The Brazilians held their own carnival against Charlotte FC and led the LA Galaxy to their first win of the season.
The 3-0 celebration was made possible by an all-new-in-2026-defense-first-system that is starting to yield the results that Vanney is planning for.
Greg Vanney’s message to the locker room before the game against Charlotte FC on Saturday was to win the first 15 minutes.
That apparently struck a chord for compatriots Gabriel Pec and Joao Klauss, who went on to create three goals in thirteen minutes.
Klauss scored a brace and created enough general havoc to earn himself his second-consecutive LARS Man of the Match award, but Lucas Sanabria and Elijah Wynder seemed like the night’s biggest winners.
Young and Untested Duo
They started together for the first time since August 23rd, 2025 (another 3-0 win) and for just the third time since they both joined the Galaxy at the start of the 2025 season.
Sanabria and Wynder took the opportunity and ran with it. They filled the void in midfield from previous games with five passes into the final third, six tackles, and seven ball recoveries between the two of them. Their control and forward passing was the foundation that allowed the Galaxy to negate threats to their goal while keeping Charlotte keeper Kristijan Kahlina busy all night long.
Their play on Saturday told fans to forget about the young and unestablished players that they saw last year and confirmed to Greg Vanney that they are ready to join Edwin Cerillo and Marco Reus in dominating the midfield.
Last May, when Lucas Sanabria and Elijah Wynder were both receiving criticism for not immediately meeting expectations, I reminded readers that they were signed as investment pieces for the future, not as players who were expected to deliver right away.
Now that they’ve had time to find their place in the team, the pressure to deliver is on. Fortunately, they are showing that the Galaxy’s investment in them was a shrewd one.
The pay-off with Sanabria and Wynder is coming at a perfect time as Greg Vanney is making a massive u-turn on his team’s playstyle.
Defense Wins Championships
After the Galaxy beat Minnesota United 6-2 in the 2024 Western Conference Semifinal, Vanney told me that a coach has nothing to live and die on if not their principles. His principles since joining in 2021 has clearly been based on undoing opponents through possession and intricate passing, and Vanney has been (to the fatigue of many) steadfast in that idea.
Not counting on Riqui Puig for the second season in a row has finally pushed Vanney to turn away from his possession-heavy, attack-minded playstyle and towards one that focuses on defense first and trusts its talented forwards to score goals.
As Vanney so eloquently put it during the press conference after the 3-0 win against Charlotte, “I’m not worried about this team’s ability to score goals, we’re going to score goals. What I love is we’re not giving up goals. Team that gave up 66 goals last year. I don’t give a shit whether we’re scoring a ton of goals right now or not. What I care about is we’re defending as a group and we’re giving them nothing…
The LA Galaxy in fact did match their worst ever record for goals conceded and played themselves out of a playoff spot in 2025 by trying and failing to score more than they conceded, just like they did in 2024 with Riqui Puig. That did not work.
Instead Vanney is looking to secure results by building a team that tries to concede less than their attackers score.
New toys Jakob Glesnes and Justin Haak join the newly improved Lucas Sanabria and Elijah Wynder and the rest of the spine that the club retained Novak Micovic’s job a boring one (which he told me he doesn’t mind).
They also end up making Joseph Paintsil, Joao Klauss, and Gabriel Pec’s jobs easier by removing the pressure to come up with three goals to outscore a leaky defense every night.
Gabriel Pec especially looked to be playing like someone who had the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. Instead of hesitating and having every shot blocked, Pec was lightning fast and decisive, immediately creating the Galaxy’s first two goals within 11 minutes.
The first goal from Lucas Sanabria was enough to secure the three points, the second was a great moment of jogo bonito between the brilliant Brazilians, and the third goal was pure striker’s greed. If the Galaxy can continue to keep clean sheets and scoring from one of their many attacking threats they will look likely to win every game
It is extremely early and consistency is the key metric to look out for moving forward, but it does seem that Greg Vanney finally made the big call of completely changing his team’s identity and it will almost immediately pay off.
PHOTO: Kelvin Kuo-Imagn Images
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