The first thing the Los Angeles Galaxy showed their fans this season was something they may have seen before.
The team’s introductory video started with a retro logo, then footage of Cobi Jones scoring the first-ever Galaxy goal. The video ran through some of the pantheon of stars who followed after Jones. David Beckham, obviously. Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Landon Donovan. Robbie Keane. It encouraged fans to view the team’s current players as ones capable of achieving the same feats as the greats from the days of old.
See, the Galaxy of old was good. Real good. They lifted MLS Cups on five occasions. They won the Supporters’ Shield four times. They won a lot of games and did it with style. The Galaxy in recent seasons, though? Not so much.
2023 was a bad year, where the team won just eight matches on the way to a 13th-place finish in the 14-team Western Conference. The year before, crosstown rival LAFC bounced them from the playoffs in the conference semifinals. That was frustrating, but a success for the team over the prior decade. Since the 2014 MLS Cup triumph, which saw Gyasi Zardes and Robbie Keane score in the final, the Galaxy haven’t been past the conference semis and have missed the playoffs more often than they made them.
The team has always leaned into its tradition, even more so since those noisy neighbors arrived 12 miles north in 2018 and quickly earned a pair of Supporters’ Shields, the 2022 MLS Cup, and this year’s U.S. Open Cup. In 2024, they wanted things to be different. The Galaxy didn’t just want to rely on their history. They wanted to carry on a legacy.
And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
With the addition of Designated Player attackers Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil and continued brilliance from the club’s latest big-time star Riqui Puig, the Galaxy won 19 matches, only missing out on the top spot in the Western Conference on a tiebreaker. Between the performance on the field, the swagger off it, and even the throwback kits the team has sometimes sported, the 2024 Galaxy are looking more and more like the Galaxy of the increasingly distant past.
“The Galaxy truly are back,” longtime Southern California soccer announcer Mark Rogondino said as he closed the broadcast for LA Galaxy’s 5-0 victory over the Colorado Rapids in the first round of this year’s ongoing MLS playoffs.
Those are the words fans have been waiting a decade to hear – and actually believe.
When Will Kuntz arrived in April, 2023 as the Galaxy’s new senior vice president of player personnel, his new team reminded him quite a bit of a different type of sports organization.
Kuntz, who was quickly promoted to general manager upon his arrival from a front office role with LAFC, saw plenty of similarities between the LA Galaxy and the New York Yankees. Really, though, he’d long made the connection between the Galaxy and the legendary baseball team he’d helped return to glory with a 2009 World Series win while he was the director of pro scouting.
“There's so many similarities with the history, the support, and the passion of the fans, the aggressive vision of ownership, the expectations that were consistent,” he told Backheeled. “When I was working across town, you know, we were certainly grateful that the Galaxy weren't as great as they maybe could have been.
“But at the same time, I think there was an understanding that, you know, they were never too far away from being actually really great. They always had everything within their capacity to be great. Even when I came here, it's like, there's nothing needed to change here that is needed to make this team a real contender. Between the city, the club, the history, everything is here for it.”
