A trio of Galaxy goalscorers ensured that the Supporters’ Shield winners would get the benefit of home cooking for the MLS Cup Final as L.A. beat Real Salt Lake 3-1 Sunday night at the Home Depot Center.<\/p>\n
Landon Donovan (23′), Mike Magee (58′), and Robbie Keane (68′)\u00a0all scored for the home squad as the Galaxy will return to their home park for MLS Cup, which, coincidentally,\u00a0is being held at the Home Depot Center on November 20th. Alvaro Saborio (25′) secured the lone goal for Salt Lake, who surged late, but failed to close the gap.<\/p>\n
In a rematch of the 2009 Cup final, which Salt Lake upset the Galaxy to earn their first Cup in franchise history, the\u00a0guests came out firing on all cylinders.\u00a0 Robbie Russell fired away on Josh Saunders in the 5th minute, but\u00a0the Galaxy goalkeeper denied the\u00a0effort.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0Salt Lake essentially handed their hosts the lead when Andy Williams\u00a0brought down Omar Gonzalez in the\u00a018 and gave the Galaxy the penalty. Donovan didn’t miss to make it a 1-0 game by the midway point of the first frame.<\/p>\n
Salt Lake responded two minutes later in 25th minute when Saborio poached\u00a0the remnants of a Javier\u00a0Morales corner\u00a0and pushed it\u00a0past Saunders to level it and give his squad\u00a0a much needed lift.<\/p>\n
Coming out of the locker\u00a0room for the second half,\u00a0both teams\u00a0stood\u00a045 minutes\u00a0from a return to their first MLS Cup since their\u00a0previous\u00a0finals meeting.\u00a0It boiled down to one question: who wanted it more?<\/p>\n
That answer came\u00a0within a ten minute span, when Mike Magee\u00a0nodded\u00a0a David Beckham corner through in the 58th minute and Robbie Keane converted a Donovan to pad the Galaxy lead in the 68th minute.<\/p>\n
Any idea that the guests would go quietly evaporated in the waning minutes. Substitute Luis Gil made a few heady runs and tested Saunders late. But each time, the Galaxy keeper came up clutch and preserved the 3-1 scoreline as the Galaxy will play in their seventh MLS Cup final in two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Galaxy surge to a 3-1 win over Salt Lake and will get to play for the league title at their home park in two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/conf_champions_group.jpg?fit=620%2C350&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6923,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions\/6923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}