Guilherme Santos scored the tying goal in the 41st minute and Jonathan Bond recorded five saves as the visiting Houston Dynamo earned a 1-1 draw with the LA Galaxy on Saturday in a Western Conference dustup in Carson, Calif.
It was the final game for both teams before MLS’s two-month World Cup break. The draw was the first this season for the Dynamo (7-6-1, 22 points), who head to the break two points clear of the Galaxy (5-5-5, 20 points) in the West standings.
Houston has earned points in four of its past five league matches (3-1-1). Los Angeles is 3-1-2 in its past six MLS contests.
The Galaxy were the aggressor in the early minutes of the match, as Erik Thommy and then Joseph Paintsil tested Bond with shots on target in the 14th and 17th minute, respectively.
Paintsil broke through in the 30th minute, making short work of a scoring play that started when Edwin Cerrillo passed to the right side of the box to Miki Yamane. Yamane worked hard to center the ball but it bounced through traffic in front of the goal before Paintsil ripped a right-footed shot past Bond and into the top-left corner of the net for a 1-0 Los Angeles lead.
Guilherme had an excellent chance to produce the equalizer for the Dynamo five minutes later but missed over the crossbar from short range.
Guilherme made the most of his next opportunity, taking a pass from Jack McGlynn outside the top of the box and hitting a curving shot past Galaxy keeper JT Marcinkowski (three saves) into the bottom-right corner. Antonio Carlos was credited with a secondary assist on that tying tally.
The second half was full of unrealized scoring chances.
Marcinkowski kept the match knotted with a stop on a low-percentage shot by McGlynn in the 56th minute. He then stopped shots from Mateusz Bogusz in the 70th minute and Jose Artur in the 73rd to quell Houston scoring chances.
Cerrillo, Matheus Nascimento and Gabriel Pec had shots on target in the final 15 minutes for the Galaxy, but Bond rose to the task to save each of them and allow the Dynamo to split the points.
–Field Level Media
