Brutal, Physical, Scoreless

The Galaxy survived early and late domination by Chivas USA to earn a draw from Saturday nights contest at the Home Depot Center. A nearly sold out crowd saw an entertaining, extremely physical, and scoreless "SuperClassico". Which is by far the greatest soccer rivalry in the States. Six yellow cards and three red cards should tell you exactly how heated this LA derby has become over the years. Although there were no riots in the stands, this time, so it has become clear that security has learned from past mistakes or the two sides fans have begun to accept and co-exist with each other. Or maybe the staff just watered down the beer.

The first half began with a Chivas side coming out and beating on the Galaxy at every chance. No Galaxy player was played the ball with out a hard challenge following soon after. The goats controlled the flow of play for most of the fist 35 minutes or so forcing Donovan Ricketts to make a couple of brilliant saves to keep the home side level. Jesse Marsh completely choked one from three feet out that Ricketts tipped over the bar. Kljestian put a shot on from distance that Ricketts made look easy. Ricketts who was making his Galaxy debut certainly earned man of the match on the night. Making a total of five saves overall. I'm not sure but that may be more saves than Josh Saunders made all year!!!

The first half ended with the sending off of former Galaxy and current Chivas midfielder Paolo Nagamura on a second yellow for pulling down Landon Donovan. The second half began with Alan Gordon (who still sucks) being issued a second yellow and shown the red card door. After that it was more Chivas on the ball playing keep away from the out matched stadium rivals. Both teams settled in for what was clearly going to be a tie game. right up until new defender Greg Berhalter gave away the ball and essentially a break away to Elecko Eskadarian and had to pull him down from behind, earning himself a straight red card. From that point on it was the goats game to lose. Enter the Galaxy Defenders, they shielded Ricketts and with the exception of one shot from distance that was no problem for the MLS player of the week (just announced) the match finished a classic nil-nil draw.