Even in the midst of their deepest struggles this season, the LA Galaxy attack has never been something to trifle with. A simple glance at the league’s goal differential ratings should reflect that fact as loud as a clanging symbol.
The Galaxy have piled goals on top of goals this season, to the point that nobody in this parity-driven league is within five goals of LA’s plus-17 margin. That obscured a few rocky results earlier in the year - and a lot of draws - but the Galaxy routinely run up goals in blowouts like nobody in the league. And the fact remains that they’ve lost only one match in their last 17 stretching back to June.
One.
And yet despite all the goals and the goal chances and the dominant effort in front of goal, the Galaxy’s attacking success against the Sounders has been minimal in 2016. Seattle will do its best to trap that lightning again on Sunday, when the teams meet in their only regular season match in Carson, Calif. (1 p.m. PT; ESPN/107.7 The End/El Rey 1360AM)
One team in the league - the New York Red Bulls - has scored more goals than the Galaxy this year, and even then it’s only by a margin of one. It isn’t all that difficult to see why. Any arsenal featuring big guns like Giovani dos Santos, Robbie Keane and Gyasi Zardes won’t struggle to score. The bigger question the Galaxy have had to deal with is how to stop them from going in on the other end.
Still, the one team the Galaxy haven’t been able to systematically break down this year? The Sounders. In two matches - albeit both in Seattle - LA’s mustered two goals and was badly outplayed in both meetings: A 1-0 Galaxy win on July 9 and a 1-1 draw on July 31. The first marked the loss that dropped the Sounders into the Western Conference cellar at the latest point in an MLS history in club history. The second marked Nicolas Lodeiro’s first match.
In both, the Sounders owned just about every statistical attacking category save goals. In the two games combined, the Sounders outshot the Galaxy 39-17 and owned a possession edge of at least plus-6 percent each time. And yet for all the possession they monopolized and all the shots they snapped off, they managed just one point.
At least in an attacking sense, you can blame the form. July wasn’t exactly a pleasant time for the Sounders. Life on that front has flipped on its head for Seattle in the weeks since.
The more relevant piece of information - at least for the Galaxy - is how the Sounders have been able to mostly quiet arguably the most dangerous attack in the league for two matches running. And it gets to a matchup problem for the Galaxy on Sunday they’ll be desperately trying to shift in their favor.
So to see why the Sounders have been so defensively efficient against the Galaxy this year - easily the key to the match as the Sounders hit the road this time - you have to dig into the past.
This is what the lineups looked like the last time these teams played - that 1-1 draw, remember - this year.
There will be a couple changes - Nigel De Jong is no longer with the team, for one, and Steven Gerrard apparently still isn’t healthy - but in an attacking sense there will certainly be some similarities. Gyasi Zardes’ injury means seeing a midfield that looks something like this topped by Robbie Keane isn’t all that unlikely. Dos Santos was held out of the Galaxy’s match last week due to some hip flexor tightness, but he’ll be back on Sunday. And whether or not the recently un-retired Landon Donovan is ready to start again (he probably isn’t), he’ll come off the bench.
But the way the Galaxy played was instructive, and even with Gerrard sidelined, the two threats were always Keane and Dos Santos. And save a brief flash of against-the-run lightning from Keane in the first match, neither has done much in 180 minutes against the Sounders.
So that’s how the lineups looked. This is how they played.
The Sounders’ propensity to push Tyrone Mears and Joevin Jones may seem like a dangerous gambit, but it actually paid off in spades against the Galaxy. The fact that Osvaldo Alonso essentially put Keane in his pocket here - he rolled his coverage to Keane almost every time, and he’ll assuredly do it again on Sunday - gave the Sounders license to direct their firepower elsewhere. Watch Alonso and Keane on Sunday. If it’s anything like the last two meetings, Keane will struggle.
Meanwhile, on the Sounders’ left, Jones and Cristian Roldan, who essentially pushed Gerrard into his own half, routinely triangulated positioning on Dos Santos and kept him from finding space. Dos Santos was not only pushed farther back than he’s comfortable, but he was also pushed wide. He doesn’t really want to be in either of those spaces. Dos Santos only averages 25.9 passes per game, about half a pass fewer per match than goalkeeper Brian Rowe.
In other words, push Dos Santos deep and he’s not much use to anyone. And the Sounders did this as well as anyone in their earlier meeting.
Donovan throws a wrench into all this, since he’s just an arrow on ball and will get stubbornly vertical where Dos Santos, Keane and Boateng will not. Since he scored against Sporting KC, the Sounders will have to be vigilant, but they’ll need to cross that bridge when it arrives.
In the past, the Sounders have done a fantastic job of limiting the Galaxy to speculative chances. Both of LA’s goals against Seattle this year were anomalies, the first on a break the Galaxy got once all afternoon and the second on a blown clearance from Brad Evans in which he heard Keane yell “leave it” in the box.
And if you can believe it, the Sounders’ defense is arguably even better than it was the last time these teams met. The only change to that back six is likely to be the in-form Roman Torres for the still-injured Evans, who will slot in somewhere else whenever he returns.
So if the Sounders manage to pick up three badly needed points here, count on it starting with the defense.
