Nashville SC has one more weekend on the road before opening up its new soccer-specific home, GEODIS Park. It faces the LA Galaxy in a Western Conference match Saturday night.
Nashville has opened the season with seven straight games away from Tennessee and has built itself a 3-2-2 record (11 points). The Galaxy (4-2-1, 13 points) is undefeated with two wins and a draw over the last three games.
Nashville, in its third season of existence in MLS, has never faced the Galaxy.
The Galaxy haven’t won consecutive home matches since a run of three straight in July and August last season. But the team has Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, who has not gone consecutive MLS starts without scoring since last September.
Hernandez, perhaps making a case for Mexico’s World Cup roster inclusion, did not have a goal last week against Chicago, but leads the Galaxy with five goals on the season. He played 76 minutes on Tuesday in a U.S. Open Cup match against San Diego Loyal.
“We know we have an important game, against a team we haven’t met before,” the Galaxy’s Julian Araujo told the LA Daily News. “We’re excited. We know they’re going to come out strong and we have to prepare and we had to change our mindset (from Tuesday) to another team.”
Hany Mukhtar scored twice in Nashville’s draw with San Jose last Saturday. He and CJ Sapong are their team’s co-leaders in goals with two each.
Nashville does it with defense, as it has allowed just eight goals in seven games while scoring eight. But coming up with 11 points in seven road matches while the team waits for its new stadium to open on May 1 has Nashville in a good position.
“The hope always was that we would put enough points on the board to be in a competitive world and not put too much pressure on some of these home games that are coming up quickly,” head coach Gary Smith told the club website. “I think (the players have) also done an incredible job with the way they’ve conducted themselves, with the way that they’ve performed, and certainly with the displays that we’ve shown on the road.”
–Field Level Media
