We're pondering the plight of the LA Galaxy today, but first, PERSONAL PROMOTION.

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Hey guess what! The Galaxy lost again. Don't worry about the details. They hardly matter at this point.

That makes 16 Major League Soccer matches in 2025 for the defending league champions without the scoreline showing more goals for them than for the other guys when the referee's final whistle blew.

16! That's a lot. Almost half the season! Unless Greg Vanney's team goes on a heater unlike almost any we've ever seen before in the 30 year history of MLS, it doesn't seem likely they'll be defending their crown come October. Am I saying it's impossible for a team in MLS to go 16 games without a win and then suddenly hit a switch and scrape together enough points to squeak into the playoffs? Of course not, MLS is bat shit insane enough that something like that could happen.

I am saying the Galaxy stink and don't have it in them.

This is a lost campaign for a very proud club that looked for all the world like it was rejoining the MLS elite after last year's run to the title. Injuries, MLS roster rules, and more than one team's share of bad luck undid all of that. If the Galaxy are going to be a powerhouse again, they'll have to reestablish their credentials starting in 2026.

Since I'm for anything that might pressure MLS into breaking apart the ridiculous rules governing spending, I'm here for all of the words spilled on how this Galaxy season is a direct indictment of how the league restricts its clubs ability to sign players. Parity to the point of embarrassment for your reigning league champion doesn't help MLS sell its product. MLS will always struggle to make sense to certain groups of potential fans (Euro-focused, casual American sports fans, et al), but here we have direct evidence of the problems the league's firm grip on financials creates.

"Anyone can win" is exciting until it feels unfair.

The built-in excuses, and the lack of a certain kind of consequence have also brought the issue of promotion and relegation into the narrative around the Galaxy.

"If MLS had pro/rel..." the thinking goes, "Greg Vanney would have been fired instead of getting a contract extension."

There are lots of reasons to want promotion and relegation to come to America and to involve our biggest, most successful league. Wanting coaches to get fired less than a year after winning a championship because it scratches some weird fetish about "accountability" is an odd one. There's a sadism that some (not all) pro/rel advocates engage in that I've never quite understood.

Vanney is a good coach who, from my reckoning, is getting screwed by rules and circumstance. It's hard to see how firing him would make the Galaxy better. Vanney didn't go from good enough to lead two different teams to MLS Cup titles to a terrible soccer coach in a matter of months.

But there is an issue of messaging around Vanney's extension that I find really interesting. The Galaxy didn't have to extend Vanney at all, though the reports suggest the club and the coach have been working out the details of the extension since the winter. Back then, locking Vanney down made sense. No one could have predicted the horrific start to the year that followed and as I laid out above, Vanney didn't go stupid between then and now. At the very least, he should keep his job.

Two things can be true: That the Galaxy made the right choice to give their MLS Cup-winning head coach a new contract, especially in a league where finding the right coach has proven to be increasingly more difficult as years pass and that it's a hard sell for fans of the Galaxy and critics of MLS that a coach overseeing one of the worst starts in league history got a new deal.

I might not be entirely on board with the idea that coaches getting fired at the first sign of trouble is a good thing but I do want the MLS regular season to mean more. Any playoff format is going to push greater meaning to games later in the schedule, but a smaller field than Major League Soccer's bloated nine-team-per-conference setup would make the front end of the calendar more important.

That would probably mean more coaches getting fired because the "waiting period" before the possibility of the playoffs slipping away would be shorter. Vanney would probably still be protected from dismissal because of his success last year (and the rules building in those excuses) and it wouldn't be the same as if LA was threatened by relegation, but it would be better.

It's probably also true that if MLS mattered more, the Galaxy might have felt pressured to delay Vanney's extension. In a world where sportstalk radio phone lines are lighting up with fans bitching about the state of the team and calling for Vanney's head, the Galaxy could even have to face the idea of dismissing him if things don't get better very soon.

If we want American soccer to be like all of our other major sports, then there's something to lament in the fact that the club is facing only the slightest bit of pressure from a fanbase still reveling in last year's triumph.

In a different type of soccer league, even in the absence of relegation, a club with a history of success and ambitious couldn't stomach even one year like this. Heads might roll if it wasn't for Major League Soccer's financial governors make it so difficult to built anything approaching what the elite clubs of Europe enjoy.

My brain is telling me that there's probably a Manchester United parallel here somewhere, but frankly, I don't have the energy to crack that open.

The Galaxy is probably making the smart move. 2025 is a lost year with only the ultimate height of the failure still to be determined. With Riqui Puig back on the field by the end of the campaign and with an offseason for general manager Will Kuntz to remake the roster, we should expect the Galaxy to be competent, and perhaps competitive, against in 2026.

Still, it doesn't not make me a little queasy.