CARSON – This flipped script would get rejected out of hand.
Because it’s preposterous. No one would believe it.
Not just improbable, but “highly improbable” as Moises Galvan, one of this beguiling plot’s passionate fans, put it Saturday. He was about to watch his Galaxy grind out a 1-0 victory over the Seattle Sounders to put themselves back in the MLS Cup final for the first time in a decade.
There’s the old worst-to-first trope – but this? From an emotionally fraught, unmitigated disaster to joy and delirium and a championship match in the span of one season? In the blink of an eye? Even the “Ted Lasso” screenwriters couldn’t bring themselves to save Richmond from relegation in the show’s first season.
To ask people to buy the Galaxy’s unreal pivot, from a forgettable 8-12-14 to 19-8-7 and an exhilarating playoff run? Not likely – except, perhaps, in the year of “Not Like Us.”
Silly, to expect there would be long lines snaking all around Dignity Health Sports Park well before the gates opened Saturday the season immediately after scores of them would show up there and refuse – for the love of the Galaxy! – to go in? Like “hermit crabs,” Galvan said, the club’s fans were always there, beneath the surface if not in the seats.
Another sell-out crowd – 26,327 on Saturday – did its part to help the Galaxy remain unbeaten in Carson this season, the stadium having transformed into an impenetrable fortress one year after the Galaxy went 6-6-5 at home. And, now, for a final flourish, that the Galaxy get to host the championship at 1 p.m. Saturday against the New York Red Bulls!? Like, c’monnn.
“It’s like getting all F’s to getting all A’s,” said Galvan, 29, from Fontana. “Like, you already know what your mom’s gonna tell you.”
Yeah, she’s gonna accuse you of cheating. Did AI write that paper? Who’d you bully into taking your math test for you? You steal the answer sheet?
“Uno Reverse,” Galvan said.
But that’s a card game. This is Major League Soccer. Professional sport, increasingly high-level serious competition against 28 other teams – and not nine other fledglings, like when the Galaxy burst onto the scene as one of league’s originals in 1996 and made their first MLS Cup appearance.
And for this to happen largely because of the will of the people, so many of them having stuck around since those days at the Rose Bowl? For them to have been heard, and for them to have been so right?
Doth protest perfectly. Go ahead, make a stink.
The Galaxy’s jitterbugging midfielder Riqui Puig was, as usual, on the mark when he posted on social media Friday: “Everyone in the stadium tomorrow is part of this team.”
A year ago, hundreds of those fans just couldn’t bring themselves to come inside and sit idly by and watch as their team faded, churning through coaches and losing more than it won, deprived of regular playoff appearances after having been a postseason mainstay for so long.
They couldn’t abide by president Chris Klein’s incongruous roster construction, by his misguided name-over-game approach, and definitely not by his being rewarded for it. Supporters were especially set off by the news that he was coming back for an 11th season even after the club was penalized for violating MLS salary rules.
They told this to me and anyone who would listen last year during pregame protests outside the stadium, with banners and chants and in so many words: “The Galaxy is everything, and I can’t wait to be back,” one supporter named Kevin said before a loss to the Sounders in April 2023. “But I am ready to sit out the season as well until we make the change.”
Turns out, the Galaxy were listening.
Will Kuntz was elevated to the club’s top front office decision-maker in December and signed Joseph Paintsil from the Belgian Pro League and Gabriel Pec from Brazil’s Série A as designated players, pairing them up top with Dejan Joveljić, who scored the match-winning goal Saturday night in the 85th minute and said afterward: “I said, ‘Just bring good, young, talented players around me and I’m gonna score a lot of goals.’”
Kuntz also brought aboard former LAFC John McCarthy, whose four saves preserved his side’s first shutout this postseason when the Galaxy – who’d scored an MLS-record 15 goals in their first three matches – needed it most.
And now here they are, playing for a sixth title. Finally. Already.
Who woulda thunk it?
Joveljić, actually: “I said it many times before the season, when we brought new players … from the first day, I knew that we have something special.”
And Ramon Hernandez. An ardent Galaxy fan since David Beckham was on the team from 2007-2012, he forced himself to sit out matches last season as a last, best recourse.
“I was optimistic all year long for this,” the 26-year-old from Fountain Valley said. “The fans really took control of their club … [Kuntz was] the right guy to bring in. Because AEG [the Anschutz Entertainment Group that operates the club], no matter how bad or good the team has been doing, they’ve been willing to spend money. We just needed someone to steer the ship the right way.”
Now it’s all lined up too perfectly: The Galaxy’s 10th MLS Cup appearance coming 10 years to the date of the Galaxy’s last MLS Cup victory, on Dec. 7, 2014. And, for the first time in 10 years, it’ll be two MLS founding clubs meeting in the final.
And it’s L.A. vs. New York, Part 2, one month after the Dodgers beat the Yankees for their eighth World Series title.
And you know, right, that there’s only one way this kind of fairy tale can end?
Happily ever after.