Swanson: On any given Sunday in MLS, a champion can lose to an expansion team

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Galaxy midfielder Riqui Puig places the 2024 MLS Championship Cup during a presentation prior to the start of an MLS soccer match against the San Diego FC at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, Calif. on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025. San Diego FC won 2-0. (Photo by Raul Romero Jr., Contributing Photographer)

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CARSON – That sound that echoed through Dignity Health Stadium on Sunday night, spoiling the Galaxy supporters groups’ familiar songs and chants?

That was an alarm clock going off. And who doesn’t hate that sound?

After hitting the snooze button all throughout a ho-hum preseason, the Galaxy were forced to wake up and face a new day, a new season, reality. It might have been Sunday Night Soccer on Apple TV, but the Galaxy played as if they had a bad case of the Mondays, having to go back to work, back to the drawing board, their 2024 dream season really and truly over.

Add a fourth P to the “Killer Ps” – Puig, Pec, Paintsill – who wrought so much damage last season for the Galaxy: Parity.

The thing the MLS prides itself on.

Where on any given day, any team can win. Where, on this given Sunday, the expansion team beat the defending champs: San Diego FC 2, LA Galaxy 0. New Kids On The Block > OGz.

Where the team that spoiled its fans with a record 18 goals en route to its league-record-extending sixth MLS Cup last December can have its celebratory season-opener and last season’s unbeaten-at-home record spoiled on Day 1, by a team playing Game 1.

Where an afternoon can start with a trophy relay, fireworks and a banner ceremony and end with fans streaming for the exits, well before the final whistle’s blown.

Exactly how Major League Soccer likes it, I guess.

If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have been able to guess which was the new team and which was the defending champion.

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Because the defending champs entered Sunday’s match without pace-pushing forward Joseph Paintsill (quad) and havoc-causing, hell-raising heart-of-the-matter midfielder Riqui Puig (ACL), who will be out for weeks and months, respectively.

The Galaxy also traded Dejan Joveljić (21 goals in 2024) to Sporting Kansas City for necessary salary cap relief, benched goalkeeper John McCarthy in favor of the younger Novak Micovic (whose pair of impressive saves Sunday were overshadowed by a critical mistake that led to Anders Dreyer’s goal in the 52nd minute) and insulted veteran defender Maya Yoshida, whose reward for captaining the Galaxy to the title was a pay cut (salary cap relief strikes again!)

That left Gabriel Pec as the Galaxy’s only returning prolific scorer and thus the focal point of San Diego’s defense, which bottled him up, limiting the 24-year-old Brazilian forward to just one shot on target.

The vibes, so immaculate and unimpeachable last season, morphed into frustration Sunday.

The good and bad news: There’s a long season ahead, and so, so much work to do – all with the added benefit of having the defending champion’s target on their backs, a burden felt even by players who weren’t a part of the trophy-raising last season.

Like Christian Ramirez, the striker form Garden Grove who made his Galaxy debut Sunday, finishing without a shot in 63 minutes: “It becomes a championship game for teams to prove themselves against us.”

Or against what’s left of them.

Still, Yoshida said: “We should have done better. Today is totally lost, defeat … after the game, they are celebrating like [they won] a cup final. We have to be ready for this.”

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And Coach Greg Vanney called his new-look team’s performance out of sync in every sense: “disconnected,” “disjointed,” “we weren’t very dynamic.”

“We didn’t look like a team that just won the championship,” he said. “We looked like a team that was fitting some things together still.”

Understandable, no?

But losing at home? No good.

“Thats what I said in the locker room: ‘This can’t happen,’” said Vanney, whose club’s last loss in Carson came on Oct. 21, 2023. “‘This is where we get points, this is where we win. We don’t lose at home.’

“Is it a rallying cry?” he asked. “It’s a wake-up call.”

Rise and try to shine, Galaxy. You’ll always have last season, but now it’s time to get up and get back to work.