MLS Expansion Draft on Wednesday
San Diego FC will select five players in the MLS Expansion Draft on Wednesday. The list of players eligible for selection will be released by MLS Communications tomorrow.
The worst part about winning a championship is at some point you have to get to work on winning another one. For long-suffering fan bases from teams stuck in the pit of misery, winning one gets you a free pass to do pretty much whatever you want for about five years before anyone rational is going to complain.
The Galaxy are not that kind of team. They don’t get to take another decade off now. They’re the winningest club in MLS history and their crosstown rivals are going to do everything in their power to get back on top in LA. The expectation will be for the Galaxy to stay among the league’s elite.
That’s going to be a tough ask in 2025. You might have heard Riqui Puig tore his ACL. High-level sports science is basically witchcraft at this point, but Puig still isn’t likely to be back until late summer. We’re probably looking at nine or 10 games for him to get up to speed before the start of the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs. He’s one of the best we’ve ever seen in MLS, but it’s just not reasonable to expect him to play at a high level immediately.
On top of that, it’s not clear how reasonable it will be for folks to pick the Galaxy as a top-four team in the West next season. When Puig gets back, will LA be in a position to play as many home games as possible in the postseason?
It’s a fair question for a few reasons. There’s the obvious worry a Puig-less Galaxy can survive one big game without him but could struggle in the long term. Just a reminder that Puig completed more passes this season than any MLS player since 2013. The only reason it stops at 2013 is I don’t have the data beyond that. I’d be comfortable betting on Puig as the most prolific passer in league history.
To be fair to LA, they went 4W-1D-1L without him this year. That includes one very big W. They could be totally fine until he gets back. My best guess is by the time Puig returns, we’ll all be writing about how scary it is one of the better teams in the West is set to add back in one of the best on-ball players the league has ever seen.
Then again, that kind of assumes we’ll be looking at the same Galaxy team. Gabriel Pec reportedly has huge clubs circling and a huge price tag. If a club your kid brother plays with on EAFC swoops in with an MLS record-breaking deal — totally plausible by the way — then it will be time for Pec to see if he can win Newcomer of the Year somewhere else.
There’s also a possibility Dejan Joveljić has serious offers waiting for him in this upcoming window or the next. The Galaxy would receive a huge windfall for transferring both, but there’s no guarantee they’d be able to replace those players effectively.
The good news is they won’t miss on those replacements because of basic infrastructure issues. This isn’t the version of the Galaxy missing a full-fledged scouting department and asking agents really nicely if they have a list of players they should sign. General manager Will Kuntz has turned into one of the most well-regarded roster builders in the league and the Galaxy clearly have the foundation in place to find quality players on the world market.
That means even if they don’t fully replace big losses in attack, they should at least continue to improve in other areas. In particular, they’ll likely keep pushing to improve on their defensive personnel. A slightly worse off in attack but slightly better in defense version of the Galaxy is still a really good version of the Galaxy.
Next year could be an understandable step back. Even if they had all of their pieces returning, it’s hard to come back strong after an MLS Cup season. The 2012 Galaxy were the last repeat champions. But LA have cash, the draw of Los Angeles and, now, the scouting infrastructure and roster philosophy to make those things matter. Oh, and once Puig is back, he’s back. It doesn’t seem like he’s going anywhere else any time soon. It may not be the first half of the 2010s again, but it sure feels like we haven’t seen the last of the Galaxy competing for titles this decade.
- Joseph Paintsil delivered a “really special” MLS Cup to the LA Galaxy.
- Matt Doyle picked out the top five way-too-early contenders for MLS Cup.
Good luck out there. Don’t waste time getting where everyone else wants to go.
