A season of frustration, a tournament of belief: LA Galaxy’s Leagues Cup story
Beating Orlando for third place secured a ticket back to the Concacaf Champions Cup and something to show the fans.
Leagues Cup is ultimately the only bright spot of the LA Galaxy’s 2025 season.
After a horrible start to the 2025 MLS campaign, which saw the club go 16 MLS matches without a win, Leagues Cup became the lone route by which the LA Galaxy would find its way back to Concacaf Champions Cup.
With 36 of the best clubs between MLS and Liga MX in this tournament, the LA Galaxy finished third in the tournament following Sunday’s 2-1 win over Orlando City SC.
LA’s best form of the season came in this tournament as it defeated Club Tijuana, Santos Laguna and Pachuca. The Galaxy would lose to the eventual champions, Seattle Sounders, but get a spot on the podium following its win over Orlando.
“It was a very different type of win, where we just had to grind it out down the stretch and had to rotate, and we went through a couple different shapes and sliding guys into different roles, things like that. So, but I think I'm proud of the group for doing so, and for taking something out of a tournament that is difficult,” said Head Coach Greg Vanney during his postgame press conference.
LA finished the competition with 14 goals scored and seven goals allowed through six games played. Players such as Joseph Paintsil, Mauricio Cuevas, and Marco Reus had some of their best performances of the season. This competition gave the LA Galaxy a chance to start with a clean slate and a moment to put behind the historically bad start to the 2025 MLS season.
“Guys are dialed in when there's things on the line. Everybody is trying their best and working the best for the team, and today was a team effort,” said Edwin Cerrillo in the mixed zone of the third-place match.
There was a lot of effort to close out the game in the final 10 minutes of the match. Players were putting their bodies on the line and squeezing every last drop of energy to defend against Orlando’s crosses into the box. In those moments and in the goal scored during this tournament, the Galaxy showed the quality and competitiveness to go toe-to-toe with many teams.
“As a player, you know when your team is not competitive. I've been on teams that aren't competitive. This is not one of them, but it's just been a season that I can't even explain,” said Miguel Berry.
“Everything that could go wrong did, and I think we kind of dug ourselves a hole that we couldn't get ourselves out of, and today, on the day we just kept going and we got out of it.
Defender John Nelson echoed that sentiment, saying,” I think some teams, if you're having a bad season, like we were having bad season, some teams in the league, they would maybe not compete, maybe not try as hard. But we didn't. We came out today.”
“It's been a rough season. But how can we do something for us? How can we do something for the fans? And I think that shows a lot,” he added.
Qualifying for the Concacaf Champions Cup is a big deal for a club that has high expectations every season. LA participated in this season’s edition but did so in the midst of its winless run of the season.
Now the Galaxy is prepared to head into North America’s regional tournament for another season. Star player Riqui Puig will likely get to show his talents in the Galaxy’s quest for continental dominance. The Spaniard celebrated at the full-time whistle with his family, as they will be excited to participate in CCC.
“This is, for me, the minimum, minimum positive feeling through this season, and including the fans. After becoming champion and losing a lot of home games and huge disappointment from the fans. We can give something nice to the fans so happy for this result today.,” said Yoshida about qualifying for CCC.
It’s not a trophy but the Galaxy will take anything positive for this nightmare 2025 campaign.