Of all the Galaxy players on the 2024 roster, only Miki Yamane qualifies as a bonafide winner, collecting seven J-League trophies over eight seasons with two different teams, and best eleven honors three times. Winners make teams better because only teams can win trophies in soccer. Talented players like Riqui Puig, Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec cannot yet claim to be winners, because they either played for teams that won no trophies, or they did not feature as integral part of a winning team.
Take for example Riqui Puig, who debuted for the Barcelona first team at the age of nineteen, promoted permanently to the first team two years later. Over four seasons as an attacking midfielder in Catalonia he started fifteen matches and managed only two goals and three assists in fifty-seven appearances.
Gabriel Pec played for Vasco De Gama, winning promotion to the Brazilian Serie A. He scored twenty-seven goals and recorded fourteen assists in 178 appearances, obviously integral to the Vasco attack. However, the Brazilian side narrowly escaped relegation landing in fifteenth place, five from bottom of table.
Speedy Ghanaian winger Joseph Paintsil featured for Hungarian top flight club Ferencváros for the 2017-18 season before signing with Belgian side Genk in 2018. After loan spells in Hungary he recorded his best season in 2023-24 with eighteen goals and fourteen assists in thirty-nine appearances. The Belgian club placed second in the top flight, losing their title bid on the last match day.
Scoring over seventy career goals and recording seventy assists with three teams in MLS, Diego Fagundez never lifted a trophy of any kind. After eight years as a backup with eight different clubs, goalkeeper John McCarthy won an MLS Cup in 2022 with Los Angeles Football Club. He entering the game in the second half for injured starter Maxime Crepeau, winning the Most Valuable Player award. It remains to be seen if he can translate that to winning a trophy as a starter.
All five MLS Cup winning LA Galaxy sides featured trophy winners with multiple teams. Landon Donovan and Todd Dunivant won an MLS Cup with San Jose before lifting four with LA Galaxy. Brian Mullen won eight trophies with four different teams including five MLS Cups, one with the Galaxy. Craig Waibel won five trophies with three teams, including one with the Galaxy. Hector Jimenez, Ezra Hendrickson and Alejandro Moreno all won trophies with multiple teams. All five Galaxy Cup winners featured players with trophies on a rival roster.
Cup winning Galaxy coaches, Sigi Schmidt and Bruce Arena won multiple titles at the college and professional level before shepherding their MLS teams to glory. The current coaching staff does employ past trophy winners, Greg Vanney as a player with the Galaxy and coach in Toronto, and goalkeeper coach Kevin Hartman. Acquiring Marco Reus would add more than another attacking player. He knows what it means to lift a trophy. General Manager Will Kuntz worked in two front offices during championship seasons with the New York Yankees and LAFC.
With the last of post-Arena dead weight removed from the front office a year ago in August, Kuntz and Vanney set about building a winner. Kuntz accomplished step one when he acquired Pec, Paintsil and Fagundez to complement Puig, and shored up the back line with Yoshida, Yamane, Julian Aude and John Nelson. Vanney seems to have largely accomplished the second step, methodically tailoring a system of play to the revamped roster that can control games and attack aggressively. One step remains. Can this version of the Galaxy learn how to win?
Vanney called the El Traffico loss “death by a ten thousand passes going nowhere. We had six or seven guys in the build and three to four guys in the attack. They’re a good enough team, that’s never going to hurt them. We were down 2-0 at halftime, because we deserved to be down 2-0.”
Vanney’s comments could be construed as criticism, but more than anything they reveal his vision for the team. “Possession is intended to break lines and build speed, attacking the opposition with numbers. In the second half when we broke lines, we changed the speed of the game. People were sprinting ahead of the ball. We forced them to defend moving backwards. When we put them on their heels, most teams aren’t as good in transition.”
Interestingly, during the recent shutout streak, Galaxy possession numbers hovered around forty-six percent far below the fifty-seven percent in El Traffico. They didn’t score as many goals without Puig on the field, but they did put the opponent on their heels. For this Galaxy team, possession only improves the defense if the opponent must defend running toward their own goal, neutralizing the ability to counter attack as the opponent tires.
