The LA Galaxy pay the Seattle Sounders a visit. To help provide some insight, we asked Alex Ruiz of the Galactic Tribune to share his thoughts.
Notable injuries
- Emiro Garces is questionable, he's been dealing with a lot of knocks this season
- Joao Klauss remains out and was placed on the injured list earlier this week
Team form
The Galaxy can’t build any momentum. The win in Atlanta last weekend was supposed to be a key stepping stone but the loss to Sporting KC on Wednesday put the G's back in square one. You can get a Galaxy team that can compete with any team in the league or a team that is clearly second-best at everything. Their form hasn’t been great these last few games and it feels like LA is on track to be a team fighting for a play-in spot rather than getting home-field advantage in the first round.
Key players
Joseph Paintsil on on the fringes of the Ghanian national team and any good performance will help his case to be on the final World Cup Roster. His pace is electric and easily is the fastest player on the Galaxy. You can see he's very much motivated to bump up his goal contribution numbers and at times it may make him a bit selfish.
One thing opposing fans should know
This LA team is exhausted. LA has travelled to Atlanta, Kansas City, and now Seattle with no stops back home in LA. Don’t be surprised if LA runs out of gas early or is not able to keep up with the speed of the match. If Seattle scores early, it’s hard for me to envision LA having the energy to create a comeback but also defend against the Sounders’ attackers all game. The Galaxy really struggles to get itself back into games when going down a goal. It’s even harder task to do up in Seattle.
Projected lineup
4-3-3: J.T Marcinkowski, John Nelson, Justin Haak, Jakob Glesnes, Miki Yamane, Edwin Cerrillo, Lucas Sanabria, Marco Reus, Harbor Miller, Joseph Paintsil, Gabriel Pec
