Galaxy avoids Stanford Stadium drama with rout of Quakes

The Galaxy’s annual late June Saturday night showdown with the San Jose Earthquakes at Stanford Stadium has not been short of drama.

The two teams have always gone back and forth during its early summer showdown on the Stanford University campus. Unfortunately for the Galaxy, they have been the ones to set the tone, only for the Quakes to snatch the plot back off their hands. Coming into Saturday’s match, the Galaxy were 2-5-3 at the farm, and in some of those  five losses and three draws, the Galaxy have dropped points in the most agonizing ways, allowing its Northern California Rivals to come back from one-goal and at times two-goal deficits to snatch points from its SoCal Nemesis.

However, this year, on this Saturday, the Galaxy not only set the tone for this match, but kept its foot on the pedal all night. A first half strike from from Joseph Paintsil, coupled with second half goals from Dejan Joveljic and Mauricio Cuevas enabled the Galaxy to collect a huge three points and set up a tantalizing July 4th showdown with crosstown rival LAFC with a 3-0 win over San Jose.

“It was a good group effort,” Galaxy keeper John McCarthy said. “Winning is the most important thing. So when you can find a way to win, it’s great. When you can get a shutout, that’s a little added on bonus for the group as a whole and it speaks volumes so it’s a nice.”

The win allows the Galaxy (11-3-7, 40 points) to keep pace with LAFC for first place in the Western Conference. While the two LA clubs are tied on points for first in the West, LAFC currently gets to claim the top spot by virtue of having one more win than the Galaxy,

The Galaxy broke through in the 37th minute. After successfully defending a corner kick, Paintsil ignited a Galaxy counter in the 37th minute, as he sprung Gabriel Pec down the right side of the field, Pec dribbled forward, slowed down, then played a perfect ball to a trailing Paintsil, and he finished the break with a one-timer inside the penalty that beat keeper William Yarbrough into the back net to get the Galaxy on the board.

“I was happy for it because the timing couldn’t have been better and to be fair, we were kind of surviving that corner kick specifically,” Galaxy head coach Greg Vanney said “You see the speed and quality of Gabe (Gabriel Pec) on the pass, the speed of Joe (Joseph Paintsil). As they had the numbers and open space, the execution of that action was really good and, again, if you’re going to overpress us or send to be numbers high, it could be a cost on the other side which we showed tonight.”

The Galaxy then wrapped up the match in the second half. Riqui Puig, who came in as a substitute in the 55th minute after sitting out the Galaxy’s last three matches, won possession of the ball at midfield and dribbled forward, Puig avoided a challenge from Daniel Munie, then let loose a volley from bout 25 yards out that hit off the crossbar, but the ball fell to Joveljic, and with Yarbrough scrambling to recover after contesting Puig’s shot, Joveljic was virtually left with an open net and he cashed in, heading a ball into said open net. Cuevas put a bow on the Galaxy’s dominant night in stoppage time, as Marky Delgado played a ball to Miki Yamane down the right side, crossed towards Miguel Berry inside the penalty area, but Berry dummied a ball, and Cuevas slammed home a shot past Yarbrough.