One side is the talk of Major League Soccer, sitting atop the Supporters’ Shield standings behind a fluidly voracious attack, fueled by to-die-for talent around the field, scooping up points left and right, and gearing up, perhaps, to steamroll everything in its sight.
Things aren’t going so swell for the other side, which hasn’t yet found itself, not fully, after heavy offseason movement left holes here and there and not much depth. Its attacking know-how has led to far less than anticipated, its disappointing results forged from inconsistent form, its potential clear but yet to be realized.
That it’s the LA Galaxy (3-0-3, 12 points) that has everyone buzzing and Los Angeles FC that’s still searching for answers is the bizarro-world landscape for the archrivals’ 22nd meeting Saturday at LAFC’s BMO Stadium. The Galaxy has paired talisman Riqui Puig with skilled and speedy wingers Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec for some of the most blisteringly dynamic soccer of the young campaign, and when things aren’t quite clicking, grit and belief has overcome.
It’s not 2023 anymore.
“A lot of things are different than where we were last year, to be fair,” fourth-year head coach Greg Vanney noted Thursday. “Probably night and day, to be quite honest.”
Probably. Last year’s Galaxy, down two starting wingers, got off to a poor start, then watched a spate of season-ending injuries decimate its spine en route to a 8-14-12 finish, better than only three of the other 28 Major League Soccer clubs. Vanney called it a “unicorn season in the worst way.”
This year, so far, is something else. With the slippery Spaniard Puig at the controls and midfield deputy Mark Delgado providing the connective tissue, LA has added dimensions through Paintsil’s pace and skill and Pec’s attacking dynamism, getting behind or carving up opposing defenses for some splendid opportunities, a good many of them goals. Striker Dejan Joveljic has prospered, scoring in all five of his starts.
Nobody’s scoring at a better pace — LA has 13 goals in six games, leads the league in goals-above-xG, and yet is justifiably disappointed not to have more — and, when things are clicking, nobody’s playing a more vibrant brand of attacking soccer elsewhere in MLS.
“Every time we touch the ball, something can happen with the guys that are out there …,” Vanney said. “Any possession can turn into a breakout or a run or something that can be interesting. All those things fit together into a group that’s really confident.”
It’s certainly made for happier times in Carson.
“There’s a lot more positivity,” Vanney said. “And I believe firmly that energy around your club can seep into everything that you’re doing.”
“We’re getting results,” Delgado, who has a team-best four assists, said after last weekend’s 1-0 victory over visiting Seattle Sounders FC vaulted the Galaxy atop the Western Conference and Shield tables. “Getting results makes everything better, changes the energy in the building. People are happier, walking around with a smile on your face, joking around.
“Getting results changes everything, makes all the difference in everyone’s attitude.”
‘We have a lot of good potential’
The results haven’t come easy, but how they’ve come has been a big upside. The Galaxy has struggled at times against low blocks, getting little from prodigious possession. It has offered inadequate resistance to opposing counterattacks, been vulnerable in possession in its defensive third and on set pieces, and only Austin FC has conceded more shots.
There’s much to improve, but the victories the past two weekends — a 3-2 comeback triumph at Sporting Kansas City and the water-logged decision against the Sounders — have been milestones for a club that the last few years has made a custom of faltering at the finish.
“Those are big moments, early on in the season,” goalkeeper John McCarthy said. “Those could have easily been losses, but I think it shows the group mentality, that the game isn’t won in the first minute, it’s not won in the 20th. You’ve got to play the full 90.”
“No matter if we’re up or down, this team can fight,” midfielder Diego Fagundez said. “You can go down, 2-0, to Kansas City, which is a hard place to [play], and then everybody steps up and suddenly we change it all up. That is huge. If you have a team like that, you can get far in this, and that’s what we want.
“The Galaxy has a history of winning championships, making playoffs, and that’s what we want to do. At the end of the day, every year we should be making playoffs.”
Kansas City looked unstoppable, with those two goals and a 17-2 shot advantage at halftime. Seattle, aided by rain-drenched turf that robbed LA of much of its pace and guile, spent most of the final hour applying pressure on the Galaxy box.
“I think our box defending has been extraordinary, to be honest,” Vanney said. “with the amount of times that opposition’s been able to get into our box or deep into our half. The fact that we are, like, No. 2 in the league on shots on target from inside of our box is a real tribute to the defensive work of our center back pairing [captain Maya Yoshida with Martin Caceres or Eriq Zavaleta], our back group [with fullbacks Miki Yamane and Julian Aude] protecting ourselves.
