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New York Times
08-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Already set up to struggle, MLS Cup champion LA Galaxy are snakebitten, too
When the LA Galaxy take the field against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday evening, it will have been 154 days since the two MLS originals squared off in last year's MLS Cup final. The Galaxy won that game, 2-1, returning to their place as the most decorated club in league history. That remains the last MLS game LA has won. Advertisement The Galaxy made MLS history last weekend when they lost to Sporting Kansas City 1-0 without giving up a shot. Not a shot on goal. Any sort of shot. The lone tally in the game came off an own goal from defender Maya Yoshida. It sent LA spiraling to an 11th consecutive game without a win to start the season (0-8-3, three points), another MLS record. 'When it rains, it f—ing pours, man,' LA goalkeeper John McCarthy said. 'You've got to figure out how to get out of it, and no one's going to help you besides the 28 guys in the locker room. You can't start looking around and going, 'Who's going to do it for us?' It's truly got to be an 'us' thing.' There were warning signs that this would be a difficult season for the Galaxy. They lost star player Riqui Puig to a torn ACL last season in the Western Conference championship and will be without their talisman for most of this season. That was an especially difficult task because so much about how the Galaxy played was built around Puig. His 13 goals and 15 assists didn't tell the full picture of his influence. No one in the league touched the ball more than he did last season; Puig led the category by nearly 500 touches. He also had the most passes and most pass attempts in the league. The Galaxy haven't found a way to totally adjust their style of play without him. Puig's absence was compounded by salary cap issues going into the season. The Galaxy was so tight up against the cap that they moved several players to get compliant. That included midfielder Mark Delgado, who has started nine games for LAFC this season; Gastón Brugman, who won MLS Cup MVP; and forward Dejan Joveljíc, who had 15 goals and six assists last season. The loss of three veteran players, as well as injury issues for stars Joseph Paintsil, Gabriel Pec and Marco Reus, who was expected to step up in Puig's absence, has made matters worse. Advertisement 'With each player we lost, we lost something,' Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said. 'Even when you talk about transition defending and cutting off the series of errors that maybe happen at the top part of the field and transition all the way down to the bottom part of the field. We have two very experienced midfielders who aren't with us anymore that cut off those types of errors, that make reads and understand their priorities. So we have younger midfielders in those situations who are learning these moments and that are going there. 'Each guy that we lost, there's a percentage of who we were that went out the door with those guys. And now we are trying to add new guys, build them up, get them to the same level.' Getting just 322 minutes out of Reus, the German legend, this season has been especially difficult. To be without a designated player and a highly-paid star like Reus, whose budget charge is at max TAM levels, is deadly in MLS. MLS roster rules are designed to top-load the roster. When high-paid players are injured or not producing, it can often spell disaster. It has this season for the Galaxy. Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz, who built the roster that won MLS Cup but now must figure a way to strengthen a group that is floundering, said the injuries and absences can't be seen as an excuse. 'We knew what we were doing, we pushed our chips into the middle of the table last year to try to make it happen,' Kuntz said. 'We took a little bit of an aggressive stance because we thought we had a chance to win. The league rules stuff is a crutch. It's a reality, but it's not unique to us.' MLS rules are essentially set up so that it's difficult for any one team to build a dynasty. There have been exceptions with teams who have had a level of sustained success. Most recently, the Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC stand out. Advertisement Vanney coached the Toronto teams that went to MLS Cup three times in four years from 2016-19, winning once. He pointed out this week that TFC also missed the playoffs in 2018, then rebuilt and got back to MLS Cup in 2019 and challenged for a Supporters' Shield in 2020. 'Every single year that you're successful, you've got to be able to sell one or two players to try to generate money back into your cap so you can pay off the things that help you to become a champion,' Vanney said. 