Coming as it did in the first month of the 2007 season, both coaches in the Los Angeles Galaxy's 1-0 victory against the Columbus Crew in a U.S. Open Cup play-in game Tuesday night took the opportunity to use some players who hadn't seen much action in the early days of the league campaign.
Galaxy head coach Frank Yallop gave a first start of the season to five players, while Crew coach Sigi Schmid did the same for seven of his charges. While the play was disjointed at times, it certainly didn't lack for intensity, as the Galaxy rode a Nate Jaqua 17th-minute goal to victory.
"We're playing four games in 14 days," Schmid said. "Frankie [Hejduk] is coming back from an ACL, so do we push him and risk him suffering a setback? Probably not. Rusty Pierce has had an injury history so we rested him. Same with Ricardo [Virtuoso], and if we want some of these guys on the field the next few games they need a break. We thought some of the guys have been playing well in training and they deserved a chance to go out there and play."
It was a welcome result for the Galaxy -- while the Crew have opened the MLS season with three draws in three games, the Galaxy started with a tie and a loss and hadn't played a competitive match for nearly two full weeks.
"[Our intention was] not to weaken it and make it seems like no one cares about the Open Cup because we do -- we got to the final last year and it hurt when we didn't win it," Yallop said. "I know it's early in the rounds -- we want to win and both teams I think showed that they wanted to win. It wasn't a practice match, or a game where the emotion of the intensity wasn't there because it was -- with the fouls and the tackles, it was a hard-fought game."
The lone goal came just a few minutes after starting Crew goalkeeper Bill Gaudette was knocked into by Jaqua when a crossing pass came into the area. In the 17th minute, nearly an identical pass came from Landon Donovan; this time Jaqua converted an easy tap-in.
"I didn't think L.A. did much of anything in the first half," Schmid said. "Bill gets hit on a play, takes a knock, doesn't have the train of thought to go down and he can't get to a ball that looks like he should have been able to get to and we lose one-nothing."
The Crew had the better of the chances throughout the match, but couldn't find the equalizing goal. It's now three times in four games in all competitions this year the Black-and-Gold have been held scoreless.
"If you look at possession and holding onto the ball, I thought we did a good job. Obviously we got caught on the one run where Landon made to the goal -- all the other chances the Galaxy got came in the last 15 minutes when we were pushing forward," Schmid said.
Said Donovan: "We never felt like they were out of it, but we never felt like they were in control. They had a lot of possession and opportunity."
A bright spot though was Columbus goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum, who was forced to come on for Gaudette in the 34th minute and held the Galaxy scoreless as well. Gruenebaum has two shutouts in his three league appearances this season.
"He's on top of his game right now," said Crew captain Duncan Oughton. "He's doing a good job. He's really taken his chance and stepped up. It's been great team defending, plus Andy's doing a good job, he's in the right place making good saves and really getting his confidence."
However, the end result on the scoreboard really did say it all for the whole team, including coach Schmid. "It doesn't matter how beautiful it looks," he said, "it matters how effective it is."
A year ago, the Galaxy reached the Open Cup Final for the fourth time in club history, losing to the Chicago Fire 2-1. However, because they were one of four teams to fail to make the MLS Cup Playoffs a year ago, they were forced to begin their quest to get the Dewar Trophy back at the first round of play-in games. Thanks to Tuesday's win, they will now take on the New York Red Bulls, with the winner entering the competition proper in the round-of-16.
"It's not ideal, leading up to it, traveling and it's kind of a bummer to have to travel this far just to play into [the tournament] but once you get here you forget about it and get to business," Donovan said.
Nathan Linton is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
