Corona, Dos Santos, and both Alvarezes can all 1-touch pass. We've seen them do it against good MLS midfields, even against SJ in the beginning. I think people are under-estimating how effective SJ was at cutting the midfield players out from each other and cutting the midfield off from Zlatan in this particular game. This is why you saw players resorting to individual dribbling runs; SJ totally nullified our ability to pass in the center. Re: the disparity in shots, this is a specific tactic of Almeyda's. I noticed it in the first leg in SJ. They shoot early and often from just about anywhere in the final third. (If you took a shot every time Eriksson did, you'd die of alcohol poisoning by the 2nd half) Even though many were not on target (but quite a few forced a save out of Bingham, even if a routine one) it has a sort of shock-and-awe effect on the other team. It had the effect of causing the defense to sit deeper and we had no confidence to play out of the back (which is, like, our whole gameplan).
I don't believe our players are the "wrong" players. Other than Zlatan we do not carry a much older club collectively than say San Jose. Guillermo is decent coach but we all see the diff compared to a great coach with the Quacks. No comparison at all. By now Guillermo should have good grip on his team and be able to, at the very least, not embarrass himself with the same team in the space of a couple of weeks playing both away and at home in a derby situation. In short, we need a very good coach, not a decent one for all this money Galaxy is putting on the field. How many more expensive players does Galaxy need to go get until this coach can beat a team like San Jose? LAFC rested their top players against Houston I believe in order to establish their dominance in LA once and for all in a historic ass-whooping. That whistle you hear is the freight train headed to Dignity Health Park this Friday.
It’s partly personnel but also tactics. When the opponent has the ball we — by intent or accident — are playing some sort of weak zonal system. In this game there were times where we were defending with 8 players behind the ball but somehow not a single one was within 5 yards of a SJ player. Our overly spread out regularly spaced grid slowly roved around the field allowing SJ players to occupy the big gaps in the grid. So SJ passers and receivers alike were repeatedly open, facing little to no pressure. Their first goal out of this situation: Minute 60:05 We had just finished handling a dangerous attack in our box and Corona had booted the ball to the midfield stripe to a SJ player who heads it to his teammate with acres of space around him. Eight of our players (not counting Bingham) are back with only Antuna and Ibra forward. 7 seconds later (min 60:12): SJ is attacking 7v8. Wondo is attacking the gap between our cb's. Every one of the other SJ players has five to ten yards of space between them and the nearest Galaxy player. Which literally means each SJ player is being given his a 10-20yd diameter circle of Galaxy free space to operate in. We can see this in action as a completely un-pressured SJ player passes to a completely open Vako. This allows Vako to easily turn and attack space. After Vako turns we are in a lot of trouble despite still having numbers up. And the trouble stems from the lack of man marking and the fact that we really don't know how to execute a zone. 1. Skjkj isn't sure if he should stay wide to protect against the attacking winger or come inside to help with SJ attacker headed in Gonzalez's direction. He decides to slowly hedge toward the middle and ends up in position to defend neither. 2. This means Gonzales is frozen - he has to worry about both Wondo and the SJ player about to enter the box on his left. He picks the bigger danger and stays with Wondo. 3. Steres is also frozen. Wondo at this point is still in the gap and niether cb has committed to makr him. As far as Steres knows if he steps up to help close down Vako then Wondo will just cut into the space behind him end up wide open on the edge of the box. So he stays back, helping with Wondo. 4. E. Alvarez, like Skjoiok, is in a zonal position where he is too far to help with either the winger behind him or with Vako. That leaves JDS who realizes it and rushes over to close down Vako. Vako takes advantage of JDS's momentum, cuts inside on him and we end up getting off this spectacular shot. Now in this case, it took an absolutely fantastic shot to score. And yes JDS over committed in the close down. But part of that was due to the distance he had to cover and the urgency to get there making him vulnerable. But the bigger lesson - look at the 7 white jerseys and literally only Wondo marked. Everyone has been either been caught in between assignments or double marking the same guy or having to last second emergency defend. And remember we cleared the ball to half line exactly 10 seconds before this score takes place. Literally all SJ had to do to get to this point was one open header, one open pass and then one cutback. SJE passed through our swiss cheese zone like this all night long. GBS - these guys need to go to man marking.
^Can't beat that post from Skydog. WOOF. I also was so excited to watch after my daughter went to bed and I got...that. The only thing I will add is that Efrain had an absolutely miserable night. Not only that, but the amount of passes in the final third is "LOL" for the Galaxy. Not good from Antuna and Alvarez. Just...ugh. This team needs some major TLC. I'm worried about a precipitous drop to the bottom.