In the middle of the dogfight that is the Western Conference playoff race, the Los Angeles Galaxy fell to the bottom of the heap after getting clipped by Real Salt Lake when a Jeff Cunningham shot went the through the hands and between the feet of Kevin Hartman at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Wednesday night.
Playing in their second consecutive game in less than a week away from The Home Depot Center, it looked as though they used all their energy in their impressive 5-2 result at D.C. United just four days earlier.
"We didn't play very well," said Landon Donovan. "There's probably a lot of excuses we could make but we didn't play energized and didn't want it bad enough.
"Everyone knows that this league's tough. Traveling is tough. Playing Saturday-Wednesday for a while, it's tough. It wears on you a little bit."
Galaxy head coach Frank Yallop felt that Salt Lake got the better of the play and probably deserved the win. In searching for an explanation of the outcome Yallop came up with myriad reasons, one of which was a common gripe of teams that visit Salt Lake, and that's the artificial surface of Rice-Eccles.
"We never really got to grips with the field," said Yallop. "We never really got our game going and we struggled a bit.
"It would have been nice to get out of here with a point but the guys that came in tried hard and that's all I could ask from them."
Missing Ugo Ihemelu, who was serving the first of a two-game suspension for a foul he committed in the United game last Saturday, and Peter Vagenas - who strained his thigh in training on Tuesday - provided an opportunity for players like first-year professional Kyle Veris to prove their worth.
Veris was very effective at slowing down the Real strike pair of Jeff Cunningham and Jason Kreis. One situation in particular during the first half saw Veris stripping Cunningham of the ball while he was breaking toward goal.
After thinking of all the reasons why his players didn't perform, Yallop summed everything up with the same evaluation given by his captain.
"We didn't play well tonight," said the coach. "The reasons why I'm not too sure. You've got to give Salt Lake the credit. They came at us and got their goal and they hung on to the lead and got the result."
With Hartman making several acrobatic saves to keep Real out of the net it looked as though the Galaxy might escape with a point. That was until the 60th minute, when Cunningham beat Chris Albright, taking the ball to the end line. With an extremely narrow angle the RSL striker still fired on goal.
Unfortunately for the defending MLS Cup champions, Cunningham's shot slipped its way through Hartman's hands and into the goal.
"They squeaked that goal in, which is what they were looking for, and then they put everybody back and just waited to counter because they knew we were going forward," said Herculez Gomez. "They waited for us and if we didn't capitalize they were coming right back down our throats. It was up and down the last 20 minutes."
With the urgency of a team fighting for its playoff life, the Galaxy threw everything into an all-out assault on goal - opening up the game for both sides. In stoppage time the L.A. defense was exposed and RSL countered quickly. As Atiba Harris streaked toward goal Tyrone Marshall lunged at the Salt Lake striker in an attempt to stop his progress. Harris fell over Marshall and the referee pointed to the spot.
Jamaican international Andy Williams stepped up to the spot for Salt Lake. Hartman was all over the shot as he easily punched it away with both hands.
Even though the Galaxy are last place in the West they know that there is still plenty of time to recover and make the playoffs.
"As a team maybe we didn't react well to [the goal] as perhaps we should have," said Hartman. "Sometimes stuff like that happens in soccer and unfortunately you have to get back up on the horse and really push and push. I don't think it was really happening for us tonight.
"There's 21 points still on the table and that will definitely get us into the playoffs."
Scott McAllister is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
