Galaxy’s new direction has them on target to host MLS Cup

When LAFC entered Major League Soccer in 2018, it was a noisy, brash upstart willing to challenge the hegemony of the Galaxy, its Southern California neighbor.

The Galaxy were the class of league, an original franchise and five-time champion who had made the playoffs eight times in the previous nine seasons, winning three MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shields. It’s owner, the septuagenarian Philip Anschutz, had co-founded the league and years later saved it from bankruptcy.

LAFC was an expansion team with a Hollywood-led ownership group, many of whom had no background in soccer. In taking on the Galaxy it launched a clash of the establishment versus the upstarts, old money versus new. And for the first six seasons the new blood won, with LAFC rewriting the blueprint for MLS success by capturing two Supporters’ Shields, reaching the CONCACAF Champions League final twice and winning a league-best four trophies, including an MLS Cup.

LAFC won more games, amassed more points and scored more goals than any team while the Galaxy lost more games than they won, conceded more often than they scored and missed the playoffs twice as often as they made them. The baton had clearly been passed.

This weekend, however, it was passed back with LAFC’s season ending Saturday short of the Western Conference final for the first time in three years while the Galaxy laid waste to Minnesota United on Sunday in what was arguably the most dominant playoff performance in franchise history.

“The Galaxy,” coach Greg Vanney said, “are back.”

Are they ever. The team won 19 games and scored 69 times during the regular season, both totals matching the franchise’s modern-era records. It came within a tiebreaker of finishing atop the Western Conference table for the first time in 13 years. The Galaxy have really found their stride in the playoffs, scoring 15 times in a pair of one-sided victories over Colorado in the first round, then dismantling Minnesota 6-2 on Sunday in the conference semifinal.

That sends them on to Saturday’s conference final against the Seattle Sounders at Dignity Health Sports Park. If they win that one, they’ll play host to their first MLS Cup final in a decade in a stadium where they’re unbeaten in 19 games this season.

The Galaxy have yet to trail in the playoffs with Riqui Puig and Dejan Joveljic scoring four goals each and combining for five assists while Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil, who both had a brace Sunday, have each scored three goals apiece. If the Galaxy aren’t the best team in MLS, they’re certainly the best of the four teams still playing.

Yet just a season ago the Galaxy’s main supporters’ groups were boycotting home games, angry over the team’s lack of direction and its dysfunctional front office. The boycott lifted when Chris Klein, the team’s longtime president, was sacked that spring but the funk continued with the Galaxy winning just eight games, matching the franchise low for a full season.

The foundation for this year’s success was built in the rubble of last year’s failures. Will Kuntz, who helped build LAFC into a winner as senior vice president of player personnel, joined the Galaxy seven weeks before Klein was fired and immediately began rebuilding the roster. Nine of the 11 players who started against Minnesota, including Pec and Paintsil, joined the Galaxy over the last 16 months.

“I would love to say it was all me [but] it was a confluence of events,” said Kuntz, who added 20 players since taking over the Galaxy’s player personnel role. “It was apparent that we needed to change. This club has a really storied tradition and we had certainly gotten pretty far afield from that.

“The thinking at the club had gotten stale.”

That thinking had always been that the Galaxy needed big-name players, which is why the team signed a succession of them, from David Beckham and Robbie Keane to Steven Gerrard and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Some succeeded, some didn’t. For Kuntz, that was a blueprint that no longer worked.

“It’s almost like it became an obligation, almost like an albatross at times. People felt like they had to deliver a huge star that had name recognition because that’s a Galaxy player, right?” he said.

“The league has changed. If we win, everything will take care of itself. Let’s try to find the players we really believe will give us the best chance.”

So Kuntz spent more than $19 million in transfer fees and another $6.4 million in 2024 salary on Pec and Paintsil, two twentysomething players most Galaxy fans had to Google to identify while LAFC was signing French World Cup stars Hugo Lloris, 37, and Olivier Giroud, 38.

The script had flipped.

LAFC hardly had a bad season. It won 19 games and finished ahead of the Galaxy in the regular-season standings by a goal in the goal-differential tiebreaker. It was the only MLS team to play in two finals, hoisting the U.S. Cup trophy. Yet after playing a league-record 103 games in less than 20 months, it simply ran out of gas, dropping two of its last three playoff games, the last loss coming to Seattle in extra time.

What would have been a wildly successful year for any other MLS team was a disappointment for LAFC, whose standard has always been higher.

“It’s not black or white, was this a good season or a bad season,” defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “There were some big, big moments where the team stepped up and put trophies into our case. And there’s other moments where we want more.

“The standard we’ve set for ourselves here is a good one. We want to win everything. This feels like a big-time letdown. It’s just so disappointing.”

Now the Galaxy is chasing that higher standard and trying to win everything. So credit LAFC with raising the bar and redefining excellence, not just in Southern California but across MLS.

Credit the Galaxy for climbing off the floor to clear that bar and grab the baton from its neighbor.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.