Thread for general discussion of the team this year. I’ll start. Currently (4/22): We are tied (w Atlanta) for the 4th worst defense in the league. IOW, our D is better than 3 teams, ranking us at the 10th pctl. Our offense is worse, tied (w NER) for 3rd worst in MLS. That puts our O at the 7th pctl. So, not surprisingly, our goal differential is the worst in MLS, so that puts us at the 0.0th pctl! Tied for worst on ppg! It would be hard to have a worse start to a season, amiright? And we have played 9/34 or 26% of our schedule already.
Not sure there’s much left to discuss about the 2025 Galaxy. For all intents and purposes, this season is over. I suppose we could take Superliga* seriously as a means to salvaging something. Other than that, it’s just whether or not we get the wooden spoon. I would be interested to know what the worst title defense has been in MLS. Seems like we should at least be close to it. * I know it’s not called Superliga anymore, I just can’t remember the latest name. .
I would just like to get a win, it's embarrassing and painful to watch this team. I know we've had injuries, but the worst one, Puig, was a known problem that we did nothing to mitigate for. Wake up, FO and coaches, and fix this!
It's beyond a joke, 9 games in and our season is pretty much over. Nothing to even talk about. Kuntz and Vanney equally to blame. Based on 5 years of Vanney, last year was the outlier....Not sure why we would re-sign him to a multiyear contract. But that's what I thought about Klein, so what do I know.
With playoffs unlikely, what does progress/success look like for the Galaxy? What needs to happen between now and the last game of the season for you to feel like 2026 we’ll be competitive again? For me Significant reduction in the number of silly mistakes We need to start winning on a consistent basis before Riqui is back A much better soccer IQ, most notably game management Showing up for 90 minutes, every game
I don’t know why anyone would expect this to happen under Vanney. We have witnessed 5 seasons of error-laden defense and team disorganization. And our offense was only good when we had massive individual talent (Zlatan and then Riqui+Pec+Dejan+Paintsill). Under Vanney we have never been a 90-min hard working team nor a high IQ team (beyond what our stars individually brought with them).
I watched Vancouver dispatch Miami 2-0 last night. Under new coach Jesper Sorensen VAN plays a low possession counterattack style that so far is a bear to score on. Small sample size but they have allowed only 6 goals in 9 games in MLS play (0.67g/90m). This is a team with a mediocre defense before his arrival (allowed 1.44 g/gm last season, similar to our 1.47 last year). In his previous Denmark gig Sorensen’s team had the 2nd best defense in the Superliga. They also had the 3rd best offense and finished 2nd. It took this coach all of a preseason to fix the VAN defense. Hey Kuntz - find us our Sorensen!
The Vanney question - is 1 championship worth 4 other years of crap? Personally I'd rather be competitive every year than have one flash in the pan.
I watched this game, too. Vancouver's organization was impressive and obvious, and it paid off for them. They have a good chance against Miami in the second leg. There was a huge crowd and it was an exciting game, with lots of Miami flair.
That does presume last year wasn’t a Leicester City style miracle run, which with each passing game seems the more likely explanation.
When you have the 3Ps + Joveljic + Delgado and Fagundez/Brugman/Reus as your fill-ins you reach a critical mass that is unstoppable. Each of these players created opportunities for each other, both directly, and indirectly by pulling attention to themselves. Plus Puig’s ability to advance the ball so quickly and through crowds made us too much to handle. I think when Puig comes back we will be 75% of that team. But losing Delgado’s creativity hurt us a lot and losing Dejan’s incredible finishing hurt us some. So yeah, 2024 was a one-off unless Kuntz finds us a true Delgado replacement and Puig regains his old speed (no guarantee that will happen). Or until we get a truly good coach who creates a team that is more than the simple sum of the pieces.
If it were literally 1 championship every 5 years, I would take it. The four bad years are hard, but I also don't think it would be fun to always be in the playoffs but never win a championship.
After the Portland game we are now in the Wooden Spoon position. Our 3pts after 10 games is tied for last place (with MTL) but unfortunately we lose the first tiebreaker with our -12 goal differential.
I believe our worst season was 2017 at 8-8-18. 24 games remain so we need to win a third and lose fewer than half the remaining games.
It’s terrible on fans and selling tickets, and it’s a straw man anyway—teams that win more in the regular season, get to the playoffs more, win more playoff games will tend to win more MLS cups. I thank Vanney and wish him well and hope we get a coach that can put a competitive, motivated, disciplined, prepared team on the field every game.
