It’s rivalry week in Major League Soccer and the Galaxy are fighting against two opponents.
The first is the Los Angeles Football Club. The annual heated El Trafico series kicks off Sunday at Dignity Health Sports Park. The teams will meet again July 19.
The other is themselves.
Nothing has gone right for the reigning MLS champions this season. The only win came in the CONCACAF Champions Cup round of 16 against CS Herediano. In league play, the Galaxy are winless through the first 13 games.
“Thirteen games, it’s tough,” midfielder Diego Fagundez said. “Right now we’re taking it a game at a time and we have our rivals coming to town, and we need to make sure that that game is a win and we put ourselves ahead and we give it our all. We need to show fans the kind of courage and players we want to be.
“Whoever is out there doesn’t matter. We’re not friends. We go to war and give it our all. Show them that we’re actually passionate and show them how much we want to win.”
After one historic season, the Galaxy (0-10-3) are off to another one, but at the opposite end. The Galaxy have only three points and have scored just 10 goals and allowed 31. LAFC (6-4-3, 21 points), meanwhile, hasn’t lost in six games (3-0-3) and resides in fifth place in the Western Conference.
“Mentally, I think as a team we’re all together and that’s the good thing about it,” Fagundez said. “We haven’t lost each other. We haven’t lost the group. That’s the huge part, but now we need to be mentally in games. Like when you’re up 2-0 (Wednesday against Philadelphia), we know 2-0 is a dangerous lead in soccer. Someone scores one and all the momentum goes their way.
“For us, we need to be smarter in that. We were up 2-0. We don’t really have to go find a third. We can play our game making sure that we keep it to zero in the back. In the end of the day, if we keep it to zero in the back we don’t lose the game. It’s another punch to the face. It hurts really bad and we see it on people’s faces, on our fans. We are all frustrated. The Galaxy are the best team in MLS, and right now we are not showing that.”
The Galaxy definitely aren’t at the championship level of last season, which was expected with the departures of several key pieces, like Mark Delgado, Dejan Joveljić and Gaston Brugman, along with the absence of injured star midfielder Riqui Puig.
“Each guy that we lost, there’s a percentage of who we were that went out the door,” Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said earlier this month. “And now we are trying to add new guys, build them up, get them to the same level.”
General manager Will Kuntz has said that “we pushed our chips into the middle of the table last year” to go for the championship. The Galaxy haven’t received consistent production from the young players that were brought in to replace last year’s group.
“I really believe that we’re much, much better than a 3-point team,” Kuntz said. “The group is not despondent. I think that’s the thing you worry about the most is do guys start to checking out or worrying about their own personal agendas. I think everybody just kind of feels a lot of pressure. Everybody feels like we’re letting ourselves down, we’re letting the supporters down and we believe a turnaround is coming and we think we have a really good opportunity to show that this coming Sunday.
Just like in 2023, the Galaxy have been hit by the perfect storm, but were able to regroup and transform into an MLS Cup-winning team. Vanney has said that every year is its own journey, but added they can draw on how they made it through 2023.
“That (2023) is a very important lesson for all of us in managing difficult situations,” said Vanney, whose contract was extended Friday through the 2028 season. “We understood that year what the plan was going to be to get out of it and where we would be. Yes, there’s a short-term inside of this where every game and every training session and every meeting matters toward this group being successful and winning the next match and taking points and going.
“As you prepare a team forward, you’ve got to be 12 months, sometimes more than 12 months, out in front of a plan in order for that plan to carry through. I think 2023 was a great example. We had opportunities to add players during the course of the season. We chose not to, because we knew what our plan was going to be at the end of the season. And we chose to be patient and act on it and that put us in a position to win a championship in 2024. I think there has to be some decision-making inside of a broader plan and not just a reactive day-to-day, sort of just trying to put your fingers in the dam to stop the bleeding.
“This group cares, they’re trying, they’re working. Inside of that, you do want to have a certain amount of being calm and being relaxed and being confident and being the things that you need to be to be best version of yourself. And that’s the thing I’m working to try to draw off of these guys so that they can go out on the field and be the best version of themselves.”
LAFC at GALAXY
When: 6 p.m. Sunday
Where: Dignity Health Sports Park
How to watch: Apple TV+, Apple TV (MLS Season Pass)