The lack of any standard language, like “ Galaxy thanks Will for his service and wishes him well”, sticks out like a sore thumb.
My son lives in SLC so I went to the RSL vs COL game tonight. I was struck by how little talent both teams have. Other than Luna there is no one in the same class as Paintsil, Pec or Reus. And my son agrees we have the more talented roster overall and he is an RSL homer. Yet both RSL and COL are in contention for the playoffs and we are in 30th place. Make this make sense for me.
This probably isn't the right place for this, but the LA Galaxy officially announced that it has scheduled a friendly against Club America for Nov. 15 at Dignity Health. Sounds like a good way to reduce the length of the long non-playoff off-season while the players are still under contract (and theoretically prepare for Campeones Cup, which starts earlier than the MLS season), make some money off of Club America fans, and maybe get some playing opportunities for Riqui Puig Los Angeles 🆚 Las ÁguilasWe will face @ClubAmerica in a friendly on November 15 at Dignity Health Sports Parkℹ️: https://t.co/aVMSqlZMIP pic.twitter.com/XcZ1Nddtzd— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) October 14, 2025 https://www.dignityhealthsportspark...alaxy-faces-club-america-in-end-of-year-clash
after posting the info above, I'm not sure how valid it is but it did bring to mind a few things, I know quite a lot of people where hoping Puigy would play to knock the cobwebs off and justify the cash grab, but as the rumors seems that he is not playing, I have a few questions. does this mean the only lead up time to the CC he will have to get ready is in training how many games do you get before you can be knocked out? will the Galaxy make the CC its priority or will it use these games to get ready for the season I ask these questions because the Galaxy never do anything by the book and in my opinion they prioritize maximum profits over the fans happiness and future club stability. to answer the questions from my perspective, I see the Galaxy using Puigy sporadically in the CC, hoping they can advance and will manage the amount of game minutes, depending on the amount of games and span between games and I don't think the Galaxy will prioritize anything and play it by ear, with no actual strategy.
At this point I’m wondering if Puig has had some setbacks we aren’t aware of. We’re getting close to a year here with this game. That is ample time to recover even from an ACL injury.
Given the atrophy he experienced in his injured leg based on the photos on his IG account when he started rehab, he may just not be strong enough yet to safely play.
Final league standings. The Gs escaped relegation! Strong finish to the season to avoid the Wooden Spoon and separate themselves from the bottom three.
With 2025 in the books, where does this one rank? Going off of memory alone, terrible Galaxy seasons were 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006–2008, 2017–2023, and 2025. Time will adjust this, of course, but 2025 had a lot of similarities with 2003, coming off an MLS Cup win and having an absolutely dreadful first half of the season while setting some rather ignominious records (first team to not win a single away game). 2004 was a chore. 2005 gets a pass; dreadful season, but played well for 5 games and won the double. 2007-2008 were sort of fever dreams. Insane lineups (a pool boy earning $65K next to an icon earning $6.5m). Insane results. It was like the Galaxy Rumspringa or an 18-year-old who found his dad’s Centurion card and a bag of cocaine. 2017 ripped the heart out of the Galaxy. A three-time failure given the reigns to the preeminent MLS club in history who proceeded to gut the team and deluded themselves into thinking they were the second coming of Matt Busby. It also marked the first year there was no Bruce to restrain the Klein/Kirovksi clown car. 2018-2019: any years with Zlatan, no matter how bad the surrounding features, can’t make the worst list. 2020 - COVID, gets a pass. 2021–2023 - Barely remembered, seemingly just unremarkable bad season after unremarkable bad season. 2025 - an historically bad season to add to some past historically bad seasons. 2025 makes my top(bottom?) three: 2017 - what Onalfo and Klein did was awful in season, but the repercussions of those bad decisions set in motion years of failure. 2025 - Historically bad year as defending MLS Cup Champions. 2003 - Historically bad year as defending MLS Cup Champions.
