Galaxy continue to get nothing done
They are shut out for the fourth time in seven games. Klinsmann makes seven saves in debut in goal.
This season has been like riding a pogo stick for the Galaxy: lots of ups and downs with little forward progress. That didn’t change Wednesday, when the Galaxy continued to bounce in place with a 4- 0 loss to the San Jose Earthquakes at Dignity Health Sports Park.
The place the Galaxy are bouncing in, by the way, is last in the Western Conference, and that hole got a bit deeper with the team’s sixth consecutive loss. The Galaxy, winless in their last seven, are four points adrift from the rest of the conference and six points and four places shy of the eighth and final playoff berth.
San Jose got two goals from Nick Lima, one in each half, and single scores from Andy Ríos and Tommy Thompson, spoiling an otherwise solid debut in goal by Jonathan Klinsmann, who faced 19 shots and saved seven of them.
“I thought he did well, He stepped up,” captain Daniel Steres said of Klinsmann. “I don’t think any of those goals you can put on him.”
When the bright spot of the game is your goalkeeper conceding four goals, that’s a sign things probably aren’t going your way. But then Klinsmann, 23, who wasn’t even with the team two months ago, didn’t get much help from his midfield or his offense, with the Galaxy going without a shot until the 58th minute and putting three tries on target all night.
“I can’t really say after tonight anything looked promising,” Steres said. “It wasn’t good from the start. They were just passing right through us. They were just breaking us apart. It was probably just our doing.”
The result was the fourth scoreless game in seven outings for a team that has led for just 38 minutes in the last 36 days.
But then it’s been an odd season all around for Galaxy, one that started with a f ive- game winless streak sandwiched around a fourmonth pause brought on by COVID- 19. That was followed by a four- game winning streak, then a seven- game winless streak.
“We have to f igure something out,” Galaxy coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto said. “The only way to come back from this moment is to f ight. To work. We don’t have time to get down. We need to be strong.
“Today, the word was frustration.”
It was also another quiet night in goal for San Jose’s JT Marcinkowski, whose Quakes have won four of f ive since he replaced Daniel Vega as the f irst- choice keeper.
The Galaxy ( 4- 9- 3) were undoubtedly hoping for the same kind of boost from Klinsmann. But unfortunately he can’t score like his father Jurgen, a World Cup champion with Germany and the former coach of the U. S. national team.
With his father watching from home in Newport Beach, Klinsmann’s f irst touch came in the third minute, when he pounced on a loose ball at the post. His f irst save came nine minutes later when he batted down a Thompson shot from the edge of the penalty area.
But his luck ran out a minute before the intermission when Lima scored on San Jose’s seventh shot of the half, a right- footed drive from just inside the penalty area.
Ríos doubled the lead for San Jose ( 6- 7- 5) early in the second half, outrunning Galaxy defender Nick DePuy to a bending, one- hop pass from Fierro and redirecting it in.
If Klinsmann was mostly sharp, Javier “Chicharito” Hernández was once again as dull as a butter knife up front. Returning to the lineup after missing a game following the birth of his second child, Hernández was subbed out in the 54th minute.
“That was my decision,” Schelotto said of removing Hernández, who the coach said wasn’t injured.