A little less than two months ago it seemed every ball the Los Angeles Galaxy touched in the final third turned to gold. In their final group game of SuperLiga, the Galaxy played FC Dallas and scored six goals in one of the highest scoring games ever involving MLS teams. At the end of the night, the opposing 'keepers had fished 11 balls out of the Pizza Hut Park nets in a 6-5 Galaxy win.
Los Angeles and Dallas are set to lock horns again Sunday at The Home Depot Center in a match the Galaxy desperately need three points from. With their playoff hopes dwindling fast, the Galaxy know they will have a dogfight on their hands if they want to get a result.
"They have a lot of great players on their team," said Cobi Jones. "They've brought in a lot of great acquisitions like (Juan) Toja and Denilson. We're going to have to be on our toes to be ready for them."
In addition to Toja and Denilson, Dallas has players like Carlos Ruiz and Arturo Alvarez guiding the attack as well. With the lack of healthy bodies and inconsistency in attack recently, LA has no interest in getting into a shootout Sunday. But if they do, they'd like to keep things a bit more manageable than the last meeting.
"(Dallas) has a lot of good attacking players and they let the game open up," said Landon Donovan. "They have a lot of guys that like to play offense so if the game has to be wide open that's fine. We just don't want to give up as much as we did last time."
On thing the fans shouldn't expect is another goalfest. The Galaxy got their offense rolling a bit against Real Salt Lake on Wednesday, scoring a pair of second-half goals. And Dallas has a slew of attacking options going forward. Still, that SuperLiga game on July 31 was more likely than not an anomaly.
"I don't anticipate 11 goals but I do anticipate that we're going to come out and play good," said LA goalkeeper Joe Cannon. "I think the result in Salt Lake was indicative of a team that's more cohesive and more on the same page. I'm expecting us to give them a good fight."
Cannon isn't the only one hoping to keep the scoring down. Head coach Frank Yallop knows just how talented the Dallas attack is, but he's hoping to slow them down enough to get a win.
"If we can keep them off the scoresheet or low scoring I think we'll get chances to score," said Yallop. "We know we can get at this team and create chances to score, but they are a good team going forward as well."
It might be impossible for the Galaxy to manage that scenario though. As much as Los Angeles would like to keep Dallas at bay, they have to chase a win, which means pushing numbers forward for goals. When that happens, things open up, and the home fans could be in store for an entertaining game.
"For us, we need to take it to every team at this point," said Jones. "We're going to have to take some chances and depend on our defense to be ready and prepared to be man-v-man in the back and come away with good defensive plays."
Greg Daurio is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
