We’ve seen it time and time again: A club makes it big and takes home a trophy in a sweep of glory, setting the expectations sky-high for their next season. Everyone expects the victors to build on the momentum that earned them some silverware.
Then they crash and burn.
Falling Stars
It happens in every sport, from the Rams’ brutal 2022 post-Super Bowl run to the Indiana Pacers’ fall-off in 2026. Big wins, bigger drop-offs. In 2020, we watched Columbus win the cup, only to miss the playoffs the next two seasons. Currently, reigning Supporters’ Shield champs Philadelphia Union are winless in 2026 and dead last in the league standings.
Is it something psychological? Is it just that hard to sustain success? Whatever the reason, this is the pattern the LA Galaxy fell prey to after their big MLS Cup win in 2024.
The Galaxy’s plunge from grace was fast and hard. Record-setting, even, as they logged the longest winless stretch to start a season with a whopping 16 games, the twelfth of which saw them fall 7-0 to the very same team they beat in the 2024 MLS Cup Finals.
The club’s dismal performance last year landed them second-to-last in the Western Conference table, just barely ahead of Kansas City. With seven wins in 34 games and a goal differential of -20, it was a miracle they didn’t wind up with the Wooden Spoon. Granted, they were operating without injured star midfielder Riqui Puig, and a salary cap crunch wound up with the departures of Mark Delgado (LAFC) and Dejan Joveljić (SKC). Now that they’ve had time to patch those holes, things might be on the uptick.
A New Hope?
Listen, Kyle made his Star Trek reference in the preview, so I’m making my Star Wars one here. Hope! What a beautiful thing, one that all the LA fans out there were surprised by on Matchday 2. The Galaxy hosted Charlotte and won 3-0, and for a minute there, it really looked like they were back. Puig is still out, but Paintsil is back, and Head Coach Greg Vanney added striker João Klauss to the mix and cultivated immediate results. The former St. Louis player has scored five times in as many regular-season games, and Gabriel Pec netted a hat trick in Concacaf Champions Cup play against Mount Pleasant. That’s a solid attacking unit, and the fact that they’ve progressed this far in CCC isn’t anything to scoff at, either. (But they’re about to go up against Liga MX giants Toluca, so… good luck with that, guys.)
In all fairness, we’ve seen some pretty big bouncebacks before. From 2017 to 2019, Toronto went from winning the cup to missing the playoffs to bouncing all the way back to the MLS Cup finals. After the Crew missed the playoffs for two years after their 2020 Cup win, they came back to secure the title again in 2023. There’s a history in MLS of turning things around, and nothing motivates a team quite like epic failure following epic success. I think it’s a turnaround we can count on — but not just yet.
To me, this feels like more of a Columbus situation, where the Galaxy take another year to build back up. Since that Charlotte game, the LA side has one point in three games. It’s still early — anything could happen — but Vanney has been there for the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. He knows what this club looks like when it succeeds, and this roster is not there. They were counting on Puig returning this year, but with the news of his second consecutive season out on injury, there’s still a pretty big hole in their ranks. And they never totally filled that Joveljić gap, either (though if Klauss keeps delivering like this, he could prove me wrong).
Vanney’s making moves to get the team back to the high point, but it’s not happening overnight (or even over a single offseason). The rest of these guys need to start performing on a higher level to really get back to glory. With Klauss joining the squad, plus Erik Thommy, Justin Haak, and Jakob Glesnes, there’s a better foundation being laid for forward progress. But one man can’t sustain a whole team on a season-long scoring streak.
The Loons aren’t exactly on a winning streak either, and this weekend both sides are looking to put themselves on the other side of a five-point start to the year. In my humble and totally unbiased opinion, the Galaxy will stay hanging around that 8-10 range and wind up fighting for a play-in spot in the postseason. And I like to think that the Loons will just keep rising, but this matchup should give us a good idea of whether Minnesota and LA are going to climb or plateau for the rest of the pre-World Cup stretch.
