Goalie gaffes propel Morelia past Galaxy
- by Ridge Mahoney @ridgemax, Sep 14, 2011
[CONCACAF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE] Bad goalkeeping and questionable officiating reversed a one-goal lead and sent Los Angeles home from Morelia with a 2-1 loss Tuesday
night in Group A of the Concacaf Champions League.
Provided a 1-0 advantage by Robbie Keane’s goal in the 52nd minute, the Galaxy succumbed to late goals by
Adrian Aldrete and Miguel Sabah that were helped over the goal line by keeper Josh Saunders, who otherwise performed superbly as the Galaxy tried to
become the third MLS team to win a CCL match in Mexico. FC Dallas and Seattle recorded victories in Mexico last month.
Instead, the Galaxy also lost an apparently good goal to an offside
decision as it fell for the first time in group play.
Morelia’s win pulled it even atop the group with the Galaxy at 2-1-0 and six points. Both teams are on the road next week:
Morelia plays Motagua in Honduras, and the Galaxy heads to Costa Rica to play Alajuelense. (Motagua and Alajuelense play Thursday in Tegucigalpa.)
The Galaxy, playing without
Juninho (suspended) and David Beckham (rested), nearly scored in the first half when Omar Gonzalez’s header from a Landon
Donovan free kick came back off the crossbar. The chance followed strong saves by Saunders on shots by Marvin Cabrera and Joao Rojas, and he also smothered a
loose ball after his attempt to play the ball caromed off Gonzalez.
Keane scored his first CCL goal and second for the Galaxy by trapping a crossfield ball from Donovan on the right flank,
gliding past Jorge Kalu, and firing a shot high past keeper Ricardo Villar. Keane nearly scored again later in the half with a spectacular lob from about 60 yards
that Villar backpedaled furiously to tip over the crossbar.
Saunders stoned Morelia several more times before Aldrete equalized in the 83rd minute when his low, long-range shot squeezed
under the keeper’s body and rolled to the goal line. Saunders lunged to apparently pin the ball with his gloves on the goal line, but his momentum moved it enough that referee Jose
Pineda signaled a goal. A Morelia player was in the keeper’s line of sight as the shot was taken but replays indicated he wasn’t in an offside position.
The officials
got that call correct but they erred badly in the 90th minute. Keane pushed a loose ball into the net after it had bounced off a defender as well as Villar, but the goal was waved off for offside.
Replays showed Keane and two teammates clearly not closer to goal than the Morelia player as well as Villar when Gonzalez headed the ball towards the net, so the goal should have counted.
Two minutes into injury time, Sabah escaped Chad Barrett on a corner kick to nail a point-blank header that Saunders sprawled to parry, but the spinning ball eluded his grasp and
rolled over the goal line.
LA was robbed on some bad officiating...LA keeper committed two gaffes on both Morelia goals and the defense gave back too many balls to the opposition with panicky clearances when there was clear sailing up-field.
Wile the goalkeeping was terrible the refs were worse. As long as the refs are going to be Latinos the Yanks are not going to get any breaks. Besides LA the same and similar situations happened with Dallas and Colorado.That is the the trouble with these CONCACAF games. Thus things will not change. So do not take these games seriously. Just use them as a practice games, just like Sigi Schmid does. He spreads out his players to all different games. Sigi knows that these Latino refs are biased especially on Latino home games. It's life it happens in this game people are not perfect. Just like BB he was just as bias against using Latino players. So it was waste of his time to even try to get lined up with a Mexican team. Not only he is biased what would he do with the Latin style of play. He doesn't speak that lingo of play!