Sports stats

MLS LA Galaxy

LA Galaxy Fall to Houston Dynamo FC at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday Night

May 23, 2022 - Major League Soccer (MLS)
LA Galaxy News Release


LOS ANGELES - Playing their fifth game in the span of 15 days, the LA Galaxy fell 3-0 to Houston Dynamo FC before 22,471 fans at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday night.

Goal-Scoring Plays

HOU - Carlos Ferreira (penalty kick), 11th minute: After Jonathan Bond initially saved Corey Baird's shot from close range, the rebound fell to Carlos Ferreira, who avoided a tackle and converted from the six-yard box.

HOU - Tyler Pasher (Carlos Ferreira), 58th minute: Cutting inside onto his left foot, Tyler Pasher's shot from long range found the top right corner of the net.

HOU - Thor Ulfarsson (Carlos Ferreira, Matias Vera), 62nd minute: After receiving a pass down the left side of the penalty area, Thor Ulfarsson dribbled by a Galaxy defender and unleashed his shot into the roof of the net.

Postgame Notes

Following the loss, the LA Galaxy (6-5-2, 20 points) sit in fifth place in the Western Conference standings.

Sunday's match between the LA Galaxy and Houston Dynamo FC marked the 35th MLS regular-season meeting, with Galaxy trailing the series 12-13-10.

Across all competitions during the 2022 campaign, the LA Galaxy hold a record of 8-5-2.

In 16 matches played at home against Houston, LA holds a 6-5-5 record.

In seven games played at Dignity Health Sports Park across all competitions during the 2022 campaign, the LA Galaxy hold a 4-3-0 record.

When the opposition scores first, the LA Galaxy hold a 0-4-0 record in league play this season.

In 11 matches played across all competitions dating back to April 3, LA holds a record of 6-3-2.

Mark Delgado attempted 126 passes (114 completed) in the match against Houston, the highest total for a player in a single game in MLS this season.

Samuel Grandsir made his 47th consecutive appearance in league play dating back to April 18, 2021.

Nick DePuy made his 50th regular-season appearance for the Galaxy.

Víctor Vázquez made his first start for the Galaxy dating back to April 9.

Dejan Joveljić made his first start of the season in league play during the 2022 campaign.

Kelvin Leerdam started his first match for the Galaxy dating back to April 16.

Next Game

Next up, the LA Galaxy play host to LAFC in the Round of 16 of the 2022 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup at Dignity Health Sports Park on Wednesday, May 25. The May 25 match kicks off at 7:30 p.m. PT and will be streamed live on ESPN+.com.

LA Galaxy (6-5-2, 20pts) vs. Houston Dynamo FC (5-5-3, 18pts)

May 22, 2022 - Dignity Health Sports Park (Los Angeles)

Goals by Half 1 2 F

LA Galaxy 0 0 0

Houston Dynamo FC 1 2 3

Scoring Summary:

HOU: Ferreira, 11

HOU: Pasher (Ferreira), 58

HOU: Ulfarsson (Ferreira), 62

Misconduct Summary:

HOU: Rodriguez (caution), 16

HOU: Ulfarsson (caution), 62

LA: DePuy (caution), 65

HOU: Avila (caution), 80

HOU: Hadebe (caution), 86

Lineups:

LA: GK Jonathan Bond; D Kelvin Leerdam, D Séga Coulibaly (Derrick Williams, 59), D Nick DePuy, D Raheem Edwards (Chase Gasper, 69); M Mark Delgado, M Rayan Raveloson, M Efraín Álvarez, M Víctor Vázquez © (Douglas Costa, 59), M Samuel Grandsir (Kévin Cabral, 59); F Dejan Joveljić (Javier "Chicharito" Hernández, 59)

Substitutes Not Used: GK Jonathan Klinsmann; D Julián Araujo; M Daniel Aguirre, M Jonathan Pérez

TOTAL SHOTS: 16 (Efraín Álvarez, 4); SHOTS ON GOAL: 6 (Efraín Álvarez, Samuel Grandsir, 2); FOULS: 9 (Nick DePuy, Rayan Raveloson, 3) OFFSIDES: 1; CORNER KICKS: 11; SAVES: 5

HOU: GK Steve Clark; D Adam Lundkvist, D Tim Parker ©, D Teenage Hadebe, D Zeca (Griffin Dorsey, 90); M Memo Rodriguez (Ethan Bartlow, 56), M Matias Vera (Daniel Steres, 70), M Darwin Ceren; F Corey Baird (Tyler Pasher, 56), F Thor Ulfarsson (Roberto Avila, 70), F Carlos Ferreira

Substitutes Not Used: GK Michael Nelson; D Sam Junqua; M Marcelo Palomino; F Darwin Quintero

