HOUSTON – After three losses in a row and a fourth in five games, LA Galaxy head coach Sigi Schmid didn’t mince words about his team's performance in their latest match — a 3-2 loss at the hands of the Houston Dynamo on Saturday.
“I thought at times we did alright,” Schmid said. “But it’s just not enough.”
The Galaxy were minutes from securing a point on the road but a 90th-minute goal from Houston prevented that from happening. Schmid said his side needed to get that point and blamed his side’s lack of concentration for giving up two goals early in each half.
Unfortunately, giving up early goals isn’t a new issue, points out Galaxy goalkeeper David Bingham.
“I think the last couple of games we’re digging ourselves into the grave off the bat,” Bingham said. “And we can’t do that.”
Was there anything Schmid liked about his side’s latest game that he can take as a positive?
“We’ve shown the ability to fight back and that’s a good quality,” Schmid said. “We’ve got to continue to have that quality but our ability to hold out and protect the lead or protect a tight game has been very poor.”
Part of that, Schmid argues, is not having everybody healthy.
“It’d be nice if we could play the same lineup two weeks in a row, which today we ended up starting the same lineup two weeks in a row, but it’d be nice if we had all our players healthy,” Schmid said. “It’s just a matter of just integrating everybody on to the same page.”
Getting everybody on the same page is a message that the newest Galaxy player, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, wants from his team as well.
“We can either wake up or continue like this, but if we continue like this, we don’t want the same objective,” Ibrahimovic said. “We don’t want to win.”
What can Ibrahimovic do to help his side right the ship and get back to controlling the game instead of reacting to it?
“Either I wake up, and I take care of it,” Ibrahimovic said. “Or we all wake up.”
