Poor decision-making from Galaxy leadership, including the de-prioritization of the Latin community and unconvincing roster decisions, sees the LA Galaxy in dire straits.
A woeful performance in a 2-0 loss to Colorado Rapids and a delayed attempt to save face following the passing of a team icon solidifies that the team’s issues have spread from the top down.
Anyone with even a minor interest in the LA Galaxy knows that it’s been an awful year on the pitch.
One win and just eight points in 19 games is a historic low for the club and the worst title defense of any reigning MLS champion.
The league as a whole seems to have noticed how rough of a season it’s been, with no Galaxy players earning a spot on the 2025 MLS All-Star roster for the first time in franchise history, an unsurprising yet at the same time astonishing reflection of the performance from this year’s players.
Millionaires Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec have each had some of the worst seasons of their careers (an admittedly harsh assessment of Pec in the context of his young career) while topping the Galaxy’s wage bill. This year, they’re earning $4,182,000 and $2,459,000, respectively. They’re only surpassed by Riqui Puig, who is earning $5,779,688 in 2025 while recovering from tearing his ACL in the 2024 Western Conference Final.
There’s nothing the Galaxy could have done to prevent Puig’s injury and potentially little they could have done in order to avoid the knock-on effect it’s had on Paintsil and Pec’s confidence this season, but the fact remains that they have paid $1,774,384 for each of the seven goal contributions their designated players have produced in 2025.
There have also been missteps on the defensive end. Spurred on by the reduction of cap space from winning the MLS Cup, the team had to part ways with homegrown talent Jalen Neal and offer captain and 2024 minutes leader Maya Yoshida a significant pay cut.
Jalen Neal made $178,625 in 2024, but the Galaxy saved on a raise for the Lakewood native by shipping him to Montreal. His captain, Maya Yoshida, earned $839,334 in 2024 but accepted a salary cut to $526,281 in 2025 as he decided to prioritize stability for his family over immediate financial gain.
With all of these savings, the LA Galaxy went on to sign Methias “Zanka” Jørgensen for the 2025 season. He will earn $600,000 while costing the Galaxy goals and points with mistakes. It feels as if the savings earned by cutting one of the team’s own and asking the cup-winning captain to play for less weren’t wisely reinvested and may have been better spent on Neal and Yoshida themselves.
Deciding whether or not bringing Zanka to LA was worth the cost is purely speculative without a look into an alternate universe, but what’s true in our reality is that the LA Galaxy have made a habit of shunning their Latin fanbase.
It’s difficult to say when this trend started, as the Galaxy’s Spanish website has been inactive for an unknown amount of time. This has more recently been coupled with the abandonment of the Spanish-language social media accounts, resulting in a complete lack of official Spanish coverage of the most storied and famous club in the United States.
There’s also been silence from the club regarding the ongoing situation with immigrants and ICE across the country. The LA Galaxy will not be releasing a statement regarding the illegal detainment of immigrants and the subsequent fear in the Latin community, despite being largely supported and staffed by immigrants and their descendants for its entire history.
Most recently, the club has been called out for failing to honor the passing of organization legend Rolando “Veloz” González, the Spanish broadcaster/match announcer since the club’s inception in 1996.
A statement was eventually released, but not until fans and bilingual soccer outlet Futboliando called the Galaxy out for ignoring the passing of a Latin legend who dedicated nearly 30 years to building a lasting bridge between the Spanish-speaking community and the LA Galaxy.
It seems the LA Galaxy is choosing to move on from the Latin community in Los Angeles, a dumbfounding decision considering that they make up the bulk of the team’s most die-hard supporters. They’ve chosen not to make themselves accessible to Spanish speakers by phasing out their Spanish coverage, remained silent in the face of their oppression in their own city, and only publicly paid their respects to their long-time link to the community when urged to by their own fans and called out by the media.
It’s been an appalling run on the pitch, but seeing the club make so many poor and saddening decisions in such a short window is downright painful and proof that the club continues to suffer from mismanagement.
The team has been building to make better sporting decisions by hiring a new sporting director and director of qualitative analysis. Still, it’s unfortunately too soon to see if these moves will be fruitful.
It’s not too soon to see how leadership has failed to prioritize its connection with one of, if not the, community that supports them most. Allowing the team’s Spanish coverage to disappear and failing to acknowledge the team’s apparent indifference to the passing of one of its best servants is an outright failure on the part of the communications department.
The LA Galaxy are failing at the offices, and that cancer has spread to the players.
Their performance in Colorado on Wednesday, June 25th, was one of their most embarrassing displays in a season full of embarrassments.
It is only June, and the LA Galaxy’s season is all but over.
The return of a diminutive Spanish magician might solve (or cover up) some problems on the pitch, but it’s clear that there must be a change higher up the chain of command if the LA Galaxy hope to become an organization worth feeling proud of again.
PHOTO: Ron Chenoy/Imagn Images
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