I'm still riding high and feeling giddy about this win. I found these videos and freaking love them: Fan video of calling for Zlatan, his banter with Vela, and of course his goals. A fan video of Pontius' goal from the south end Same fan, different video of Zlatan's game-winner Zlatan's game-winner from LARS perspective I'm not into Katy Perry or any of today's music but I thought these lyrics seem appropriate: "I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire Cause I am a champion and You're gonna hear me ROAR Louder, louder than a lion Cause I am a champion and You're gonna hear me ROAR" Also this: pic.twitter.com/tiIr5uILpE— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) April 1, 2018 I'm going to end this post with this image. Wait, is that a LAFC fan flipping us LAG fans off? How will we snowflake Galaxy fans react to that? Maybe go to their message boards and bitch and moan about it?
Apparently they were back at full training this week, and according to an article on the Galaxy website on Friday "Romain Alessandrini, Michael Ciani, Giovani, and Jonathan dos Santos are each expected to be available for the sold-out clash." But I'm OK if only two of them are indeed available against SKC, if you know what I mean...
Only reason I'd want Ciani back so soon is because of the attention he and Zlatan would receive on set pieces. I think we're all fine with Husidic filling in for JDS for now.
So out of all the memorable moments the match created, what was everyone's favorite? Mine is the "Ole" goal created by Carrasco and Lleget followed by zLAtan's "You're welcome LA" wonderstrike.
I would love it if we could start the same lineup for the next game except JDS and Alessandrini replacing Carrasco and Pontius. Then maybe we sub in that tall Swede dude in the second half....
Their fans are apparently already fighting with themselves: https://www.reddit.com/r/LAFC/comments/88tpk2/lafc_fight/ Reminds me again of Chivas USA where they had a real hooligan element to their fanbase (you know before they became a complete joke) that they never could coral properly. Looks like LAFC invited the same group back to their team and are going to have the same problem.
1st goal problems: Big problem - Ema: Obviously biggest individual error on our part was the careless turnover by Ema. His whole approach was too casual. The game had just started and possibly Ema wasn't mentally "into the game" yet. Bigger problem - defensive shape after turnovers: Their goal scoring sequence started with one of their many rapid counterattacks following a turnover. Our shape made those counters sooooo easy for them. Here we are chasing them about 25 seconds before they score their first goal. (Obviously there were problems before this, otherwise we wouldn't be chasing them down the field.) Note that all 4 of our our cbs and dms are pulled to the right side of the field leaving an enormous gap between them and Cole -- a textbook example of a disconnected backline. Cole being by himself leaves Blessing wide open to attack the space behind Cole. We already are completely vulnerable to a half decent cross. If you watch the vid you will see that Kitchen is jogging behind the play for most part (and Rolf never makes it back in the the 30 seconds that pass until the goal is scored). Kitchen needs to sprintto fill in the vulnerable gap between Cole and his teammates. Anyway a few seconds later LAFC has gotten the cross off and we look like this: In theory we should be ok since we have 5 defenders vs their 4 attackers. But our defense remains way too shifted to the right, with 4 out of our 5 defending players to the right of our right goal post. It doesn't help that Carrasco and Kitchen are marking air. Cole is still isolated and still stuck with the impossible mission of simultaneously providing cover for Skjelvik and marking Blessing. But it's gotten actually gotten much worse. Now LAFC has possession in the box AND somehow Vela (only their best player) is being allowed to walk in completely unmarked at the top of box! Kitchen continues to spectate, apparently not even aware of what is going on behind him. But we get lucky and Urena - being Costa Rican - dawdles with the ball to long and ends up not making the pass to the open Vela which would have been an almost certain goal. Instead he waits and passes to the trailing Feilhaber, who of course also comes in unmarked since the rest of our team apparently took a break for orange slices: Feilhaber still has an open Vela standing in the box to pass the ball and make our life hell. But Feilhaber, being Feilhaber, makes a bad pass that goes right to Cole and we dodge a bullet! Well, almost ... As we all know Cole passes to Ema and immediately takes off on the attack leaving Vela behind him. Which is ok but Ema mishandles the ball and gets stripped, and Vela ends up alone with the ball anyway. So Cole rushes back but overuns a bit and we give up a goal from this position: The goal still could have been prevented if Skjelvik (and his far teammate) hadn't kept dropping back and held their offside line. That would have put him next to (ahem...connected with) Cole. With that positioning Skjelvik would have been able to shut down the shot after Vela made his cutback. But to be fair Ema's turnover surprised everyone and we were left with emergency defending. We also prevent the goal if Binghams footwork is better. Vela takes an amazing shot but Bingham misreads the flight of the ball for a second and takes a small step forward before realizing it was going behind him and then trying to recover. Anyway this long post is just to show one of the many examples of how our poor positioning killed us in the first half of this game. The 2nd goal is a better example but I don't have the energy to go through it now. In fact, despite LAFC having a better midfield than the one we fielded still all 3 of their goals were all gifts. Sigi needs to coach these guys up.