“We’ve got to reduce the number of transitions. We’ve got to reduce the number of balls lost between their lines and just the kind of purposeless possession. We’ve got to hurt them for ninety minutes.”
Attacking the opponent in numbers at speed generally reduces the possession numbers, but it also reduces the number of opportunities for the opposition. Struggles defending set pieces and counterattacks can be reduced by an aggressive balanced attack, that retains enough shape to recover the ball quickly, and threatens the goal with numbers.
July 4th El Traffico may go down as Puig’s worst attacking game with the Galaxy. He played within the system, but did not energize it until the second half.
Vanney described some necessary adjustments to integrate Puig back into the lineup. “The balance was a little bit thrown off because when Riqui drops down to pick up the ball, we lose a number in the higher part of the field. It takes a lot of other movements to replace that number.”
Against Minnesota Puig stayed higher, displaying glimpses of how Puig-ball can successfully merge with Vanney-ball. He set up both goals from the offensive third, playing rangy pinpoint passes to a sprinting right fullback. The speed of those plays forced Minnesota defenders to face their own goal. With Pec attacking the box there could be only one outcome.
The 2-1 victory, despite tired legs, reveals the potential for this Galaxy team. With Joseph Paintsil nearing the end of his midseason-preseason, the Gs will add more speed into the attack. Puig himself may be ramping back up after shutting down for a few games to heal from his own niggling injuries.
Creating principles of play within a structure adds another benefit. Substitutes understand exactly what they need to do. The winning goal at the death against Minnesota may go down as one of the best team goals of the year. Substitute Mauricio Cuevas began an aggressive run into the right side of the box from a deep position in the midfield, as Puig wheeled with the ball searching for an option. His pinpoint pass reached the fullback’s right foot perfectly in stride.
Cuevas instinctively popped the ball over the defender and one-touched a perfect low cross behind the defense. Pec, who had drifted toward the middle to make space for the run, bulged the back of the net with an emphatic tap in. The play incapsulates the aggressive attack the coach wants.
“We need to use possession to put the opposition on their heels, to score goals to, to bury them to make them feel like we’re relentlessly coming at them.”
Vanney instructed Cuevas to “Get Gabe (Pec) a little bit inside more, running in front of the goal and you just get going. Let’s see if Riqui can switch it similar to the first goal.”
The coach explained the reasoning, “He (Cuevas) just hits a very hot but kind of friendly ball across the back line that’s really difficult to defend.”
The substitution and instructions highlight an emerging trend within the team. Vanney sees the strengths of his players and knows how work them into the system of play. He wants an intelligent kind of aggression that forces the opponent to retreat.
In addition to a high tempo passing attack, with aggressive runs and quick recoveries, winners need the mental capacity to stay locked in for ninety plus minutes. Yamane makes mistakes like any other player, but very few careless mistakes. He establishes good defensive position early in the play every time with out exception. He takes calculated risks only with other players in position to cover. While sometimes attempting an aggressive pass, he rarely does so in a situation that will lead to a transition for the other team.
Mental focus, intelligent reading of the game and consistent intensity separate winners from very talented players with impressive statistics. Recent videos of the U-15 and U-17 Generation Adidas Cup run reveal an emphasis on intensity and mental focus throughout the academy. The messages from the coaching staff to the first team players, trickles all the way down the development pipeline.
The Galaxy played one almost perfect game to start the season against Inter Miami. They mentally locked in for ninety minutes and controlled the game, threatening the goal from start to finish. Only rusty early season form and the other-worldly combination of Jordie Alba and Lionel Messi tied the game 1-1 at the death.
Sloppy mistakes from Galaxy players losing focus, rushing attacks or making poor decisions account for the majority of goals scored against them. Conceding penalty kicks, dangerous set pieces and costly mistake do not happen the Galaxy pins the opponent in their own end.
Learning to take ruthless advantage of attacking opportunities, maintaining intensity and mental focus remains the final hurdle to winning trophies. It begins with individual players, but only when it becomes the character of the entire team will the Galaxy be back for good. As for establishing a Real-Madrid-like franchise, winning the next trophy comes first.
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