Just 4 months ago, I was writing about LA Galaxy creating history by winning a record 6th MLS Cup. An achievement any club would be immensely proud of.
Yet here we are today, with the Galaxy languishing in 13th place, crashing from one defeat to another and suffering the worst start to a season ever by a defending champion.
This embarrassing record is one any club could do without.
Winless in their first six games, with a meagre 2 points to show from two draws and a goal difference of -7, there are clearly problems at the Dignity Health Sports Park. Galaxy are having more joy in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, but despite progressing to the quarter finals, they have not looked particularly confident.
By rights, they should walk through Real Salt Lake on the 5th of April, but the way they have been going, I don’t know anymore.
So how can this dramatic plummet in form be explained? I’ll do my best to work it out.
Loss of Key Players
After the first few lacklustre displays from Grey Vanney and his men, the loss of certain key players was used as an explanation. It was a fair comment to make.
Riqui Puig, one of the stars of the Galaxy squad, is out long term with an ACL tear, and Joseph Paintsil was out with a quad injury at the start of the season. Those two players alone are a huge loss to Galaxy’s attack, and go some way to explaining their lack of bite so far in 2025.
Then there are the players who left.
Dejan Joveljić went to Sporting KC over the break – he was worth 19 goals last season. Gaston Brugman left a bit of a hole in midfield when he transferred to Nashville, and Mark Delgado widened it when he joined LAFC. Lord knows Galaxy weren’t the best defensively in the first place, so losing these two key players with their defensive abilities was always going to cause issues.
All of these players apart from Puig (who was already injured) started in LA Galaxy’s MLS Cup winning squad against the Red Bulls. That sort of exodus of key talent is going to be problematic.
But should it be as bad as this?
Conceding Goals: Strong Attack Masking Poor Defence
Actually, it makes sense, because their goalkeeper, John McCarthy, has to work way too hard.
If you look at a few stats, it becomes clear that LA Galaxy were an unbalanced team last season. They may have come 2nd in the Western Conference and won the MLS Cup, but they conceded a lot of goals doing it.
However, they scored a lot too, which helped to hide the problem.
With such a strong attack they could afford to concede the way they did, but as I have already highlighted, their attack is not so strong anymore, so the cracks are showing.
In the 2024 season, LA Galaxy conceded 50 goals. Only 2 clubs who qualified for the playoffs conceded more. However, they also scored more goals than any other team in the conference. Their goal difference looked fine, but it was this that saw them come second rather than first.
If their 5 goals scored in 6 games this season is representative of their final goal tally for 2025, that puts the Galaxy on track for around 30 goals all season. If the 12 goals conceded is also representative, that makes for around 60 goals conceded, a goal difference of -30.
That’s highly unlikely of course, but it highlights just how bad the situation is at the moment, and why.