CARSON — The last few weeks have seemed like preseason for the Galaxy.
Major League Soccer paused its 2026 calendar in late May for the FIFA World Cup. The first set of regular-season games resumes next Thursday, with the Galaxy jumping back into action Friday against LAFC.
The Galaxy returned to training late last month.
“The first week wasn’t fun. It was just preseason, basically all over again,” Galaxy midfielder Elijah Wynder said Thursday. “On the track, no cleats the first day, but after that, the last couple of weeks, it’s been more like a season field to it.
“We’ve got certain sessions for certain things, building into the week. Wednesday was a hard day. Thursday was more tactical and building for the America game. It’s a friendly, but the LAFC game’s a big rivalry, so we’re going to it (Saturday) like it’s a real game and try to get the most out of it as we can.”
The road back to competition included a pair of closed-door scrimmages against Tijuana and the El Salvadoran national team, leading to Saturday’s friendly against Club America at Dignity Health Sports Park in front of 18,812. Joseph Paintsil scored in the first half and the Galaxy saw out the remainder of the game, securing a 1-0, hard-fought win.
“I’ve got to be honest, the week before you play in a derby, that’s not so bad to play a friendly that has a little bit of juice in it,” Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said. “As long as everybody gets out healthy, which is the case, then I feel like it was just a good exercise down the stretch.
“We talked about maybe changing a bunch of guys, but down the stretch it became an exercise of seeing it out and you can’t really duplicate that in a training session, so we just let the guys work through it.”
Club America is also in preparation for the start of its upcoming Apertura season in Liga MX.
The Galaxy are shorthanded upon their return with Gabriel Pec (Cruzeiro), Mauricio Cuevas (Santos Laguna) and Matheus Nascimento (Gremio) all departing. The transfer window opens Monday, allowing MLS teams to bring in new players.
“It’s not ideal to lose players that we’ve lost, but it’s part of the business, it’s part of the game,” Wynder said. “So we all have to adapt, move forward and control what we can control. We’re just focusing on ourselves right now and the rest will go in place.”
The challenge next week will be trying to stay healthy in training and get both JT Marcinkowski and Harbor Miller back into the flow, after both sat out Saturday’s game.
“Yeah, we’re light,” Vanney said. “But hopefully, as some of the guys who were precautionary (out) and some of the guys who were coming back, that will extend and hopefully we start to see some incoming bodies in the next few days and weeks.”