LA Galaxy struggles: Injury woes or something more?

The LA Galaxy, it feels safe to say, have looked nothing like their 2024 selves thus far this season.

With Wednesday night’s 1-0 Concacaf Champions Cup Round of 16 first-leg loss to Herediano in Costa Rica, the reigning MLS Cup champions have lost their first three matches, scoring just one goal across the 270-plus minutes. Perhaps more ominously, a previously explosive front line has produced less than two expected goals combined.

It’s also safe to declare that this wasn’t particularly unexpected. Star attacker Marco Reus said as much to Men in Blazers’ Roger Bennett in “Rebuilding a Champion,” an MLS Season Pass special recorded at Dignity Health Sports Park shortly before the 2025 season opener.

“We have new players; important players [were] leaving the club. So that means we need a new chemistry in our team, a new rhythm. So it needs a bit of time,” the German luminary said. “I will not say that in the first games we see the old Galaxy team, because there's not an old Galaxy team, there's a new one. And we will see.”

All of which makes the Gs’ Matchday 3 duel with St. Louis CITY SC on Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass) something of a gut-check moment for the defending champs.

Injuries mount

The turnover to the lineup that delivered the Gs’ record-setting sixth league title in December resembles a laundry list.

Linchpin playmaker Riqui Puig is out for the better part of a year thanks to a torn ACL. A quad injury has ruled out another Designated Player, winger Joseph Paintsil, for the campaign’s opening weeks. The team’s spine has been transformed by a series of trades necessary to reach salary-budget compliance, with central midfielders Mark Delgado and Gastón Brugman, homegrown center back Jalen Neal and spearhead striker Dejan Joveljić moving elsewhere in MLS.

Reinforcements have arrived, too, most prominently SoCal native Christian Ramírez from Columbus Crew, veteran center back Mathias 'Zanka' Jørgensen, rising US talent Elijah Wynder and U22 Initiative signings Lucas Sanabria and Matheus Nascimento – both of whom are injured at the moment, and all the newcomers face a generally steep learning curve in coach Greg Vanney’s possession-oriented system.

The Galaxy were shorthanded enough on Wednesday that academy products Harbor Miller, 17, and Ruben Ramos Jr., 18, made their first starts with the senior squad against Herediano; in the second half Reus was substituted for another youngster, Sean Karani, signed to a short-term agreement from LA's MLS NEXT Pro side Ventura County FC earlier that day.

“Right now, for this group, it's trying to find the right dynamics to get us to play in the vision that we want to play,” Vanney told reporters on Tuesday, lamenting the absence of not just quality and depth, but “important players who sort of change the dynamics of your group” with their influence. “But also we have to be more dynamic on the attacking half of the field. The game needs to move faster for us. It's too slow right now.

“It's just, we're integrating players into key areas of the field that used to be, what I would say a well-oiled machine, and now they're just in the rebuilding phase. And that's something that we have to work through.”

Adaptation & buy-in

This challenge is not unique to the Galaxy. In stark contrast to many European leagues, repeating high achievement is devilishly difficult in MLS. It’s been over a decade since the last back-to-back winner of either MLS Cup or the Supporters’ Shield. The rigors of Champions Cup are a particularly demanding test in the aftermath of a big season like LA’s ‘24, as Vanney experienced himself in charge of Toronto FC during the Reds’ 2016-19 salad days.

The veteran coach chuckled on Tuesday as he recalled TFC’s gritty run to the 2018 ConcaChampions final, despite a relentless stream of injuries along the way that forced his staff to patch together a back line with a holding midfielder and a fullback at its heart, narrowly and agonizingly falling to Chivas Guadalajara in a penalty-kick shootout.

“You recall, we played Michael Bradley and [Gregory] van der Wiel as the two center backs in the final. So there's times where we've had to be creative,” said Vanney.

“This group will figure it out. This is what we do and we'll do it with the guys we have now, until we can get the guys healthy to fill back into their spots that we expect them to be in.”

Can short-term pain give way to long-term gain? Ramírez hoisted multiple pieces of hardware with the Crew, and sees the building blocks for similar achievements in LA.

“It's about who's here right now, and then the staff will bring in as they as they can and as they will,” the well-traveled 33-year-old said on Tuesday. “It's about buying into what the staff wants for this given moment, and then being able to adapt and buy in together. That's the biggest thing: We have a group that's bought in together from top to bottom, and that'll give you success.

“Everybody is bought in. It's just a bit of bad fortune with the injuries going on. I think if those injuries weren't in place, we'd be in a whole different situation.”

Sunday Night Soccer showdown

The current crisis, if three games can really be a large enough sample size to merit that term, pales in comparison to the Galaxy’s monumental climb from second-to-last place in the Western Conference in 2023 to last year’s cup winners, a rebirth that required not just dramatic talent upgrades like Paintsil and fellow winger Gabriel Pec, but a shift in locker-room culture.

“It was emotionally difficult; 2023 was the hardest year of soccer I've ever been involved with in my life, and trying to find our way out of it,” Vanney told Bennett last month. “There was so many things that were going on and going against us. It was a perfect storm of nonsense, is what I call it.

“I know our starting point is going to be higher than it was a year ago, because we have a lot of players who've now spent a year together, spent a year in this league, and now know what it takes to win. They understand what it means to play in front of this [home crowd] and to wear the badge. They have a different level of understanding than they did even a year ago, and I think the winning has just driven the hunger more, not the complacency.”

The Galaxy’s current difficulties might actually up the ante for St. Louis, who plummeted from first to 12th place last year after a euphoric inaugural season and are finding their way under a new boss in Olof Mellberg. CITY SC are one of only three MLS teams yet to concede a goal after two matchdays, yet are conversely also one of three clubs yet to score, with a clear focus on caution and defensive stability in the early stages of ‘25.

For now, the glass is being described as half-full by the Midwesterners, who after last week’s 0-0 draw at San Diego FC’s home opener have yet to win an MLS match in Southern California in their short existence. But attacking invention will be a pressing priority for both sides in Carson.

“I said to the team now after the game that we should not think too much now and try to turn every stone and look like, where’s the problem?” said goalkeeper and captain Roman Bürki in San Diego. “There is no problem. We played really good with the ball against Colorado, which we should have won, and now we played really good against the ball. So we can do both.

“If you compare our performance that we had in a game like this last season, we would have never gotten away with a point last season.”