MLS Cup 2024: How Los Angeles Galaxy advanced to MLS final against New York Red Bulls

But how did they get to this season’s title game? 

Here’s the story of the Los Angeles Galaxy, the champions of the Western Conference.

A franchise-dooming run of form

2023 was a rough season for the Galaxy, who won just eight games and failed to qualify for the playoffs for the fifth time in seven seasons — an unacceptable record for the winningest team in MLS history. 

Fans turned their ire toward Chris Klein, the Galaxy’s long-standing president. His 10 years in charge of the club coincided with its precipitous drop in competitiveness. 

“It’s been a slow trickle and slow decay of our front office for 10 years,” Manny Martinez, the president of leading Galaxy fan group the Outlawz, said in February 2023, per Jeff Carlisle of ESPN. “The lack of transparency, the lack of accountability, it all adds up to: How can we keep going like this?”

The Outlawz joined forced with other Galaxy supporters and refused to attend Galaxy matches until Klein was ousted. At first, their protest was met with disdain. 

“There’s things out there that fans and supporters can impact, and there’s things that they’re probably not going to impact,” Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said at the time, per ESPN. “And so then it just becomes a distraction, because it’s not going to change anything.”

Vanney was wrong. 

In a major victory for fan groups everywhere, the Galaxy fired Klein after several months of protests. The club brought in a new leadership team and spent the offseason hunting for talented new players. By the time the Galaxy returned in 2024, the team looked reborn.

The Killa Ps (and Joveljic)

The Galaxy’s 2024 return to form was spearheaded by attackers Joseph Paintsil of Ghana, Riqui Puig of Spain and Gabriel Pec of Brazil, who are known as the Killa P’s. The three combined for a 39 goals and 39 assists during the regular season.

But as the legend of the Killa P’s grew, a new Galaxy attacker — Serbia’s Dejan Joveljic — was waiting in the wings. He didn’t receive the same media attention as his attacking counterparts, but his 15 goals and six assists put him in the upper echelon of MLS forwards this season.

The Killa P’s and Joveljic defined this new Galaxy team’s style: an all-or-nothing, attack-minded assault. The Galaxy conceded plenty of goals in 2024 (50, 16th in the league) but made up for it by outscoring everyone except Inter Miami and Columbus. 

In four games in the postseason, the Galaxy have a whopping 16 goals to three against.

The Red Bulls are the Galaxy’s stylistic opposite. While Los Angeles is free-flowing and seemingly always pressing forward; the Red Bulls are sturdy, organized and designed to score on the counter. When the teams met in a preseason friendly in February, the Galaxy won  2-0.

But this Galaxy isn’t the same as that Galaxy. This Galaxy is missing its star playmaker, Riqui Puig, who suffered a torn ACL in the Western Conference final and is done for the season. Puig was omnipresent for the Galaxy in 2024. Will the team be able to press forward without him?

Win or lose, the Galaxy can rest easy. Its fan-driven efforts revived the club and brought it to the precipice of its record-setting sixth MLS Cup.

The Galaxy will host the New York Red Bulls in the MLS Cup final on Saturday at 4 p.m. ET at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.