TOTAL SHOTS: 14 (Carlos Ferreira, 4); SHOTS ON GOAL: 8 (Carlos Ferreira, 4); FOULS: 13 (Carlos Ferreira, 4) OFFSIDES: 0; CORNER KICKS: 0; SAVES: 6

Referee: Marcos Deoliveira

Assistant Referees: Frank Anderson, Diego Vlas

Fourth Official: Natalie Simon

VAR: Geoff Gamble

Weather: Clear, 68 degrees

Attendance: 22,471

All statistics contained in this box score are unofficial

LA GALAXY POSTGAME QUOTES

LA GALAXY HEAD COACH GREG VANNEY

On what happened tonight and his thoughts on the match:

"For me, we lacked killer instinct of any kind. And that's... I say that when we have the ball, and I say that when we didn't have the ball. There was... Again, we give up an early goal off of a transition. We lose a ball. They play across the field. They get in between our outside back, center back. We're down 1-0 pretty quickly into the game. I think we, I mean, we created a fair number of chances the first half. We have some balls that have to hit the back of the net. We don't, which is part of that killer instinct. We're not. For me, in front of the net, we've got to be ready to finish one touch. We're trying to make it more perfect. We have opportunities to shoot. We try to make it more perfect. And, that's just... that can't happen. Because you're vulnerable every time you give up, you let those opportunities pass. You're more and more vulnerable as the game progresses. We saw that. Second half, Séga [Coulibaly] goes down. We were already preparing a group of substitutions. So, then, having to switch to find a substitution to come in for Sega, get him ready... Derrick [Williams]. We have a window of about a few minutes, maybe, to get ourselves to that substitution, to get to 11 v 11. And, we give up the second one. Again, I think, okay we're down a man, but we got passive when [Tyler] Pasher got the ball and he put it on his left foot. We were passive. We weren't closing him up. He bent one to the back post, and now you're two down and scrambling, and all the fresh legs that are coming on the field have a much bigger hill to climb. I think, you know, some of these teams that sat back against us and clogged things up, it's not, again, it doesn't come with enough killer instinct. It doesn't come with enough forward intention. It doesn't come with enough goals being whipped in front of the goal and making them make saves. When you're just kind of passing the ball around the perimeter too slowly and not finishing the attacks, then, again, you're vulnerable. And, I felt like that was a bit us. Some of these transitions, we don't win challenges. We lose tackles in the transitions and that's deadly. You're two against one, and I don't know how many times one against two. Them one, us two. Where guys dribbled through us. Or, we lost the challenge, and now they're on the other side of us. These things, they just can't happen. This group, and the message in that group, is we play nice and lose games is unacceptable. We have to find the ugly, and the fight, and the competitive side and the killer instinct to win games. To take what can be nice moments of soccer and turn them into real winning soccer. Which is the hard, nasty work that gets done in front of the goal. Who wants to get on the end of things in front of the goal. Who is going to run hard in that. That's the discussion with us. And asking everybody to step up and be the best version of themselves. And, to take that responsibility. And, they're with it. They're with that. It was a great conversation quickly as a group after. And we know we have a quick turnaround with a big ask for the next couple days. But, when you're in this moment and the arrival and the knock out game is in front of you, it asks a big question for you to turn around and find the fight real fast. Which, I think the guys were all a little embarrassed with the outcome today, and there's an opportunity in a couple days to come out and put on a real battle."

On how he would describe his emotions about this game, and a lot of frustrating moments this season:

"I think it's, for me, a lot of these moments kind of sum up to the same moment. Which, again, it comes down to that killer instinct side of things. We've let a lot of opportunities pass us by this year. We haven't scored a lot of goals. I think just over the last few games, we've conceded more. But certainly, earlier in the season, we defended a lot better. But it's... we have a lot of guys that like to play the pretty game. And like to pass the ball, and move the ball and have some nice combinations. But, all of us, and what we talked about, was starting with me and everybody there, it needs to go a step further outside of the pretty game and lead to the effective game. And, that requires more work. More running. More sacrificing yourself in front of the goal. And, some of that hard stuff that is gritty. And, we just need more of that. For me, that's the hump that we really need to get over. Like I said to them, a lot of guys have had opportunities throughout the course of this season, and now everybody needs to step up and opportunities are going to start to swindle as guys start to show what their value is for the group to be successful. Not just to play. But to be successful. To win games. To fulfil the expectation of the LA Galaxy. That's what we're finding out right now as we go through this."

