You can tell MLS has been around a while because on Saturday it held a nostalgia-soaked tribute event featuring two classic clubs.
The Los Angeles Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls? What is this, 2014? It seemed that way as Dejan Joveljić scored what proved to be the goal that won MLS Cup and celebrated with a wobbly Robbie: an unsteady homage to the cartwheeling Galaxy legend Robbie Keane. The Irish striker scored the decisive goal against the New England Revolution 10 years ago, the last time the Galaxy reached the final.
The 2010s were the decade of Keane, David Beckham and Landon Donovan leading the Galaxy to back-to-back championships while New York won the Eastern Conference five times and the Supporters’ Shield on three occasions yet never made it to MLS Cup. Not with Thierry Henry. Or Bradley Wright-Phillips. Nor with Tim Cahill or Juan Pablo Ángel. Rafael Márquez? Fuggedaboudit.
Yet here they were, propelled by the lesser-heralded Emil Forsberg and Lewis Morgan: another MLS original franchise but appearing in only their second final, having lost to the Columbus Crew in the same stadium in 2008. When MLS was born in 1996, they were the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, the league had 10 teams, draws meant 35-yard shootouts and only two clubs did not qualify for the playoffs.
In 2025 the league expands to 30 clubs in its 30th season but some problems are eternal: the outlier summer schedule, low TV ratings, its biggest names liable to be in the sunset of their careers.
At least the wider context is far different today. A calendar realignment could come in 2026 as the US co-hosts the World Cup, the league is fretting about audiences while luxuriating in an innovative 10-year, $2.5bn streaming deal, and if attracting declining veterans means signing Lionel Messi, then bring it on.
The playoffs, though, are still preposterous: rendering the regular season near-irrelevant by qualifying 18 teams in a 47-day marathon with different formats in different rounds and a momentum-killing two-week break in the middle. In the old days, before hugely popular clubs such as Atlanta United and the Seattle Sounders joined and redefined the league’s power bases, MLS executives would have welcomed a climax between clubs in the nation’s two biggest media markets.
This time they were victims of the inherently unpredictable nature of knockout soccer, with Most Valuable Product Messi’s brilliant Inter Miami shockingly ousted in the first round by Atlanta, who qualified despite finishing ninth in the Eastern Conference in the regular season. Terrible news for the narrative. New York, meanwhile, profited from the distended format. Seventh in the East, they won three of their last 18 regular-season games but regrouped to dispose of the reigning champions, Columbus, in round one.
A gameplan centred on set-pieces and stubbornness, opportunism and organisation, was ultimately not enough to overcome the free-scoring Galaxy in their home stadium, however. More assured in possession and more dynamic in attack, LA were two goals up after 13 minutes. The Red Bulls pluckily regrouped to avoid a rout and after pulling one back through Sean Nealis they had chances to equalise in the second half despite their manifest inferiority.
But the final whistle brought confirmation of a stunning turnaround under head coach Greg Vanney, a former Galaxy player at the dawn of the league who managed Toronto FC to MLS Cup in 2017. Only last year the Galaxy finished 26th in the overall standings amid supporter boycotts. Like the Red Bulls – overshadowed by New York City FC, who began MLS play in 2015 and won MLS Cup six years later – they were not even the loudest noise in their own city.
Los Angeles FC – MLS newcomers in 2018, champions in 2022 and runners-up in 2023, and with famous owners – became a trendier option for fading Euro-stars seeking the Hollywood lifestyle. Before Saturday the Galaxy hadn’t returned to the final for a decade and had only made the playoffs four times. They looked like an increasingly irrelevant legacy brand, marginalised by their own failings and the emergence of more agile competitors. This was the first final between two MLS founding members since 2014.
A disillusioned fanbase wanted victories more than celebrities. Vanney and general manager Will Kuntz – hired, notably, from LAFC – rebuilt the squad in the offseason, moving away from the old strategy of acquiring highly paid big names such as Steven Gerrard, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Javier Hernández and attempting to mould a more functional unit with astute signings such as the Ghanaian winger Joseph Paintsil and the Brazilian winger Gabriel Pec: lesser-known players in their mid-20s with plenty of upside who made crucial contributions this season. (Still, they didn’t pass up the opportunity in August to acquire the 35-year-old former Germany midfielder Marco Reus, who came off the bench against the Red Bulls.)
New York are also operating in a more strategic and less ostentatious fashion rather than pursuing the galácticos approach. They reached the postseason for the 15th successive year, while only one player in the starting lineup at Dignity Health Sports Park was over 30 and five were local youth products.
There was little to reproach beyond the choreography of the celebrations as the Galaxy won their MLS-best sixth championship, two ahead of DC United. Before Joveljić’s messy moves, opening goalscorer Paintsil frantically gestured for a replica shirt bearing the name and number of Riqui Puig as delivery took longer than planned. Still, it was a touching tribute: the effervescent Spanish playmaker was condemned to watch from the stands in a dapper suit having torn his ACL in the Western Conference final against Seattle, though he somehow carried on and provided the game-winning assist.
That Puig’s replacement on Saturday, Gastón Brugman, threaded a perfect pass to set up Paintsil’s goal and was named man of the match underlined the value of Vanney’s emphasis on squad depth.
Talent-wise Puig is a worthy heir to Keane and Donovan, both of whom were present on Saturday as special guests, adding to the retro feel. Another VIP was 84-year-old Philip Anschutz, the conservative Republican-backing billionaire who co-founded MLS, kept it afloat in its troubled youth and, through his AEG behemoth, ran six teams simultaneously, including New York. Now he owns just the one: the Galaxy. During the post-match ceremony he thanked “all the fans who continued to have faith in the Galaxy” as the players hoisted a hefty piece of silverware named the Philip F Anschutz Trophy.
“This is kind of the stamp that we’re back,” Vanney told reporters. The season, he said, indicated “that we’re back as an organisation … the quality is there”. Saturday’s victory was “to prove that we’re back as champions and we’re on top again,” he added. “At the Galaxy, it’s about winning championships.”
Party like it’s 2014, prepare like it’s 2024. And, perhaps, prosper in 2025 and beyond with a smarter, more sustainable strategy.