My preseason predictions were based on an assumption that our defense would get a bit better this season. Boy was I wrong. Injuries to Yashida and Yamane didn’t help but our biggest problem remains our complete lack of discipline, effort and awareness of basic defensive principles. People can come up with all kinds of counter-arguments to defend Vanney but one they can’t answer to my satisfaction is this: How can a coach put out a poor defensive team year after year and not be held accountable? During his 5 seasons in charge of the Galaxy Vanney has gone through probably 20 defenders that are starter-level players (in fact several of our subs went on to start for our opponents). Lack of talent isn’t why our defenses always rank from mediocre to worst-in-MLS. The only way we win a game now is by scoring at least 3 goals. We would have needed 5 last night! That isn’t a winning formula unless you have 4 All-Star level attackers, two of which are league MVP level players (Puig & Pec), like we did last season. Even then our 69 goals were not enough to win the WC due to our mediocre D. If Vanney were a top coach he would have identified defense as our biggest weakness halfway through the first season and started taking whatever steps necessary to fix it. That could be trying different formations (eg, 3/5 in the back has worked well most times we tried it), teaching midfield to keep numbers behind the ball, learning how to provide cover for each other, not getting spread flat across the field when pushing up, teaching discipline in strategic fouling, pushing up quickly as a unit, etc. It also would include demanding better effort and performances rather than making excuses and throwing out platitudes after each game. After trying all those strategies if our D still sucked a good leader wouldn’t just keep doing the same failing thing over and over. At some point Vanney should have realized his plans weren’t working and have started directing the club to find and hire a known defensive specialist to work for the team as an assistant. Great leaders surround themselves with great minds/people. Football teams have realized that - some coaches are defensive or offensive savants and teams have added them as DCs or OCs. If I were Greg I would have long ago insisted on bringing in a defensive specialist to fix our sieve in the back. Instead Vanney changes nothing. He trots out the same formation and we play with the same inconsistency, make the same mistakes and the same excuses game after game, season after season. Vanney must go.
I don't think its as easy as saying 1 championship every 5 years, to me it would all depend on how bad those other 4 years play out, 4 years of playing putrid soccer and being at the bottom, would drive most casual fans away and drive the hardcore's to contemplate their life choices. it would be easier to stomach an average team. that gave you hope throughout the year, but it would be a heck a of a lot more difficult to keep an interest in a team that is out of the playoffs by the second month of the season, multiply that by 4 years and you'd probably be thinking different. MLS is also a different beast, the way the league is structured, any mid team can catch fire and win a title (see last years Galaxy team), so I personally think if you had a crappy team for 4 years, that 5th year would be a mid team catching fire (again see last years Galaxy team) and a team that always made the playoffs would give you a lot more memories and emotional moments than 1 flash in the pan championship (one more time, last years Galaxy team) its just a frustrating situation for the whole fanbase to be in and quite frankly it sucks
There is no excuse for a team with the Galaxy’s budget to be in last place, ever. End of story.There are 30 teams and 29 are better than us?? As Obama would say, C’mon man! https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EgqzxT3ej/?mibextid=wwXIfr
There have been several managers sacked the season following a championship (Ranieri, Emery at PSG, Capello at Real Madrid), so last season's results shouldn't cloud this season judgment. Either the players have quit on Vanney or he's tactically unable to adjust to the roster changes. Either way what's being put out there is rubbish and changes need to be made.
People know I have consistently been a Vanney defender or, at least, I've maintained that he shouldn't have been fired and I think 2024 vindicated that. But to have opened the season with 7 losses and 3 ties in the first 10 games is simply unacceptable for any club, let alone a flagship club of the league and defending champion. Week after week talking about these games with people we'd say things like "I think this is the week things click for them" etc.; now nobody even expects the Galaxy to win. To destroy the goodwill and culture you earned from winning a championship in merely 10 games is crazy; fans already feel like we're back in 2023, just no expectations for anything. My critique of Vanney has been consistent; the system he prefers requires near-perfect conditions to pull off and MLS just doesn't afford you that for very long. This team missing big components in midfield but is not bad enough to have 7 losses in 10 games. The G's still have two opportunities to win hardware this season: League's Cup and Campeone's Cup. But in its current state it doesn't look like this team can win even a single match.
We are a third of the way through the season (well 32%) and we have 3 points, putting us on pace for a 9 pt season. Wowzee.