Wrapping My Brain Around RBNY - Galaxy

By: Laurie | August 19th, 2007

I’m having a very hard time wrapping my brain around this game last night. And I wasn’t even playing Jeff’s Beckham drinking game. (Although if I’m being honest I will have to admit that this was probably due more to lack of alcoholic beverages in the house than lack of desire. Particularly in the second half it would have been nice to have something to dull the pain.)

But my brain fuzz was more due to picking up a nasty cold in LA, along with the fact that I kept having a hard time figuring out who was playing where after the substitutions began. In…what…the seventeenth minute? (Seriously, forward Gavin Glinton for leftback-filling-in-as-center Ante Jazic? What?!?) And I had to miss twenty minutes in the second half, and those twenty minutes turned out to be the time when things really started going to hell. So I don’t have the answer to the “what happened here?” question.

I’m not sure we could have done this, regardless, without Abel Xavier. The lack of height in the backline was hurting our ability to win balls even before Jazic got injured. But we definitely proved that we couldn’t do it without both Xavier and Ante Jazic. Remember back in Jr. High, when you’d be sitting at a football game and one set of cheerleaders would yell, “Defense!” and the other would respond, “Get it together!” “Defense!” “Get it together!”? I wonder if that cheer would have helped. The Galaxy held it together almost to the end of the first half, but then NY really seemed to get our number. (That second RBNY goal killed us. Once I saw that, I just had the feeling that it was all over.)

Confession here: RBNY is one of the teams I root for whenever they’re not playing the Galaxy. I love Jozy Altidore and Dane Richards and Juan Pablo Angel, so I had a bit of a feel for what these guys are capable of before the game started. We may have sucked at shutting down Altidore and Angel, but I did think that Mike Randolph did a credible job with Richards. Was that the matchup of the night or what? Pretty amazing for a guy who’s only on what, his third start for the Galaxy? Since it looks like Jazic will be out for awhile, I think Randolph will probably get the chance to continue to prove himself. After seeing him play this week, I am really rooting for him. We need more young talent capable of taking the field at a moment’s notice. EDIT: Yes, I know that Richards really did outplay Randolph. But not to the extent that I expected. So that’s a plus, right?

More thoughts:

– Yes, to give them credit, this looked a WHOLE lot better than any of the pre-Beckham games. They’re looking like a team now. This makes the loss all that much more painful.

– Turf is not our friend. Seriously, has David Beckham ever, in his life, hit the wall before? Did we watch history? That was bizarre. I choose to blame the turf and not an exhausted and overtaxed Beckham.

– Speaking of which, Beckham played the full ninety. Was this a good thing? He was definitely flagging by the middle of the second half. I shudder to think what he’ll be like on Thursday after two trans-oceanic flights and back-to-back games.

– It was good to see Carlos Pavon finally get the chance to show why he was brought in. Those first two goals were just what I imagined when I saw what he’d done for Honduras in the Gold Cup. He also didn’t look too bad on the field last night.

–When are we going to stop giving up goals in the last few minutes of a half? AARRGGH!! I don’t know that my heart can take much more of this.

– At least Kevin Harmse didn’t pick up another yellow, so he’s still not suspended for the next game. That’s something. Let’s hope he’ll play in the midfield and not as a defender.

– Joe Cannon. Sigh. So much to be proud of, but no win. And two of those goals were just. So. Close to being saved.

– And P.S. Ty Harden was DAMN lucky not to get a red card for pulling down Altidore in the first few minutes.

Okay. Moving on. In the next round, our team hauls their exhausted butts back to LA for the SuperClasico against Chivas. Can they do it? Tune in Thursday to find out.