Level Set 4, Los Angeles Galaxy: The Best Team in MLS History, Also, Hold That Thought

Call him. Jim Kelly feels your pain, LA.

What follows is a brief history of the Los Angeles Galaxy, aka, the most historically successful team in Major League Soccer history, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
The olds whisper legends about how the Los Angeles Galaxy started its storied history as Major League Soccer’s first Buffalo Bills, losing the first three MLS Cup they played. Those early stumbles buried more than one relevant fact – e.g., they won their first Supporters’ Shield in 1998, their first CONCACAF Champions’ Cup in 2000 (not the feat it later became, to be fair) - but the Galaxy put together competitive teams from the jump, even if they didn’t have all that many trophies to show for it. With long-forgotten players like Mauricio Cienfuegos, Kevin Hartman, Danny Califf, Cobi Jones and (the semi-infamous; he earned this...to some extent) Carlos Ruiz leading the way, the Galaxy won a Double in 2002 – and came damn close to a triple (they were runners-up in the U.S. Open Cup that year). Some real successes followed – an MLS Cup in 2005, if with a decidedly average team (also, won by one of the flukiest goals in MLS history; in here, somewhere, happy hunting!) and the Shield again in 2009 – but LA spent the rest of the 2000s bumping their asses against the ground as hard and often as any team in MLS. Turns out that playing in a world-famous city doesn’t do a team enough favors when roster rules and small budgets bind every team in the same shackles. It ultimately took not just the arrival of the Designated Player Rule (2007), but also the subsequent expansion(s) of the same rule (2010 and 2012), for the Galaxy’s natural advantages to kick all the way in. Success wasn’t immediate - even David Beckham, aka, the OG DP, played with the peanut gallery calling him a flop over his first few seasons - but the opening of MLS’s Rube-Goldbergian budget rules set the stage for the five-plus-season period that made the Galaxy the most dominant team in MLS history. Between 2009 and 2014, LA won three MLS Cups, two Supporters’ Shields, and they went to one more MLS Cup besides. They owed a lot of that success to Landon Donovan, aka, the man whose name now graces the league MVP award, but Ireland’s Robbie Keane arguably put those teams over the top (his hit-rate in MLS was nuts). Those two, Beckham, some outstanding defenses, and unsung heroes like midfield back-stop Juninho turned the Galaxy into MLS first unstoppable force since the DC United teams of the late 1990s/early 2000s. Even if both Red Bull New York and the Seattle Sounders would like a word, MLS hasn’t seen a team as reliable as LA’s best teams since. After the 2014 MLS Cup, LA could only squeak into the 2015 post-season as a wild card and they missed the playoffs outright in 2017 (with a tap by the Wooden Spoon thrown in for good measure), 2018, 2020, 2021 and as recently as 2023. The Galaxy signed the biggest players they could to solve the problem – see, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Giovani dos Santos – but they either scrimped on the foundation (my personal theory, fwiw) or just couldn’t put one together, any star can only shine so bright, etc. Maybe that’s what made LA’s comfortable 2024 MLS Cup win feel like a bolt out of the blue. With wingers Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec running on either side of Devan Joveljic (traded after 2024), and the small, shifty No. 10(?) Riqui Puig pulling the strings, the Galaxy raced up the table by, often as not, running up the score. The sturdy yet dynamic midfields of Mark Delgado (also traded), Edwin Cerrillo and Gaston Brugman (also traded; just Brugman) bought those four stars time to be lethal and the rest is, as they say history. And then history threw up all over the fairy tale.

Getting Reacquainted with the Los Angeles Galaxy, MLS's Very Own Nora Desmond

No longer ready for their close-up.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

The Los Angeles Galaxy started as the first Buffalo Bills of Major League Soccer. True story. They reached MLS Cup in literally half of the league’s first six seasons only to flop on the biggest stage. Those failures gave them the opposite of stage-fright: the Galaxy became the first dominant team in league history, making the playoffs every season over the first ten years – virtually always in the top 5 too. Hell, one of their “Bills” seasons saw them claim the Supporters’ Shield (1998), but they didn’t have to wait long for their first Cups, either: the first came in 2002 – which they paired with another Shield – then again in 2005. Their fallow seasons – 2006-08 – look like hiccups today because OG LA dominated the first half of the 2010s, chewing up and spitting out one trophy after another. The Galaxy didn’t become the team current fans know until 2017- the same season the Wooden Spoon slapped their bottoms for the one and only time in team history. By now, the glory years have faded enough to where you have to wonder if their fans even remember them. The Galaxy have missed the playoffs in five of the past seven seasons. Worse, they haven’t looked like doing much the two times they didn’t.

