Amazingly, despite the deluge of goals, at halftime the Loons were still a goal away from parity. Kelvin Yeboah tied the score only five minutes in, blasting a powerful shot past a defender and goalkeeper John McCarthy, and he scored again just before the half ended on a penalty kick to pull his team within 3-2.
McCarthy actually saved Yeboah’s first penalty effort, but replay showed that the goalkeeper was off his goal line, and the kick was retaken. At his second attempt, Yeboah drove the ball into the side netting.
However, any hope of a turnaround in the second half was killed five minutes in, with Pec on the score sheet again. While the 23-year-old Brazilian had 16 goals in the regular season, few could have been as good as this one. It was all Pec, who picked up the ball 20 yards into his own half, then dribbled past three defenders on a straight line to the Minnesota goal, finishing inside the far post for a second time.
“We, of course, knew the level of threat that the forwards posed, but had every intention of this not being a game that was played in big open spaces,” said Loons coach Eric Ramsay, whose team had given up a total of two goals in its previous seven matches.
From there, the second half was almost all Galaxy. First, St. Clair saved a Pec penalty kick, but other than confirming his status as the king of penalties and preventing Pec from getting his hat trick, all it did was make the final score better.
Loons center back Jefferson Díaz was sent off with less than 10 minutes to go for a pair of second-half yellow cards — killing any hope of a comeback and opening the door for the Galaxy to pad to their total. Paintsil and Joveljic both added late goals, giving all three members of LA’s star-studded forward trio a pair of goals for the evening.