'And so we're going through those stresses ourselves.' The Galaxy, one of the more dynamic attacking teams last season, has sputtered on the offensive end. Paintsil missed the first seven games of the season, but his return didn't seem to lift LA as one would have expected. The Ghanaian winger had 10 goals and 10 assists last season, but he has no goals in five starts this year. Pec had 16 goals and 14 assists in 2024, but he has just one goal and two assists in 10 starts. The Galaxy has also been poor defensively, especially at the start of the season. They are tied with a league-worst 21 goals conceded and have a league-worst minus-13 goal differential. But Vanney sees improvement on both ends of the pitch. He noted that the team has had improved chance creation and better movement on the attacking end, while also limiting some of the defensive mistakes that have plagued them this season. There are some indications that's true. The Galaxy has allowed one or fewer goals in three of the last four games — a 4-2 loss to Portland is the exception there — after giving up two goals or more in six of their first seven games. And while the goals haven't come, Vanney said he clipped together 14 'highly-positive' attacking moments against Sporting KC to show the team that the goals will start to come. Advertisement According to data pulled from TruMedia via StatsPerform (Opta), 19.5 percent of the Galaxy's chances over the last five games were 'big' chances, a slight uptick from the 15.8 percent of the first six games of the season. The Galaxy still just aren't generating enough chances. Last year, they ranked fourth in MLS with 11.2 chances created per game. That has dropped this year to 8.9, tied with the Chicago Fire for 15th. The focus, Vanney said, has to be on the process rather than simply on the results – especially when those results have been so poor. He pointed to the fact that the Galaxy didn't give up a shot against Kansas City as evidence of the process even if the result was a historic loss. 'There's positive things inside of a sh—y result that we try to stay focused on so that we can utilize those things that are advantages going into the next game and not just sitting back and going, 'S—, we lost, and let's all feel terrible.' Because that doesn't help us in the next game either to try to create the margin we need for winning,' Vanney said. The key now is to find a way to create some momentum, because the season is quickly slipping away from LA. 'I do think that the results build confidence, right, it builds that positivity and that energy that you want to use to build momentum,' Vanney said. 'So I think those are key. Nobody has played us to a way that we feel like we were overwhelmed or we were really behind it in a game. And that's why I think the margins are thin for us to turn this thing into positive results. 'It's not big things, it's little things.'
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Are the Galaxy cursed? Why things are going so wrong for winless defending champs
Lucas Sanabria, right, hugs Galaxy teammate Khiry Shelton after a 1-0 loss to Sporting Kansas City on Sunday. The defending MLS champion Galaxy are winless through 11 games. (Kyle Rivas / Getty Images) There's an episode midway through the first season of 'Ted Lasso' in which the team, feeling cursed, decides to remove the spell by gathering in the locker room at night to burn personal items in a flaming trash barrel. It may be time for the Galaxy to consider a similar exorcism because it seems clear someone has put a spell on them too. Advertisement The team dominated Sporting Kansas City on Sunday but lost despite not allowing a shot. Not a shot on goal. A shot of any kind. That had never happened before in MLS. Last December, the Galaxy won a record sixth league title. They haven't won a game since, with their 11-game winless streak matching the longest to start a season in league history. With just three points through 11 games — the Galaxy are 0-8-3 — it's also the worst start in franchise history and also the worst start by a reigning MLS champion. Read more: Maya Yoshida's own goal dooms winless Galaxy to loss against Kansas City The team has suddenly become the best at worsts. Advertisement Will Kuntz, the team's general manager, refuses to blame the paranormal for the historically poor start. He really doesn't have a much better explanation though. 'Cursed would be too strong,' he said Monday. 'But the bounces have definitely been going against us.' That's probably an understatement. In Sunday's loss, the Galaxy outshot SKC 11-0, had the ball for nearly 60 of the 90 minutes, completed nearly three times as many passes and, for the first time in franchise history, didn't allow a shot. Yet they lost when captain Maya Yoshida deflected an SKC cross into his own net in the 13th minute. The season isn't quite a third of the way gone and the Galaxy are already 23 points out of first place and 13 points out of a playoff berth. Maya Yoshida knocks the ball into the goal past Galaxy John McCarthy for an own goal against Kansas City on Sunday. (Kyle Rivas / Getty Images) Kuntz, who signed 10 of the 14 players that played in the MLS Cup final, is widely — and deservedly — credited with building the roster that won the title last year, taking a team that matched a full-season franchise-low with eight wins to 24 victories (including playoffs) and a championship in less 18 months. Advertisement Now he's taking some of the blame for the team's woeful start. The Galaxy lost midfielder Riqui Puig, its most irreplaceable player, to an ACL tear in November's Western Conference final, a loss the