“What we have to do now is be better at preventing teams from advancing into our half so easily … because it’s been a little bit too easy in the last few games to get into our half and be around our goal, and that’s the problem. You can’t survive doing that over and over.”
“Too many teams are getting too deep into our area too easily,” he told Soccer America. “We’re conceding too much ground too quickly and sometimes in transition moments or in some defensive situations. It’s meant, particularly over the last three games, that we’ve ended up defending quite low, and that’s something that we don’t necessarily want to be living and dying on. We want to be able to oppose teams a little higher — it doesn’t mean that we need to be high-pressing all the time, but higher, not just letting teams into our half of the field.”
The Galaxy have been working on that all week, have come up with solutions, “and we looked good in those solutions and clear.” If they work as designed, it would mean, at its most successful, “more chances on goal, more transitions from better areas of the field, better starting positions for our attacks, and it [would give] the opposition a feeling of more relentlessness, that we’re just coming at you all the time, versus ‘OK, you’re just taking territory on us.’ “
The Galaxy has reached the playoffs only twice since Bruce Arena‘s departure after the 2016 season closed the club’s most successful era. Vanney, a Galaxy original, has been working to return the team to prominence since arriving at the start of 2021 following six and a half transformative seasons at Toronto FC. He’s been rebuilding ever since, always a piece or three short, and too often in trying circumstances. That culminated with last year’s summer-transfer ban, a fan boycott that led to club president Chris Klein‘s resignation, and all those injuries.
If that was the low point, this, so far, is the high. It’s early; that’s understood.
“[What being on top says is] we have a lot of good potential and a lot of capability,” Vanney said. “Right now, I think everybody is still trying to settle into the best version of themselves, and that’s still us. We’ve got a fair [number of] new faces, and we’ve done some things really well. We’ve shown the power that we have in the attack and the qualities that we have in some of these attacking moments, the speed and pace and different things we can do in the way we score goals and how we’ve done it.”
‘We believe in our squad’
Los Angeles FC (2-3-1) has hopes of playing in a third successive MLS Cup final and wresting the trophy after last year’s loss at Columbus Crew, and there’s no reason they can’t. With a bit more fortune, and a lot less snow, Steve Cherundolo‘s group could be battling their neighbors for No. 1 right now, but too little of the first and too much of the second have dropped LAFC into ninth place in the Western Conference.
Withered depth, after salary cap considerations forced many departures, has been an issue, and the absence of a true No. 9 has limited options, although Kei Kamara‘s arrival could fix that, and word is French star Olivier Giroud is coming this summer. The Angelenos have scored nine goals, but five of those came in a home rout two weeks ago against Nashville, when everything flowed like 2022 and it could have been 10-0. Two more in a fine opening-day home win over Seattle. Throw those out, and it’s 1 goal for and 7 against, with a 314-minute no-goals span at the center.
The snowy loss at Real Salt Lake is a throw-away — no way that game should have gone on — and the 0-0 home draw with Sporting Kansas City seemed reasonable. LAFC was poor in Minnesota and last week twice let leads slip away before a dumb red card preceded Colorado’s 89th-minute winner.
It leads MLS in shots, shots on goal, expected goals and goal frames struck. Denis Bouanga, last year’s Golden Boot winner, has just two goals, one a PK, both against Nashville. He’s also hit the crossbar or post eight times. Things likely sort themselves out.
“We just believe in our squad so much,” defender Ryan Hollingshead said after the Nashville romp. “We’ve got the talent to beat anybody and we’ve just got to start getting back to our DNA as LAFC. Obviously, starting 10 days later than every team [other than champion Columbus] this year didn’t help with that — the last thing to come with preseason and fitness and all that stuff is just that product in the final third. It’s that last pass, that last decision, so struggling to score goals early in the season is understandable a little bit when you think about that. But [the Nashville game is] a good showing of what we’re all about.”
Both goals against Colorado, by Eduard Atuesta and Venezuelan teen phenom David Martinez, were superb, and Bouanga should have netted at least one.
“I think we are in a building process, and with all that means,” captain Ilie Sanchez, the midfield anchor, told Soccer America. “We are building towards something we want to see on the field that we have pretty clear off the field. We all know what we have to do, our principles are very clear, we know our roles on the field, based on what positions we play in, and we just need to see more consistency. …
“I don’t think we are far [from what we want to be].”
That’s more or less how Vanney sees it.
“You always have to respect what they’re capable of doing, that’s for sure,” he said. “When they recover balls, they’re as fast as anyone to get after you, and the speed and the quality, the power they have in those guys in those transition moments is as good as anyone. You know what they’re capable of. I think they’ve had a challenging start … some tough games and some tough conditions to work with. We’re expecting the best of them, the best version of them.”