On Sunday, as the LA Galaxy continued their Final Push to the Playoffs against the Houston Dynamo, Landon Donovan made his first MLS start since retiring after the 2014 MLS Cup Final.
It wasn’t an easy game in which to make his return to an MLS starting XI. Facing 90 degree temperatures and a Houston team content to sit in defensive formation, Donovan had to grind out a tough 60 minutes. He even joked about the workload with defender A.J. DeLaGarza after the match:
All ribbing aside, all that running did pay off for Donovan. He stuck mostly to his right sideline with Giovani dos Santos patrolling the central attacking midfielder area, but Donovan did make a key pass in front of the penalty area when he came inside. He also made a handful of defensive plays, including three recoveries.
“Landon had a solid game,” said head coach Bruce Arena. “We’re slowly building him forward with additional minutes. He gave us a good 60 minutes. It would have been nice to have some better conditions, but to be able to do that – to put in 60 minutes under those conditions – was good.”
Coming back to the league in essentially preseason form has made predicting exactly what Donovan could contribute to the Galaxy a bit of a mystery. Injuries were part of the reason he was asked to come out of retirement, and now Sunday, with Robbie Keane and Steven Gerrard unavailable, he was asked to make the jump from 30-minute shifts to 60.
“It might be my last start,” Landon Donovan told LAGalaxy.com after the match. "I almost died a few times."
“It was fun, I enjoyed it," he continued. "Still got a ways to go, but it was nice to be able to come in and contribute. When you can put in 60 hard minutes then you’ve got a former MVP in Mike Magee coming in to make a play to change the game, that’s what a real team is all about.”
It’s worth noting that Alan Gordon, who scored the lone goal as a solo forward, didn’t have a shot attempt until after Donovan left the match in the 60th minute. Donovan’s key pass was to Emmanuel Boateng, as the Galaxy midfield did most of the chance creation with Donovan and dos Santos on the field together. It was a speed game, throwing counter after counter at the Dynamo defense.
“I really just wanted to be able to help,” said Donovan. “It wasn’t a great [game] for me, but I felt like we all did what we needed to do. “When you look across the board you’re not going to get any 10’s from people, technically brilliant or doing any of that, but a lot of 7’s and 8’s from guys that just put in the real effort. I was happy to do that for 60 minutes.”
