Los Angeles – There are a lot of highlights that make up a championship season. Some are blowout wins, others are stirring come-from-behind victories, while some are hard-fought battles that are ground out through guts and grit.
In the end, every win, and even the losses and the way a team reacts to them, make up the identity of a championship-caliber team.
Since their first draw of the season, an electric opening day home fixture against an MLS Cup favorite, the LA Galaxy has set about trying to reestablish their identity and change the perception of who they are.
It was a team full of players who believed they could be MLS Cup champions.
Coming off the end of a season in which they finished 13th in the Western Conference table, fans and pundits alike had justifiable reasons to doubt them at the beginning of the season. Many even questioned whether the most storied franchise in MLS could get it together enough to get back into the playoffs.
After all, how much progress could actually be made in just one season that was supposed to be a rebuilding year?
A Belief that Never Wavered
However, Los Angeles Head Coach Greg Vanney and his players never wavered in their belief and goal of playing for a title this year.
“This group has attacked it from day one this season and hasn’t been afraid of it or in awe of it and has gone for it,” Vanney said of the newly crowned Western Conference Champions just days after their 1-0 home win over the Seattle Sounders.
But believing and executing are two different things.
So far this season, the Galaxy has met every test and confirmed their MLS title aspirations. Now they’ll need to do it once more, in MLS Cup, against a resolute New York Red Bull team that has defied expectations to come out Eastern Champion as the lowest seed in history to make the title match.
And they’ll need to do it without star midfielder Riqui Puig. Less than 24 hours after the Galaxy had celebrated amidst confetti and lifted its first Western Conference trophy in 10 years, the team confirmed that Puig had suffered a torn ACL injury and would miss MLS Cup.
It is a bitter blow to Puig and the Galaxy.
But it is just another opportunity for the Galaxy to show to its fans, the league, and themselves just who they are. In a final test of their resolve, the Galaxy must draw upon everything that brought them to this moment to once again prove themselves and win their sixth star.
Below are the key matches that forged the Galaxy’s championship identity and took them to MLS Cup.
Read More: Why LA Galaxy Fans Should Be Thankful
Regular Season Matches That Showed Who the LA Galaxy Are
LA Galaxy 1 – Inter Miami 1 (February 25)
The most highly anticipated MLS opening day match perhaps in league history besides the very first, the Galaxy raised a lot of eyebrows during their season opener. They were heavy underdogs going into the match, with many predicting lopsided scorelines and a Leo Messi goal fest.
Instead, the Galaxy looked much the better side for large portions of the game. They were stalwart in defense and patient in attack. Most importantly, LA never once backed down from the challenge, with Midfielder Edwin Cerrillo getting in Messi’s face being the lasting image of the fixture.
“I think you have to give the credit — a lot of credit to the guys. Again, they were really locked in and connected, and they did a nice job of reading situations together as a group,” Vanney said about his backline after the home opener.
A strong defensive performance put LA in position to win this match through Dejan Joveljić’s goal on 75 minutes, but a diving Sergio Busquets and the subsequent second yellow card he earned Mark Delgado through simulation had other ideas. The Galaxy were forced to play the final 20 minutes with 10 men against the most dangerous player on the planet on his day.
Although the Galaxy played bravely, they ended up conceding the tying goal to Messi in stoppage time. The disappointment Galaxy fans felt postgame began to light the first embers of hope that their team could perhaps compete.
They had seen a Galaxy that was starting to reestablish its identity and show signs of life. A week later, LA would go North and blow the San Jose Earthquakes out of the water with a comprehensive 3-1 Cali Clásico win, and the Killer P’s would start to emerge.
Sporting KC 2 – LA Galaxy 3 (March 23)
When you haven’t beaten a team at their place since 2019, some would say you’re due. But when you’re down two goals at halftime, it’s most likely not your day.
Cue the first Galaxy comeback win of the season.
Coming off the back of three draws in their first four matches, a loss against SKC could have made for a very different season in LA. With only one win through five games, if this result had held, Vanney would surely have started to feel the pressure.