On if the shift needed is just turning a switch, or if it's something that is going to require something more massive:

"I think some of it is just... you'd like to think some of it is just a switch with the players in there. It might take a different combination of players. It might take restructuring and put some different partnerships on the field. I don't necessarily think it takes something massive, though, we're going to be looking at where we're at when we get to the window. There's been lots of opportunities that we'll keep our eyes on. Not lots, but there's opportunities that we'll keep our eye on. At the end of the day, again, I think we have quality players in this group. But the quality of players that are here, we all know, and, again, it starts with me, it needs to be more effective football. It can't just be passing around, looking nice, creating things. It has to be effectiveness on the end of our attacks. We need to get back to that hard, no stinginess that we had earlier in the season on the defensive side."

On rotating the starting lineup, and if he liked the way that line up played:

"Yeah. By and large, I did. I thought, again, we had some moments that we didn't deal with. And they hit the crossbar. They have a couple chances. The game is about moments. You can play well, and have three moments where you don't deal with things well, and be down 3-0. And that's not acceptable either. I thought there was some good actions. I thought we put together some good chances, of which we didn't finish. But I still think when the opposition clears the ball because you have a good press on them and it comes to you, and you're the guy that needs to knock it down to your teammate, you need to knock it down to your teammate. Not down to the opposition, who then counterattacks you and scores a goal. Those are things that... those are gaps that have to close. When the guy crosses the ball, we can't have a guy in between two of our center backs, heading the ball of the crossbar. We have to mark the guy in that moment, and we have to deal with that situation. So, again, I was... I thought at halftime, if we kept the activity level of the group, the speed at which we were playing, some of the combination play, we would be able to create some more chances within the second half. And I thought some momentum could find us some of those opportunities. But, again, the message is that we can't concede anything. We've got to close the gaps on those moments where we have to seal things off defensively, and in transition, we can't let things happen. And, again, we got caught on that. So, there was some good moments. But, again, it comes down to the effectiveness and ultimately, the execution in the final product in the box in both sides."

On if there is a difference in this team of going on the road and playing at home, and if the good fight on the road needs to develop at home:

"I do. It's something we actually talked about. It's interesting, because we talked about it. Leading up to the game, I talked about it with folks in Spectrum [SportsNet], and I talked about it with our group. That we need to have the grittiness at home. And that we don't have to win the game in the first five minutes. We have to build ourselves into the match. Build momentum. But stay disciplined. Stay organized. And, continue with the mindset of being effective. I do believe a little bit, and this is something that this group is working on, and haven't found the right formula yet, is... what it ultimately takes to be effective in front of our fans, in front of the expectation to win games, in front of the expectation to perform. It's something that this group has to own that responsibility. And all of us in a different way. Because the lower hanging fruit for us, is we have to be better at home. We've been actually decent on the road. We've taken decent points. But, we've now let I think nine go at home, at least, and that's not the Galaxy. The Galaxy win at home. It's a fortress. And, we have to own that as a group and find that right formula as a team. Because, that's going to be the difference for us. If we can, then I think the other stuff, we've actually... we've grinded out well. On the road, and become difficult. But, at home, it hasn't been good enough."

LA GALAXY FORWARD JAVIER "CHICHARITO" HERNÁNDEZ

On today's breakdown after the team had early goals scored against in the first and second halves:

"The breakdowns are very a very negative performance from all of us. It's the second time that we concede three goals in our home. In our fortress. We are being very naïve in soccer IQ. We need to improve all of us. We need to be more decisive because we think that one simple pass from five yards doesn't matter, but everything counts. Everything matters. Every turn, every pass, every tackle. Every intuition, like a play. Everything. We need to wake up because if not, we're going to go into an even deeper hole. And we don't want that. So we need to wake up, all of us, we need to have that desire, that hunger, that confidence. That if we want to be champions, we cannot be playing like this at home. Because one time, it could happen, like it did against Dallas. They played very well. But right now, we are dominating, we are playing pretty well and then we concede three goals with decisions that all of us can prevent. And I'm the first one. The situation is like, we need to improve way, way better. We are LA Galaxy players, it's not any organization, it's the best one. You need to be one of the best player in the world to be here. So, we need to keep it up."

On how the team needs to respond on Wednesday:

"By giving everything. That's the thing. We need to give everything. And it's very easy to speak. We need to go. We can't lose games. We lose some of the games and we played amazing, and we play very good. And yes, they were better. We go to the next one. But with this feeling, in our place, without that pushing, with that kind of naiveness that we are showing, all of us, we need to turn this around. It's not about only about the futbol skills. I am a little frustrated because we have so much talent, we have so much squad as well to be here, and we need to be grateful. We need to be confident, and we need to respond to that confidence that they give us to be an LA Galaxy player. It's not simple to be here. You can ask any player in any institution. [The best players] want to be here in California, in LA, with an institution that's won the most titles and we need to prove that every single game."

