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two forwards (Joveljic and Herandez). The Galaxy normally play in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Hernandez the lone forward.

“The reason I did it was to give it more minutes and let’s see over a longer stretch of time how we manage the midfield, how we defend when we have two on, how we possess the ball and still play through our principles,” Vanney said of Joveljic-hernandez pairing. “If we do it for 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, sometimes, you don’t get as big a look at what actually it brings to the table, so in the end, we found a solution.”

The Galaxy looked like a team that had its good run interrupted by the international break. The pace, timing and execution was out of sync throughout the first 45 minutes. Unfortunately, Portland needed just one chance, a counter-attack the finished with Yimmi Chara slotting a ball by Jonathan Bond for a 1-0 lead.

“The first half was difficult for us, definitely very, very bad for us, there’s no excuses on that part,” Araujo said. “We came into the locker room, we knew we had 45 minutes to go. They had a goal, but we came back against Austin (FC) and that was our mentality. “Last year, we didn’t have many of those ... we have a different mentality this year, so we stayed positive.”

The Galaxy could have put the game away earlier. On two separate occasions, the Galaxy had shouts for penalty kicks, but both were denied by the Video Assistant Referee. In the first half, Vazquez looked to his feet tangled with a Portland defender and went to the ground and in the second half, Samuel Grandsir

sprinted through three defenders, appeared to get tripped by Portland’s Larrys Mabiala, but no penalty was given and in fact, Grandsir was given a yellow card for Simulation.

After scoring the tying goal, Joveljic also received a yellow card for taking his shirt off. That’s his third yellow card of the season, each time after scoring, something he said he has to stop doing.

“This is my last time,” he said with a laugh.