GM likens to the Golden State Warriors losing Steph Curry. But Kuntz knew in December he'd be without Puig until at least August; that was an absence he could have planned for. He also knew MLS salary rules would force him to remake parts of a roster that didn't need remaking. He did that by trading midfielders Gastón Brugman and Mark Delgado and striker Dejan Joveljic, the team's leading scorer in 2024. However eight of the 11 MLS Cup starters returned. So what went wrong? Advertisement It would probably be easier to list what didn't go wrong since the season has been a perfect storm of injuries, poor performance and simple bad luck. Marco Reus, a three-time Bundesliga player of the year, was being counted on to pick some of the slack left by Puig's absence, but he's played just 322 MLS minutes because of injury problems that nearly led the Galaxy to shut him down for the year. Read more: Japanese soccer players forming connections with L.A.'s Japanese American community At least nine other starters have missed time to injuries already this season with wingers Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec both forced out of Sunday's game in Kansas City after hard fouls. If neither is able to play Saturday in the team's MLS Cup rematch with the Red Bulls, it would leave the Galaxy without all three of their designated players. Advertisement 'It's been kind of a daisy chain of correlated injury stuff,' Kuntz said. In retrospect would Kuntz have been better off keeping Delgado, who is having a solid season as a playmaker in the middle of LAFC's midfield? Should they have kept Joveljic, whose five goals for Sporting Kansas City would have made a difference for a Galaxy team has scored just eight times in 11 games? (The Galaxy have conceded 21 times, leaving them with a league-worst -13 goal differential.) Probably not, especially since the Joveljic deal brought the cash-strapped team $4 million in return. So if the problem isn't related to who left, it has to be related to who stayed. Advertisement Last season the Galaxy were the first team in MLS history to have four players score 10 or more goals. This season just one player has scored more than once. Pec, who had 16 goals in 2024, has one this year. Paintsil, who had 10 goals a year ago, has yet to score this season. A year after leading the conference with 69 goals — an average of 2.02 a game — the Galaxy have just eight this season. They've been shut out five times in 11 games — one more than all of last year — are averaging less than a goal a game and have led just once, for 64 minutes, all season. Galaxy defender Maya Yoshida, left, and goalkeeper John McCarthy react after giving up an own goal Sunday. (Kyle Rivas / Getty Images) About the only thing coach Greg Vanney hasn't tried is suiting up and trying to score himself. He's had 11 different lineup combinations but the Galaxy remain too rigid, too predictable, using a style of play that was well-suited to last year's team but doesn't fit this season's personnel. Advertisement As a result the team ranks 26th in the 30-team league in shots on target despite ranking in the top three in passes and passing percentage and sixth in time of possession. Vanney earned a one-year contract extension when he qualified for the playoffs last year, but that extension expires this season. Sources say the team and Vanney's agent, Ron Waxman, are making no progress on a new deal and the longer the team struggles, the less leverage Vanney has and the easier it becomes for the Galaxy to move on. Waxman did not respond to messages seeking comment. Vanney, however, called Sunday's loss 'a solid game and a pretty complete game.' Which raises a question: if a game without a goal, without a win and without a point qualifies as solid and complete, has the bar been set too low? Maybe it is time for Vanney to fire up a Lasso-like barbecue sacrifice of his own. On one hand it couldn't hurt. Yet given the way things have gone so far this season, whose to say the Galaxy wouldn't wind up burning down the stadium. Advertisement ⚽ 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. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
06-05-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
Are the Galaxy cursed? Why things are going so wrong for winless defending champs
There's an episode midway through the first season of 'Ted Lasso' in which the team, feeling cursed, decides to remove the spell by gathering in the locker room at night to burn personal items in a flaming trash barrel. It may be time for the Galaxy to consider a similar exorcism because it seems clear someone has put a spell on them too. The team dominated Sporting Kansas City on Sunday but lost despite not allowing a shot. Not a shot on goal. A shot of any kind. That had never happened before in MLS. Last December, the Galaxy won a record sixth league title. They haven't won a game since, with their 11-game winless streak matching the longest to start a season in league history. With just three points through 11 games — the Galaxy are 0-8-3 — it's also the worst start in franchise history and also the worst start by a reigning MLS champion. The team has suddenly become the best at worsts. Will Kuntz, the team's general manager, refuses to blame the paranormal for the historically poor start. He really doesn't have a much better explanation though. 