LA Galaxy lose to León on a night where Liga MX powers assert themselves

"I mean, it's weak side defending, is what it is," Vanney noted. "And we talked about it going into this game. Their team ... likes to cross their team. Their team likes to get switches of play. Guys on the weak side, and, this particular situation, Ra [Raheem Edwards], specifically, I think, Uri [Rosell] was kind of in that area, he was in that side. But as they switch and the players on the backside of it run through the line, we don't track the run or manage the run.

"And when he runs through, he ends up unmarked and in on the goal," he added. "And just the guys that are on that backside, that weak side, they have to quickly make an assessment of whether that player's onside, is going to be onside, and if they do, they have to track the run and take away the most dangerous player. And, if it’s Ra [Raheem Edwards], for example, to leave the guy on the outside, open, and make sure you track that guy who's running in front of your goal. 

"But I felt like, yes, we checked out," he added. "Naive defending, which happened on a number of occasions through the course of the night. Just some naive defending. And it cost us. And that's this kind of game against these kinds of opponents as you can't have let downs. Novak [Mićović] bailed us out on a couple. Made some great saves. But, that one, he couldn’t do anything about. And, we took it." 

'We were just running around'

Neal said, of his return to the club, "I felt good, coming back from injury. My body was feeling right. Had a tiny knock in the game but it’s nothing major and I’ll be good for Sunday." 

Looking to what needs to improve, Neal observed, "I think we really need to establish our possession, getting into the other opponent’s half and just settling there, instead of maybe wanting to rush things or take things too slow. I think that was the problem today, first half especially, we didn’t maintain enough possession. Leon had a lot of the ball, and we were just running around. That just left us being out of position. So, when we did get the ball, there was not the right options." 

On the night, the Galaxy actually finished with substantially more possession, getting around 55 percent of the ball, and were only edged on shots by a 12-10 margin, though León did also have a 5-3 advantage in shots on goal — and, of course, won the ultimate stat on the night. 

"Now we have one more ahead of us," Vanney said, looking ahead to Sunday. "We’ve got to deal with that one appropriately."