From being the second-worst team in their conference in 2023 and not making the playoffs, LA Galaxy went on to win the 2024 MLS Cup on Saturday night defeating New York Red Bulls 2-1 in the final at their home in Carson, California.
By James Nalton
It’s a turnaround built on shrewd work in the transfer market and the building of a team that works. This much was on show in the final itself for which the Galaxy were without their talisman Riqui Puig, through whom all of their football usually flows.
Puig picked up an ACL injury in the Western Conference final win against Seattle Sounders, and it immediately raised doubts as to the Galaxy’s ability to win the MLS Cup final without him, but their team have coped on the few previous occasions the Spanish midfield orchestrator has been missing.
As important as Puig is, they have difference-makers throughout, each performing on the back of and as part of a team unit.
The Galaxy didn’t leave it long to answer the question of how they would cope without Puig.
There is no replacement for Puig, but the player who came into the XI, Gastón Brugman, sent a perfectly timed pass through to Joseph Paintsil to open the scoring with just nine minutes played.
Four minutes later they added a second when Mark Delgado fed Dejan Joveljić who carried the ball forward and finished as he has done so well throughout the season, despite being off balance as he shot.
After scoring the Serbian attempted the classic Robbie Keane celebration in honour of the former Galaxy striker and three-time MLS Cup winner.
“I don’t want to sound arrogant but I knew I was going to score and do Robbie Keane’s celebration,” said Joveljić on Apple TV after the game. “It wasn’t that smooth but next time will be smoother!”
Brugman’s only other assist in 2024 came way back in March in the third game of the season against St. Louis City and the middle of his season was interrupted by injury, but this pass for Paintsil for the opener was that of a practised creative midfielder fully in their groove. The timing of the run from the Ghanaian matched the pass to perfection.
In those early stages of the game, the Red Bulls looked at a loss as to how to deal with the Galaxy attack.
The Red Bulls were out of sorts and lacked defensive organisation. This wasn’t helped by the news ahead of kick-off that dental defender Andrés Reyes was taken ill and had to be replaced at the last minute by Noah Eile.
The mistakes for the goals weren’t individual errors as such, even though man-for-man the Galaxy attackers should get the better of the Red Bulls’ defence, but had more to do with the defensive organisation required from the team as a whole to stop the likes of Paintsil, Joveljić, and Gabriel Pec.
The Red Bulls recovered and settled into the game. It took the concession of two goals before they were able to do so, but it was important for them and the spectacle as a whole that they eventually did.
Eile’s improvement epitomised this increased stability in the Red Bulls and they actually finished the game having had more possession than their opponents.
This was a reverse of the two teams’ usual styles as the Galaxy are normally the possession team while the Red Bulls like to soak up pressure and catch teams on the break or catch them out with high pressing.
Maybe this was part of the Galaxy’s game plan, but without Puig, they lack that world-class midfield controller and only dominated possession in one of the other five games he’s missed this season.
The Red Bulls moving Eile to left centre-back in a swap with Sean Nealis was another simple tweak that helped them improve. It was Nealis who scored the goal that got the Red Bulls back into the game in the first half with a composed finish following some chaos in the box following a corner kick.
Right until the end of the game, the Red Bulls looked like they had a chance to get back into it. Emil Forsberg missed a great opportunity to make it 2-2 after he set Lewis Morgan free down the right and eventually received a ball back from Elias Manoel but sent his shot wide.
The Galaxy held on and were deserved winners. Marco Reus came on with 15 minutes to help see the game out and add an MLS Cup to the two DFB Pokals he won with Borussia Dortmund.
By that time the game had been won by the contributions of the players mentioned earlier plus quality displays in defence from 23-year-old Colombian Carlos Garcés and the man to the right of him, steady 30-year-old Japanese right-back Miki Yamane.
Yamane also contributes in midfield up and down the pitch from his position on the right and is an underrated part of the Galaxy’s turnaround this season.
From the pressure applied by the supporters last season to the team-building of general manager Will Kuntz to sign the majority of the names mentioned in this article, the Galaxy have produced an almost perfect turnaround from 2023 to 2024 that saw them become one of the best teams in the regular season and then win the MLS Cup playoffs at the end of it.
This season was built up to be about the league’s latest headline club Inter Miami and the new global profile they’ve achieved on the back of signing Lionel Messi, but in the end, the final came down to a game between two original teams who were present in the first season of MLS back in 1996, and resulted in another trophy for the original MLS Galacticos.
(Cover Image from IMAGO)
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