2017 was a Wooden Spoon year and wasn't injury plagued, so it still gets my worst season of all time. Even though we had less points this year, we didn't get the Spoon and we did have legitimate injury and salary-cap issues. And we were actually half-way decent in the second half of the season - although our defense was bad the entire season.
In the "what have you done for me lately" category - I'm going to give 2025 the crown of worst season ever, and I'm relying on the lowest point total to support my view. Even though we avoided wooden spoon, even though we improved in the second half, this season has been dismal and we expect much, much more from Kuntz, Vanney and company no matter what the excuses. Even comparing them to Klein and Onalfo makes my point. Those guys were honestly clueless (and seemed lazy).
And congratulations to San Diego FC, for winning the Western Conference in their first season. Who would have thought when they opened their first MLS season in a game against the LA Galaxy, that we would once again look up the freeway to see our main rival ahead of us, and look down the freeway to see an ascendent rival best us and even come in first. It's galling.
The odd thing about the stat is that it's not like the Galaxy have much of a home field advantage in terms of fan support (especially this year with the supporters groups boycotting for awhile), but it's clear as day that the Galaxy were significantly more successful at home than away. Is it that our field is bigger, longer/wider, and grass. all of which help our style of play and the grass may help older players like Reus? Maybe, but I think MLS guidelines are 110x70, most are 115x70-75 and we are 120x75. Bigger, but not dramatically bigger and we've certainly won a lot of road games over the years. Maybe it's just random considering how seldom we won any games this season. Maybe our guys party on the road. Maybe it's just that our margins were so small in terms of skill and talent that any minor thing that that knocked us of our best was enough to prevent us from winning. Regardless, I would at least look into whether we did anything different this year. If just a few of those road ties had been wins we would at least have been in the conversation for the last playoff spot.
We played without them at home too! (In fairness, though, all three of those players offer different ways to score than through speed and when your best chance to score is with speed, than maybe the bigger field at home mattered).
I don't think everyone is considering how many matches the Galaxy played without its DPs and other key and potentially key players. Besides the obviousness of Puig's absence, Pec missed 5 games this season, all of them were away games and the Galay lost 4 of the 5. They only managed a draw in their final game against Seattle in September. Paintsil missed the first 5 games of the season to injury and 2 more in May. He also missed 2 more matches due to international call ups. Of those 9 games, the Galaxy had 1 win, 5 losses and 3 draws. The only win being the home win over Dallas in October. In total, 6 of those were away games and 3 home matches. The U22's didn't really do much for the Galaxy this year, partially due to injury and partially due to a lack of development (especially early in the season). Sanabria, who was brought in as the Mark Delgado replacement as the 8, showed why iron man Delgado was so valuable. Sanabria after his 5 week absence from a broken collar bone, basically played himself off of the starting roster by the end of June. He then was injured for the last 6 matches of the season. Nascimento also started injured, missing the first 3 games and then 5 more in August and September. He didn't make the starting lineup until the end of May. Aude seemed to get nicked up on a regular basis. Aude split a lot of time with Nelson and never really developed into either a reliable attacking wing or a lock down defender. Looking at the rest of squad, Reus only made the squad 21 times out of 34. Of the 21, he played less than 30 minutes in 4. So he was effectively available as a Puig "replacement" or complement for just over half of the season. Cuevas missed the first 8 matches of the season due to injury and didn't get regular minutes until match 12.
In the 18 games that Pec, Paintsil and Reus started in 2025, our record was 6W-8L-4D. (Counting the Cruz Azul loss on Penalties as a draw). In the 27 games where one of the three did not start, our record was 6W-14L-7D (again counting games decided by penalties as draws). Fun facts: We did not win a game when Ramirez started. (0-9-4) We went 8-5-3 when Nascimento started. Now that I have the spreadsheet... any other questions?
Thanks for that. So we definitely played better with all 3 of our "DP-ish" players on the field. As for Ramirez vs Nascimento obviously some of that is that we just played a lot better in the second half of the season as a team - but man I wasn't expecting to see that stark of a difference.