It also would have signaled more of the same for LA; a team incapable of beating its own mental hurdles.
Instead, the Galaxy started to exhibit a trait that has served it well all year. That of being a second-half team.
They scored three goals in eight devastating minutes, with Delgado scoring the winner, and showed that LA had belief in themselves not to let the match slip because they fell behind. Three different goalscorers not in the record-setting “Killer P’s” put the league on notice that they had other killers in the team that could win a match.
“Of course, it was belief. I remember that I said, guys, we need just one goal, and everything is going to turn out, and it’s like that. We score one goal, and we created some chances,” Joveljić shared in a post-match press conference.
“You see, it’s completely two different halves and two different matches. In the second half, we came out, and we killed them.”
The Galaxy would use this match as a springboard to defeat another bogey team of theirs.
A week later, LA would beat the Sounders 1-0 at home, marking the Galaxy’s first win over Seattle since 2018, a run of 11 regular-season defeats.
The Galaxy hasn’t lost to Seattle in MLS competition since.
Real Salt Lake 0 – LA Galaxy 1 (June 22)
This match did wonders for the Galaxy’s confidence on many fronts.
RSL presented the Galaxy with an important test against a rival challenging them for the Western Conference crown.
With issues like fixture congestion and injuries affecting the team before this match, the Galaxy was able to secure an important away win through Gabriel Pec’s lone goal.
The victory earned the Galaxy its first three-game win streak under Vanney, a feat it would go on to achieve multiple times over the campaign. The fact they did it without Puig, who was out for the entirety of the eventual four-game win streak, bodes well for the Galaxy’s chances at MLS Cup.
In that instance, multiple players stepped up to make sure that although Puig’s presence was missed, the Galaxy could still achieve its goal of finally landing their three-game win streak. Diego Fagundez, who would start on most if not all MLS teams, showed why with a fantastic starting performance.
“For everybody, it’s special that it’s three in a row,” Fagundez said. “I think it shows how much work we’re trying to put out there on the field and how much it means to everybody. Not one player didn’t leave a hundred percent on the field. So that’s a huge part.”
While only one is a series of regular season wins, it proved the Galaxy could win three in a row, do it on the road against a quality opponent, and do it without their talisman.
The winning run itself proved the Galaxy could rely on its much-maligned defense, who posted three straight shutouts during the stretch.
LA Galaxy 4 – LAFC 2 (September 14)
The LA Galaxy went into this game knowing that a win would make them the first team in the Western Conference to clinch a berth in the MLS Cup Playoffs.
And after two previous El Tráfico losses earlier in the year, in which they’d played probably their worst soccer of the season, the Galaxy would need to do it against its biggest problem. They produced a performance that finally got their revenge over their city rivals. And they got over the mental hump of losing three straight matches to LAFC.
But it didn’t come without nervous moments.
Two early goals conceded sent LA into halftime two goals down again. It seemed like the Galaxy would drop all three matches against their neighbors for the first time in their history, but the Galactic attack had other ideas. They produced another epic comeback in a season that has had its share.
Four second-half goals shocked the black and gold into submission to produce the stunning comeback win over their city rivals for the Galaxy. Joveljic scored a brace and shed any lingering doubts on whether he was the striker to lead the line for LA. The cream of the crop of the four goals, however, was the third.
Cerrillo scored a stunning 30-yard golazo that took any fight left out of LAFC and again showed that any Galaxy player could be the hero.
“We knew we came from two losses already with them and even the first two games, we go out with intention, and we go out to give it our all. We didn’t get the results we wanted in the first two games,” Cerrillo told Extra Time Talk after the win. “We knew at home we’ve been undefeated. Unfortunately, we go down 2-1 but came out in the second half and gave it all for our fans. That’s really important for us.”
The victory assured the Galaxy would stay unbeaten at home in its biggest test. It also put LA straight back into the conversation for one of the teams the West crown would need to go through. But the first step towards MLS Cup was actually making the playoffs.
If a moment must be picked for when the Galaxy went from a good MLS team to one of the MLS Cup favorites, this is surely it.