LA GALAXY MIDFIELDER VÍCTOR VÁZQUEZ

On finally being back in the starting eleven and thoughts on today's match:

"In one way it's great to be back of course, but it's not the best coming back in this kind of way, like today, losing a game like we did. I think we have to learn, because we are not learning from the mistakes we are doing every game at home. We are not starting the games in the proper way; we are conceding goals the first 10 to 15 minutes always. It happened today again, first half and second half. And it cost us the game. It's great to be back like I said, but it's not the way I wanted."

On how the team needs to be better:

"We are working. We are working on it, but it's still happening and it's on us it's not on the coaches. It's not because of the atmosphere, or whatever. Because the fans are here, helping us, supporting us. I think it's our mistake and we have to learn from it. I think we say today again we have to start more, not like conservative, but more compact as a team because when we are wide open, they create the chances, and they score goals. Like today, it happened, again when we start the build-up, but we missed the ball, we lose the ball and then immediately after two seconds, they are in front of [Jonathan] Bond, one against one and they score. And it's on us. We have to keep working on these kinds of things. And we're going to get better. We are lucky that now we have another game on Wednesday and we can switch this thing around very quickly."

On what's missing and what the team needs to be better at:

"For sure to score more goals because this season, we are missing that. We were so good at the beginning of the season, like doing many, like not conceding a lot. Today we concede three goals at home again. This cannot happen again. But of course, we need to be more like effective in front, to be more killers. We need everyone, we need the strikers, we need the midfielders, we even need the defenders when we get the free kicks, the corner kicks. We need more from all of us and it's not happening. We are working on it. Of course, we have many guys in front that they can score goals, but we are missing. And today in the first half we see again that we miss a lot of chances and I think we could be leading the game in the first half, but we were not."

On there being specific details that are missing:

"No, I don't think so because you can see on the first half. Of course, we didn't start a game as we wanted, but at the end, we were creating the chances. And, as I said, I think we could be in front of the game at half time, but we weren't, and then the second half, it happened the same again. The first 10 minutes they scored the second goal and then you have to work really hard to get back and it's not easy."

On whether there's a disconnect between the runs and the passes and chances being created:

"Yes, sometimes it is, and sometimes it's also maybe the fault from the guys we are playing on the middle, that we are not putting the right ball in the right moment. Sometimes it's about the running, sometimes it's about, maybe, the control because we are missing the control sometimes or the shot or whatever. I think we have to try to connect all the pieces again. I think, I'm sure we're going to do it because we have the quality, we have the players, but we have to also, like we said today, we have to trust more on each other because I think we are missing that and we said today, we said last week, and we have to believe that we are a great team. We are a good team. We show it many times and I think this Wednesday is a big one to do it and I think we have to do it for our fans, because I think today the second half like I said, it was unacceptable, and we feel really bad for them."

On whether there's other players on the team who can create chances if he is not on the field:

"Of course, we have players who can do the same. As I say, always I think Efraín [Álvarez] is one of our guys, that he has the quality to do that and the rest, we have players, of course, we have Rayan [Raveloson], we have Mark [Delgado] in the field. They are different than me or as Efraín, but we have the right players. I think it is more about that we are missing some clear chances in front of the goal. And I think, once we are getting in this and we keep scoring goals, I think everything is going to be more easy. Everything is going to look better; the passes will be there. The score, the goals will be there, and we will forget about these things. But yeah, when we are on the field, players like Sacha [Kljestan], Efrain, myself. We keep doing this. And keep serving the other guys to try to score goals."

On how he feels physically:

"Yeah, I am feeling great. Today was a good like 55 minutes. I don't know how much it was at the end but yeah, it was great to be back. I'm ready for everything now again, and I'm happy of course, to be back and trying to help the team as much as I can."

On Greg Vanney saying he wants the players to play more efficient:

"Yeah, I totally agree with Greg [Vanney]. We just spoke about this in the dressing room, and I think we have to understand the kind of players we have on the field. And for example, if Efrain [Alvarez] myself or even Douglas [Costa] or whoever is on the field that we have this kind of qualities to give the last pass, to give this movement to the team to create chances, we have to give the ball to these guys. Because, you know that these guys are going to create the chances and the other guys, they have to be in the box. In the first half we make it. We did it. We missed the chances, we weren't lucky, but in the second half, I think we didn't do enough. I think we didn't create a chance in the second half. Then we have to like I said, we have to trust each other more and if I'm on the field, they know that I'm a key player, that I can give the kind of balls, that I can make the team play. And the other guys, they have to be in the box, and they have to be ready for this kind of opportunity because when we start to play so nice, okay, we can do it. But when you are losing a game, it's for nothing. We lead the game two to zero and then to start playing nicer. Have the ball and move the ball around and have them running. But today, it wasn't like this and the second half like I said, I think we looked very bad, really bad. And I think it's unacceptable for us, for the supporters, and for the organization."

Check out the LA Galaxy Statistics



Major League Soccer Stories from May 23, 2022


The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

OurSports Central