Great analysis. I remember typing a post about 20 minutes into the game that Boateng didn't seem prepared for the speed and intensity of this game. Unlike our more veteran players, he's never played a "derby" game before and I wonder if he just wasn't prepared mentally for how intense they are. He seemed to improve in that regard as the game went on, but by the time he had, we were already down 0-2.
Anyone know how to treat an injured shoulder? Patting myself on the back is harder than it used to be. Ouch!
http://lakingsinsider.com/2018/04/0...orado-injuries-vilardis-series-winner-zlatan/ At the bottom here is some fun discussion and reaction from some LA kings who were in a suite yesterday... And by the way, sonewhere on Twitter I saw video of the dos santos brothers going crazy in a suite yesterday as well. It made me happy to see that Gio seemed to really care.
Hmmm, I saw this comment on reddit and I wonder if there might be a connection with this and our LAFC guest who posted his complaints?
THIS IS LA! @Ibra_official Welcome GOD! 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥 pic.twitter.com/We7cyyFyDk— Jonathan Dos Santos (@jona2santos) March 31, 2018
LAFC Fans: I've been a life-long LAFC fan because I want an authentic football experience. LAFC Fans: I can't believe someone threw beer in the air during an epic comeback and yelled at me because I'm cheering for the visiting team. LAFC Fans: Fu&k it - we're here to fight and if we can't fight ACB we're just going to fight ourselves.
And now I’ve just seen the Eriksen strike in the Tottenham game. Not quite the measure of Zlatan’s, but not far off and similarly important.
Great link. But that whole sub is full of gold. They're cannibalizing themselves while trying to keep it all together. They're upset with themselves because there was a major brawl (not a fight, but a brawl) amongst several LAFC supporters after the match. Also they were upset that LAFC supporters were trying to set fire to some Galaxy shirts inside the stadium. Also there seems to be a huge "PUT0" chant problem as well... lets see.. oh yeah, they're upset that many were chanting "ole" while the ball was in their own backfield when the defenders and keeper where passing it around (Carrasco made them regret that). People are generally perturbed by the just the whole cocky attitude by many being projected reflecting poorly on the rest. Admirably, they've basically concluded that they're rookie supporters and have to learn how to handle winning and losing.
That’s the one. Down a goal, with 28 years of not winning at Stamford Bridge. Very different than 3-2 down against a brand new cross town rival, but also a lot of similarities. I enjoyed this weekend.
BTW anyone notice amongst the sea of black celebrating the first LAFC goal were two bright red Manchester United shirts.
Wow I poked around that site and it's convinced me that LAFC might just be a big social experiment to see if hipster millennials and their modern progressive social norms and old world traditional Latino (primarily Mexican) soccer fans can coexist. Really sounds like the plot of a bad sitcom but I'll tune in again.
I had NO IDEA when I posted this. It's like asking your parents for a bike and they give you a BMW instead.