'Cursed would be too strong,' he said Monday. 'But the bounces have definitely been going against us.' That's probably an understatement. In Sunday's loss, the Galaxy outshot SKC 11-0, had the ball for nearly 60 of the 90 minutes, completed nearly three times as many passes and, for the first time in franchise history, didn't allow a shot. Yet they lost when captain Maya Yoshida deflected an SKC cross into his own net in the 13th minute. The season isn't quite a third of the way gone and the Galaxy are already 23 points out of first place and 13 points out of a playoff berth. Maya Yoshida knocks the ball into the goal past Galaxy John McCarthy for an own goal against Kansas City on Sunday. Kuntz, who signed 10 of the 14 players that played in the MLS Cup final, is widely — and deservedly — credited with building the roster that won the title last year, taking a team that matched a full-season franchise-low with eight wins to 24 victories (including playoffs) and a championship in less 18 months. Now he's taking some of the blame for the team's woeful start. The Galaxy lost midfielder Riqui Puig, its most irreplaceable player, to an ACL tear in November's Western Conference final, a loss the GM likens to the Golden State Warriors losing Steph Curry. But Kuntz knew in December he'd be without Puig until at least August; that was an absence he could have planned for. He also knew MLS salary rules would force him to remake parts of a roster that didn't need remaking. He did that by trading midfielders Gastón Brugman and Mark Delgado and striker Dejan Joveljic, the team's leading scorer in 2024. However eight of the 11 MLS Cup starters returned. So what went wrong? It would probably be easier to list what didn't go wrong since the season has been a perfect storm of injuries, poor performance and simple bad luck. Marco Reus, a three-time Bundesliga player of the year, was being counted on to pick some of the slack left by Puig's absence, but he's played just 322 MLS minutes because of injury problems that nearly led the Galaxy to shut him down for the year. At least nine other starters have missed time to injuries already this season with wingers Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec both forced out of Sunday's game in Kansas City after hard fouls. If neither is able to play Saturday in the team's MLS Cup rematch with the Red Bulls, it would leave the Galaxy without all three of their designated players. 'It's been kind of a daisy chain of correlated injury stuff,' Kuntz said. In retrospect would Kuntz have been better off keeping Delgado, who is having a solid season as a playmaker in the middle of LAFC's midfield? Should they have kept Joveljic, whose five goals for Sporting Kansas City would have made a difference for a Galaxy team has scored just eight times in 11 games? (The Galaxy have conceded 21 times, leaving them with a league-worst -13 goal differential.) Probably not, especially since the Joveljic deal brought the cash-strapped team $4 million in return. So if the problem isn't related to who left, it has to be related to who stayed. Last season the Galaxy were the first team in MLS history to have four players score 10 or more goals. This season just one player has scored more than once. Pec, who had 16 goals in 2024, has one this year. Paintsil, who had 10 goals a year ago, has yet to score this season. A year after leading the conference with 69 goals — an average of 2.02 a game — the Galaxy have just eight this season. They've been shut out five times in 11 games — one more than all of last year — are averaging less than a goal a game and have led just once, for 64 minutes, all season. Galaxy defender Maya Yoshida, left, and goalkeeper John McCarthy react after giving up an own goal Sunday. About the only thing coach Greg Vanney hasn't tried is suiting up and trying to score himself. He's had 11 different lineup combinations but the Galaxy remain too rigid, too predictable, using a style of play that was well-suited to last year's team but doesn't fit this season's personnel. As a result the team ranks 26th in the 30-team league in shots on target despite ranking in the top three in passes and passing percentage and sixth in time of possession. Vanney earned a one-year contract extension when he qualified for the playoffs last year, but that extension expires this season. Sources say the team and Vanney's agent, Ron Waxman, are making no progress on a new deal and the longer the team struggles, the less leverage Vanney has and the easier it becomes for the Galaxy to move on. Waxman did not respond to messages seeking comment. Vanney, however, called Sunday's loss 'a solid game and a pretty complete game.' Which raises a question: if a game without a goal, without a win and without a point qualifies as solid and complete, has the bar been set too low? Maybe it is time for Vanney to fire up a Lasso-like barbecue sacrifice of his own. On one hand it couldn't hurt. Yet given the way things have gone so far this season, whose to say the Galaxy wouldn't wind up burning down the stadium. ⚽ 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.
