The 40-yard Ibrahimovic wonder goal will long be remembered as the signature moment of Saturday’s 4-3 comeback victory by the LA Galaxy, but the moment when the tide initially turned came well before that, while Ibrahimovic was still warming up, and LAFC was holding a seemingly untouchable 3-0 lead.
It began in the 60th minute, when Steven Beitashour poked a ball away from Ashley Cole to spark an 18-pass sequence for LAFC. The expansion side knocked the ball around with ease, leading LAFC fans start chanting Ole for each pass about halfway through the sequence. As the Oles grew louder, the anger among Galaxy players increased, and when the opportunity to stop the sequence came, Servando Carrasco took it, stripping the ball away from Benny Feilhaber and finding Sebastian Lletget for the Galaxy’s opening goal little more than a minute after the LAFC sequences of passes first began.
“It definitely felt like a low point, but it motivated us,” Lletget told Goal. “When we got that first one everything changed.”
“When that is happening in your home stadium, you know it’s something that shouldn’t be happening,” Galaxy midfielder Perry Kitchen told Goal, referring to the series of Oles just before Lletget’s goal. “It was good pressure from Servando, then a good ball, and everyone felt like we’ve broken through and if we get a second then we’ve got a game.”
“The fact I lose a ball in midfield, and we give them a gift of a goal, gave them life and it took away a bit of our confidence and willingness to play,” Feilhaber said. “We can’t allow ourselves to change the way we play, because we know that we can be very good when we play our style.”
LAFC had dominated much of the first 60 minutes of the match by squeezing the Galaxy with consistent pressing all over the field, and lightning-fast counterattack that created plenty of chances. LAFC didn’t convert all those chances though, hitting the post once and missing narrowly wide on another occasion. At the point where LAFC started to knock passes around the field rather than trying to go after the Galaxy’s vulnerable defense, it gave the Galaxy some motivation. As the momentum swung in the Galaxy’s favor after Lletget’s goal, LAFC stopped looking like the same team we saw in the first half, and LAFC coach Bob Bradley’s side never did regain that edge.
“There are moments in football games where as a group you have to be resilient,” Bradley said. “The first two games things went our way. 3-0 things seem to be going our way, we lost the ball and then at that moment we need to find our way back to playing football the way we can.
“Obviously momentum, and some incredible moments by Ibra and so we end up on the back end,” Bradley said. “We’ll learn. This game is going to be important for us, it’s going to go a long way towards making us a good team.”
The Galaxy learned a lesson as well, that continuing to fight, even when you’re down 3-0 and watching a rival pass it around you at will, can sometimes lead to defining moments, even if they don’t wind up being the moments that people remember.