Best Season(s)

The Galaxy ran away with their ’98 Shield at a sprint that would have left Usain Bolt’s jaw on the ground, but their best years came between 2009 and 2014, when they won another Shield (2010) and reached MLS Cup four times and won three of them (2011, 2012, 2014; they were runners-up in 2009). Those seasons saw Landon Donovan and Roy Keane running absolute riot up top while absolute rock defenders like Omar Gonzalez and A. J. DeLaGarza held things down at the back in front of a succession of strong goalkeepers (e.g., Donovan Ricketts, Josh Saunders, and the underrated Jaime Penedo). Absolute juggernauts, I tell you, and I still hate them for it. Oh, and they won the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup in 2000, but that shit was so goofy that the Mexican teams didn’t pay it much mind…until 2001.

Long-Term Tendencies

Their very best seasons (1998 and 2014) saw the Galaxy do very well in defense and even better on offense, but they built their best seasons on sturdy defenses and Bruce Arena’s second great run as a head coach. [Sidebar: does anyone know what words or actions cost him the New England gig?] There’s a lot of reverting to the mean on either side of that, but nothing has defined the bad years (2017 to…well, now) like defensive fragility: they’ve been over the league average for goals allowed in six of the past seven seasons.

An MLS History Project: 1998, An Expansion Team Among Expansion Teams

Not the main subject, but a key sentiment of this post....

First, I have to get this off my chest. Look at the 1998 final standings. (Look at them!!) Who the hell has two different kinds of wins and losses? Who does that?

Moving on, 1998’s was the first set of final standings that I really looked at – as in, saw where each of the (now) 12 teams (wait for it) finished and a couple data points really take me back…far enough that I’m going to dip my toe into some research.

Until recently as…shit, 2019, the ’98 Los Angeles Galaxy team held the single-season record for most team goals scored: they banged in 85, and they had two fewer games in which to do it than Toronto FC would in 2019. While that record and the team that held it has always lurked around the back of my mind, I couldn’t have placed it in time with a gun to my head. I knew it was back in the day, but…damn. A quick scan of that roster (or just its leading scorers) gets you to “god-damn” pretty fast – not just because that’s a massive brick in the building of Cobi Jones’ reputation (19 goals, 13 assists?!), but also because Welton, a wiry whippet of a player (if I remember right) who stuck in LA for a few seasons, plus a(nother) career season for OG-legend Mauricio Cienfuegos (13 goals, 16 helpers) – but the larger point was that this team had a lotta ways to hurt. The Galaxy was just as solid on the other side of the field, with a backline made up of Robin Fraser, Dan Calichman, Greg Vanney, and Steve Jolley (or Paul Caligiuri) – and that’s before I get to the fullbacks (e.g, Ezra “EZ” Hendrickson). Between front and back, they had this great one-two between Daniel Hernandez – a really strong d-mid in his day, and I think he’s still remembered – and another player named Danny Pena. The latter played more box-to-box, but he had some real sharp ideas on the attacking end for a guy in that role. Pena didn’t last long, but he was hella fun for as long as he did and those two were great to watch when they clicked. Taken together, that team managed a 2:1 between goals for/against. Impressive, obviously…

…but the one name I see that really caught my eye in that data-pile was Carlos Hermosillo. People, myself 1,000% included, sometimes talk about Mexican National Team players as if they’re coming to MLS for the first time over the past couple seasons. Hermosillo does and doesn’t disprove that. He remains among the top scorers in Mexican National Team history, and his numbers for Cruz Azul for the 90s qualify as a big step past bat-shit; he was massive in his day…those just happened to come one or two before signing to MLS, and I guess that answers the question. Still feels notable that he had twice as many assists as goals…