When the winless Galaxy stumbled home from the MLS Is Back tournament in Florida two months ago, the league rewarded them with arguably the toughest schedule for the first phase of the MLS season reboot.
The Galaxy didn’t lose a game, twice shutting out LAFC, the best team in the league a year ago, and beating Portland, champion of the Florida tournament.
So when the Galaxy started the second phase of the reboot Saturday against the Colorado Rapids, a team that had won just once since MLS teams stopped playing in front of fans in early March, it looked like a mismatch.
And it was, with Cole Bassett and Jonathan Lewis leading the Rapids to a comfortable 2-0 win in an empty Dignity Health Sports Park, snapping the Galaxy’s six-game unbeaten streak.
Bassett scored late in the first half and Lewis late in the second. Before Lewis’ goal was allowed to stand, it had to withstand a long video review after the sideline official ruled the Rapids were offside on the play.
The Galaxy have gone 187 minutes without a goal. Even Javier “Chicharito” Hernández proved unable to save them, coming on for the final 36 minutes — his longest appearance in more than two months — but putting just one shot on goal.
And the Galaxy (4-4-3) not only lost the game, they also lost their cool. Teenage defender Julian Araujo, who has been spectacular at times this season, earned two yellow cards and an ejection late in the second half, leaving his team to play the final 15 minutes without him.
Araujo was whistled for a hard tackle on Kellyn Acosta but disagreed with the call and appeared to say something to referee Ted Unkel that Unkel objected to, leading to the second yellow card and the expulsion.
Three minutes later Lewis scored to put the game away.
It never should have come down to that. The Galaxy were coming off back-to-back shutouts, the Rapids fresh off their most one-sided loss of the year and having just traded Kei Kamara, their co-leading scorer.
Even though they seemed headed in opposite directions, the teams slogged through an even if unspectacular first 30 minutes before the Rapids came alive, pushing forward in numbers and eventually beating Galaxy keeper David Bingham to take a 1-0 lead on Bassett’s goal with five minutes left in the first half.
The goal was the first Bingham had allowed in three games and 220 minutes and it came on an easy finish for Bassett, who beat Galaxy defender Nicholas DePuy to Sam Vines’ long, right-footed cross and tapped it in.
On defense the Rapids kept a crowd around the Galaxy’s Cristian Pavón all night — and the strategy worked, with Pavón finishing without a goal or assist in consecutive games for the first time in his MLS career.
He leads the Galaxy in both categories and though he didn’t put a shot on target, he still had his moments, including one midway through the first half that ended when teammate Sebastian Lletget inexplicably stopped his run into the box just as Pavón sent a pass that way.
Lletget had a good look off a corner kick in the 71st minute, but his header from the center of the penalty area went well over the goal.
The Galaxy’s best chance may have come in the 52nd minute when Araujo sent a low, hard pass from the right wing to Ethan Zubak at the near post. But Zubak’s attempt to redirect the ball in was smothered by William Yarbrough, one of four saves he made in registering his second shutout of the season for Colorado (4-4-4).
