Galaxy close out last regular season home game with a loss

The LA Galaxy played their final home game of the regular season against their Western Conference rival the Vancouver Whitecaps. Although the Angelino team were already qualified for the 2019 Audi MLS Playoffs, the team came out intent on winning in order to maximize their playoff seeding.

The home team showed just that from the beginning of the game. Although Vancouver was the first to get a shot off on goal, barely a few seconds into the game, the Galaxy took control of the game from there. Unfortunately, they weren’t always as fine-tuned as they would have liked. After the home team failed to convert opportunities into goals on various occasions, Vancouver responded by taking advantage of a corner kick opportunity and opened up the scoring in their favor.

It wouldn’t take long however for the Galaxy to respond. Just a few minutes later, at the 23^rd minute of play, Zlatan Ibrahimovic stepped up for his team once more to tie things up 1-1. The equalizer was set up by Cristian Pavon, who is now the club leader in assists for the season, this despite only having joined the Galaxy half-way through this year’s campaign.

The Whitecaps wouldn’t be finished, however. Despite not dominating the home team, throughout the game they consistently found ways to exploit the Galaxy’s weak defense to put themselves on top. At the 41^st minute, Whitecaps forward Theo Bair found himself on the lucky end of a rebound inside the Galaxy area which he easily pushed into the goal. With this, the team from Canada would go inot the half with the 2-1 lead.

Once the second half was well underway came a moment of magic for the home team. At the 58^th minute, Mexican superstar Jona Dos Santos sent in a beautiful pass form midfield to his fellow Mexico teammate, Uriel Antuna, who would simply chip the ball over the Vancouver goalie from the edge of the box. Quietly, the young Mexican star was adding to his goal tallies, now clearly the second highest goal scorer for the club, behind Ibrahimovic. Momentum was now clearly on the Galaxy’s side.

However, once more Vancouver would find a way to spoil the party. Forward Tosaint Ricketts would send in a header for goal at the 64^th minute of play to again pull ahead in the scoreboard.

Galaxy coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto was still intent in winning the game and sent in forward Chris Pontius at the 83^rd minute. The idea here of course to help out Zlatan at the top. It only took Pontius 3 minutes to do just that and make an impact, as he received a slick Zlatan assist inside the box that he easily converted for the 3-3 tie.

Vancouver for the final time called game. On a counterattack, exploiting the Galaxy defense one last time, Whitecaps and Honduran forward Michaell Chirinos was one on one with the Galaxy goalie and was able to easily seal the win for Vancouver 4-3.

With this result, the Angelino team drop to 4^th place in the Western Conference standings. They will visit the Houston Dynamo next week to close out the regular season and in search of a result that will give them a favorable seeding in the playoffs that would allow them home field advantage.