CARSON, Calif. -- The LA Galaxy looked like they might be on their way toward one of their trademark romps in the opening minutes against visiting Houston, showing off some sublime soccer and forging ahead just three minutes in when Robbie Keane struck following a 50-yard run.
It all turned shortly after, as the Houston Dynamo took advantage of a defensive miscue to equalize off a corner kick just eight minutes later, then gave LA all they could handle en route to a 1-1 draw Saturday night at StubHub Center.
Keane, the Galaxy's captain, was not pleased.
“We need to get better. We need to get better,” he said in a tense postgame scrum in LA's locker room. “We can't keep carrying on [like this] every game. We know it's three games in; I keep saying it's going to take four or five games [to develop the necessary sharpness], but when you have a game that's there for the taking, playing at home, get off to a great start and give a silly goal away -- at this level that's not good enough.”
That was the consensus among the Galaxy, who dominated possession nearly all night but struggled to do anything with it against a Dynamo side that rarely looked capable of netting a winner but did everything required to escape with a point.
“There were moments in the game where we were matching their intensity, and especially in the first half, but I thought in the first half they probably outworked us, and that was probably a big difference,” said left back Robbie Rogers, who let Nathan Sturgis get free in the box to score the Dynamo's goal. “We can't let that happen, especially at home. We can't let teams come in here and outwork us.”
The Dynamo played with far more energy than LA.
“They worked really hard,” Omar Gonzalez said. “Their front five busted their asses the entire game. ... It was a tough matchup. I feel like a lot of games are going to be like that this year, where teams come here and just put in a lot of hard work. They want to beat the champion, and we have to be prepared to meet that intensity and maybe, hopefully, overpower them with our own intensity.
“Hopefully, we learn quick. Hopefully, tonight is all it takes, and we'll be ready where we won't sit back after we get a goal. We've got to keep on pushing, we've got to be ready for anything. We've got to be a lot more physical in the run of play, a lot more physical on defensive set pieces.”
Keane's frustration was apparent on the field, and after snapping at two reporters' questions, he noted that “you can see I'm not in a good mood.”
“When we got the goal, we were good for about 10 minutes, and then we stopped playing,” the Irish striker said. “We dropped off, let them play. They got the goal, and they they got a grip on the game. They got fairly, I'd say, comfortable. They probably looked like they were a little bit the better team in the first half, but at home we should be certainly doing a lot better. ...
“We're disappointed. Of course, when you're the champion, we have to understand we're a team that people want to beat us all the time. And we have to accept that. The sooner we realize, the better, because we're not going to get any easy wins in any game. People are going to make it hard for the Galaxy this year, so we need to make sure that we're on top [of our game] at all times and make sure we're not giving up silly goals.”
