Written By: Wendy Pintor
LA Galaxy defeated the Seattle Sounders 3-1 on Wednesday night at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, in the Round of 32 of the U.S. Open Cup. The match between the LA Galaxy and Seattle Sounders FC marks the 47th meeting across all competitions between the two teams as MLS franchises.
The attendance was not announced and perhaps because of the teams undergoing problems with the fans, the stadium was not in high capacity like past Cup games.
Seattle (6-3-2, 20 points) today the Sounders missed starters Cristian Roldán, Raul Ruidiaz, and Nouhou to injury but regardless of whether they played or not, LA Galaxy came to brag the win, which could have possibly ignited the flame to this season’s upcoming games, first opening with Julian Aude in minute 3′ scoring his first goal then LA closing first half with a clean sheet.
However second half had too many non connecting moments, the ideas were thought out but the chemistry was not and so Coach Vanney had Javier Chicharito Hernández subbed for the Serbian player Dejan Joveljić and Tyler Boyd for Raheem Edwards who then had a brilliant performance with the rest of the group that stayed on the pitch.
The team then began to create and was up 2-0 with Memo Rodriguez’s first goal in the 66th minute scoring off a one-time finish corner kick play and then to a ball that became an assist by Edwards in the 84’ minute, Rodriguez had not scored any goals since arriving from Houston Academy, the 3-1 win brought great fuel to the hopeless Galaxy team.
The Sounders halved the deficit just a minute and a half later when Tacoma Defiance midfielder Paul Rothrock scored on a header at the back post. “We had a great team performance, the season has been long and I’m just so excited as if it was my first goal ever, being able to lock these two and the win for the team tonight” Rodriguez added.
Moving and passing around the Seattle Sounders as if they were not a top team in the league LA confidently played til the end, LA Galaxy’s team was beyond surpassed with experience versus the twenty-year-old handful of talented players Seattle brought. Sounders constantly kept stacking on with ideas but the decisions were made far too late into the game.
“Memo showed a shift really happy for him to see some minutes, he came on tonight and made a big difference for the group the same way all the other guys who came on did well. I thought overall it was nice to get a win because this is one of those faves where you go out and you’re playing a very young team on the other side and you have a lot to lose on the day too if you don’t come out with the results. You know like our guys with big names on the back of their jerseys and everything loses to a team that’s playing there depths in their roster, it’s a lot of stress inside of that too,” Galaxy manager Greg Vanney said postgame.
“Inside for us getting the results I think the guys managed it well and they handled it well, we did what we were supposed to do, which is we won the game. Sometimes that’s easier said than done and today we did what we needed to do, and we won the game,” Vanney contained in the press conference after LA Galaxy deserved victory.
As Sounders attempted to tally up some last-minute goals the Western Conference standings leader subbed in Nicholas Loderio in the last 15 minutes remains of the game and although he didn’t score like he normally would have in a season for the team, Sounders fell short against the improved LA Galaxy who moves on to the round of 16, in the Lamar Open Cup, the draw will be held on May 11th, WATCH ON B/R APP & B/R FOOTBALL YOUTUBE
The return and the luck of Memo Rodriguez and LA Galaxy orbiting the competition in the upcoming round of 16 in the Open Cup facing LAFC in the western side facing each other and making things interesting for the clubs, LAFC won Monterey Bay FC in PK’s with their MLS PRO squad and did not disappoint the group gave a great Win moving forward.
The two will face each other on Tuesday, May 23rd TBA.
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