Fox News
05-05-2025
- Sport
- Fox News
Sporting KC becomes 1st MLS team to win a game without recording a shot on goal
Los Angeles Galaxy defender Maya Yoshida had the only score on Sunday night, but it was an own goal that led to a 1-0 victory for Sporting Kansas City. With the win, they made history, becoming the first MLS team to win a game without registering a shot on goal. It was just the third win in 11 tries for Sporting Kansas City, this season, but their second in the last three games. As for the Galaxy, they continued the worst start by a defending champion in league history. The Galaxy (0-8-3) are still looking for their first victory 11 matches into the season and even a 3-0-2 record in five previous matchups with Sporting KC (3-7-1) didn't help. In the 13th minute, KC's Daniel Salloi sent in a cross on the ground, and it deflected off Maya Yoshida and into the net. There was no attacker near enough to the cross to threaten tapping it in, but Yoshida tried to make a defensive play and it went awry. John Pulskamp had to make one save, and it came in the first half on the way to his second clean sheet in his 11th start of the season for Sporting KC. His save came just before halftime on a right-footed shot from the center of the box by John Nelson. John McCarthy did not have a save for the Galaxy. It was sweet revenge for Dejan Joveljic, who came to Sporting KC in the first cash-for-player trade in league history after helping the Galaxy win their sixth MLS Cup last season. He leads the team with five goals — all at home. The Galaxy have missed Riqui Puig, who hasn't played since suffering a knee injury in the playoffs. And Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec, who combined for 50 goals contributions in the championship run, have just four so far this season. Sporting KC interim coach Kerry Zavagnin and the Galaxy's Greg Vanney were teammates on the US men's national team. The two coaches represented their current teams when the two clubs squared off in the conference final of the 2000 MLS Cup — won by the then-Kansas City Wizards, who went on to beat the Chicago Fire 1-0 in the championship match. The Galaxy travel to play the New York Red Bulls on Saturday. Sporting KC travels to play the Portland Timbers on Saturday. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!
Fox Sports
05-05-2025
- Sport
- Fox Sports
Sporting KC becomes 1st MLS team to win a game without recording a shot on goal
Los Angeles Galaxy defender Maya Yoshida had the only score on Sunday night, but it was an own goal that led to a 1-0 victory for Sporting Kansas City. With the win, they made history, becoming the first MLS team to win a game without registering a shot on goal. It was just the third win in 11 tries for Sporting Kansas City, this season, but their second in the last three games. As for the Galaxy, they continued the worst start by a defending champion in league history. The Galaxy (0-8-3) are still looking for their first victory 11 matches into the season and even a 3-0-2 record in five previous matchups with Sporting KC (3-7-1) didn't help. In the 13th minute, KC's Daniel Salloi sent in a cross on the ground, and it deflected off Maya Yoshida and into the net. There was no attacker near enough to the cross to threaten tapping it in, but Yoshida tried to make a defensive play and it went awry. John Pulskamp had to make one save, and it came in the first half on the way to his second clean sheet in his 11th start of the season for Sporting KC. His save came just before halftime on a right-footed shot from the center of the box by John Nelson. John McCarthy did not have a save for the Galaxy. It was sweet revenge for Dejan Joveljic, who came to Sporting KC in the first cash-for-player trade in league history after helping the Galaxy win their sixth MLS Cup last season. He leads the team with five goals — all at home. The Galaxy have missed Riqui Puig, who hasn't played since suffering a knee injury in the playoffs. And Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec, who combined for 50 goals contributions in the championship run, have just four so far this season. Sporting KC interim coach Kerry Zavagnin and the Galaxy's Greg Vanney were teammates on the US men's national team. The two coaches represented their current teams when the two clubs squared off in the conference final of the 2000 MLS Cup — won by the then-Kansas City Wizards, who went on to beat the Chicago Fire 1-0 in the championship match. The Galaxy travel to play the New York Red Bulls on Saturday. Sporting KC travels to play the Portland Timbers on Saturday. Reporting by The Associated Press. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily ! recommended Get more from MLS Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
