El Trafico, the Matchday 8 finale and Sunday’s showdown at Dignity Health Sports Park (4:30 pm | MLS Season Pass, FOX), will feature two rivals going in completely opposite directions.
Five months removed from completing an MLS Cup-Supporters’ Shield double, LAFC are cooking as they navigate the early MLS regular season and Concacaf Champions League ambitions. Steve Cherundolo’s squad has secured 14 points from six matches (4W-0L-2D) and is one of two clubs without a defeat in 2023.
The LA Galaxy are the polar opposite. Greg Vanney’s side has secured just three points through six matches (0W-3L-3D), sit 28th out of 29 teams in the overall league standings and join Sporting Kansas City as the only winless teams this season.
To further illustrate the gap between the rivals from last weekend's results:
- LAFC are coming off a 3-0 win over Austin FC with Dénis Bouanga, perhaps the early favorite to win Landon Donovan MLS MVP, netting a hat trick.
- LA Galaxy had two players sent off and suffered a 3-0 defeat at Houston Dynamo FC, a performance that prompted an apology afterward by Vanney.
And in a development Tuesday evening amid fan-led protests, club president Chris Klein wrote to Galaxy season ticket members that he'll "step aside" if LA fall short of their goals for 2023.
"I feel like LA Galaxy's kind of like a dysfunctional family at this moment," Kaylyn Kyle said in the latest edition of Extratime. "Picking up two red cards, there's dysfunction going on somewhere."
The Galaxy were at the heart of the discussion ahead of the derby showdown. Once the gold standard of the league as the only five-time MLS Cup winners, the current iteration is a shell of those glory days when David Beckham, Robbie Keane and Donovan shared the field.
"The current brand is not the previous brand, I'll say that," Andrew Wiebe said. "When you walk through, and I reference it all the time because this is who the Galaxy want to be, when you walk through that hallway and you see the MLS Cups and you see all the shiny things that they've won over the years, that's then. That's not now. It's very clearly not now."
And while LAFC have pushed all the right buttons in player acquisitions, from their first-ever signing of Carlos Vela to the more recent in Bouanga and Stipe Biuk, as well as intra-league pickups, the Galaxy’s moves haven’t yielded the same dividends.
"They've gotten their DP signings wrong, they've gotten their Under-22 signings wrong, they've gotten their MLS veteran signings wrong, they've gotten their international signings wrong," David Gass said.
"There is not a single, outside of maybe Jalen Neal, academy player who is making a difference. Efra Álvarez, I don't even know how you keep talking about it or pushing it. … He's never going to hit the heights we thought. So what can they lean back on as a club? History and that's it."
Tactically, Matt Doyle said, a move to a 3-5-2 formation best suits the club’s personnel. But the right tactics only get you so far, as Vanney has pointed out following Matchday 7.
"They have three usable forwards. They do have, even without Martín Cáceres, they have a few usable center backs. They don't have any usable wingers," Doyle said. "So we're right to focus on the 3-5-2, but he's absolutely correct with that. The competitiveness of this Galaxy team waxes and wanes and mostly wanes this year to the point where after 15 minutes it was obvious Houston was going to win this game. It wasn't just from a tactical standpoint. He's right. If that's the way the team's going to come out, then all the tactical stuff goes out."
One positive Doyle highlighted was the Galaxy’s hire of Will Kuntz, formerly of LAFC, as the club’s senior vice president of player personnel, which should help in the roster-building.
"This is a team that has contacts around the world, has the ability – we were saying, LA's not a tough sell for most players, man. They could go out there and sign Stipe Biuk and Dénis Bouanga. They have the ability to do this," Doyle said.
"They haven't gotten any of that right because the people in charge of the Galaxy in the front office have never built the infrastructure you need to get those signings right. So the hope is that [Kuntz] will be given that responsibility, that kind of power, clean slate and try to build something that can last and can match the team up the road, which is officially the big team in LA."
For more Extratime analysis, check out the Matchday 7 rewind episode via MLS Season Pass on Apple TV or the podcatcher of your choice.
