Nightmare Restart: LA Galaxy lose 3-0 to LAFC to resume MLS regular season
Friday night became a nightmare for the LA Galaxy and their return to MLS action. What went wrong against their city rivals.
The LA Galaxy’s return to the 2026 MLS regular season began with a stunning loss to rivals LAFC. The Black and Gold won 3-0 at Dignity Health Sports Park in the first El Trafico of the season.
Mark Delgado opened the scoring in the 26th minute for LAFC. The former Galaxy midfielder scored his second goal of the season and celebrated in front of the home fans.
LA struggled to find an extra gear in the attack and LAFC would soon double its lead. Justin Haak took down Denis Bouanga in the box during an attempted clearance. It was called for a penalty, and Bouanga scored from the spot.
The Black and Gold added another hurdle to the G’s with Son Heung Min scoring his first MLS goal of the season and the third of the match.
The Galaxy never found its attacking spark to challenge LAFC and left the pitch with their heads down. It was the first time since Aug. 2025 that the LA Galaxy failed to record a goal in a match.
“We lost today to a team that executed better than us on the day… They executed their plan. They stayed low. They made the game very difficult for us. We did what we can’t do, which is gift goals in a game like that,” said Head Coach Greg Vanney about the performance.
Haak added that he and the rest of the team were let down by what happened on Friday night.
“This was definitely not a step in the right direction,” said Haak.
“I think nobody is proud or happy with how that game went. We all expected much, much more, but that’s something that we have to learn from and do better.”
With no focal point in the box and lacking the physicality to tussle with center backs, LAFC’s game plan to sit in a low block and counter was the best way to frustrate the G’s.
Marco Reus couldn’t get many touches in the box, Paintsil was forced to make passes backwards every time he reached the final third, and no midfielders crashed the box effectively.
“They came in, they sat in the lower block, obviously recognizing we don’t really have a nine… We were passing the ball, but we weren’t getting anywhere. We weren’t creating attacks. We didn’t build speed into our attacks,” said Vanney.
With Gabriel Pec no longer on the team, Joseph Paintsil has the duty of playing on the right side of the pitch.
Paintsil excelled on the right side at his former club Genk before joining the LA Galaxy. Since making the move to MLS, Vanney has used the Ghanaian as an inverted left winger. It’s worked to get him attacking the backline, but now his role has shifted to doing that on the right.
55% of LA’s attack came down the right side of the pitch, and even Head Coach Greg Vanney mentioned that the ball was being forced too much in the direction of Paintsil.
“We really overplayed one side,” said Vanney regarding the first-half build-up.
“I felt like it just became so predictable that it was easy for them to organize the defending over on that side. Joe… it was hard for Joe to build speed because it was just so dense over there.”
Haak chimed in on the attack approach and agreed that the ball was forced to many times down the right side.
“I think we try to force the ball too much to Joe in slower moments. I think we got the ball to him a little bit slow, so they already had two players in front of him, which isn’t ideal. You want Joe running 1v1,” said Haak.
The loss to LAFC highlights even more the roster issues the Galaxy have that make them an easy opponent to gameplan against. This result is a gut punch, but it may not mean too much if LA can get it together in the coming games and add reinforcements to the roster.
St. Louis comes to town on Wednesday night and provides the Galaxy the chance to take the bad taste from this game away.