Sandy, UT (SportsNetwork.com) - A pair of fierce Western Conference rivals will lock horns on Wednesday as the defending champion Los Angeles Galaxy travel to Rio Tinto Stadium to tangle with Real Salt Lake.
The Galaxy come into the clash looking for a three-point effort after consecutive 1-1 draws against Red Bull New York on April 26 and the Colorado Rapids last week.
Playing without several stars, Los Angeles was a little slow to get into the game against Colorado and fell behind in the 40th minute when Michael Harrington sent a pass into space for Torres to chase. Torres beat to defenders to the ball, went in on goal alone and slid it past Galaxy goalkeeper Jaime Penedo with ease.
But the Galaxy battled back to equalize with 15 minutes to play as Gordon got on the end a Stefan Ishizaki corner kick and nodded it down and into the bottom right corner of the net, past Rapids goalkeeper Clint Irwin.
"Good goal. Alan certainly knows how to come into a game, and that's a real skill," said Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena. "He continues to do it, so I give him a lot of credit."
"We wanted to give (Ignacio) Maganto a start. We're going to need those guys not only this month, but June and July. We have a very heavy schedule, so we have to have other guys playing. Leonardo came back from an injury, he was out for about a month so we wanted to give him a start. We needed to get Mika on the field a little bit. So those were the reasons, and obviously we have some other games coming up."
Real Salt Lake, meanwhile, enters the fixture in an uncharacteristic run of poor form, going four matches without a win, including a 1-1 draw against the San Jose Earthquakes last week.
San Jose took a 1-0 advantage on a disputed goal in the 19th minute. Shea Salinas shot from the top of the box and his attempt took a deflection off Jamison Olave and fell to Chris Wondolowski, who beat the offside trap and slotted home.
But RSL drew level late on when some good pressure by RSL forward Alvaro Saborio on defender Victor Bernandez forced Bernandez to knock the ball into his own net for the own goal.
"I thought there was too many stoppages and obviously we didn't play exactly the way that we wanted to, but I want to put a product out on the field and I want the fans to enjoy themselves and tonight was a hard night for them to enjoy themselves with so many stops and starts," said RSL head coach Jeff Cassar.
Wednesday's clash marks the first meeting of the season between the rivals. The clubs last met in the Western Conference semifinals last season, when Los Angeles claimed a 5-0 aggregate victory.
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