, because LA couldn't get a good rhythm through the middle. It also felt like the midfield/forwards were given more liberty to attack. It certainly looked more fluid than the Kreis era where you didn't always see a lot of overlap from players.
I think LA came in with a gameplan of marking Sabo out of the game. Gonzalez was man marking him the whole time and usually had some help as well. That left Plata with a lot of space to work with though. If we get as much production from our second forward as we did tonight then teams won't be able to keep such a close eye on Sabo and he will get into the games.
How do you penalize Beltran when the ball was almost over Borcher head (jumping), who was standing a good three feet further back. Friend would've needed to be about 10 feet tall to have had a chance at it.
I didn't get to watch the game (was at spring training game), so I was forced to listen to Bill and Dunny. I do know that regardless of speed, Mulholland's name was called far more often than Gil's, who (at least on the radio) was a ghost. Besides - anyone want to guess who normally gets the description of 'slow...a lot of good pinpoint passes...' - anyone, anyone...? Kyle Beckerman! So speed isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just asked the replacement ref, who had to come up with some lousy excuse to negate Luke's goal. Wish I knew what it was, because the only remotely possible explanation I saw in the highlights was Plata's push-off on Gonzo.
Mulholland reminds me a bit of Williams. Not too quick, but he can pick out a pass. If he keeps it up it'd be nice to see both him and Morales at the same time. Having a couple solid passers pushing into the attack should help relieve pressure on Morales. It was kind of funny going into preseason because it seemed like nobody thought any of the players drafted would even be around. Glad to see some of them are looking like they'll be contributing down the road.