Riqui Puig’s Galaxy, MLS champion!

With Riqui Puig as a reference throughout the campaign and as a notable absence in the final due to a serious injury, LA Galaxythe most successful team in the history of the MLSrecovered his throne and glory this Saturday. The Los Angeles team won its sixth MLS Cup and its first since 2014, defeating the New York Red Bulls.

A Galaxy has had to wait an entire decade to reign again, whose jersey, throughout its splendid history, has been defended by stars such as David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Landon Donovan. Joseph Paintsil and Dejan Joveljic were the heroes with the goals in the final, but the dedications of their goals, both for a Puig dressed in a suit in the stands, perfectly reflected the weight that the former Barcelona player has in the Galaxy locker room.

At 25 years old, the playmaker had an outstanding regular season with 13 goals and 15 assists in 29 games. His extraordinary performance continued in the playoff with 4 goals and 3 assists in just four games with several very large scores: 5-0 and 1-4 against the Colorado Rapids, 6-2 against Minnesota United and 1-0 against Seattle Sounders.

However, in the Western final against Seattle The Catalan tore the cruciate ligament in his left kneea brutal blow to the Galaxy’s aspirations in the final and also a torpedo to the team’s morale just one week before the duel against the Red Bulls. Puig was not able to take the field this Saturday but from the sidelines, very smiling although he probably would have given anything to be able to play in the final, he followed the game very closely and encouraged his teammates until they won the title.

Something like this, uniting and organizing all the pieces of the Galaxy, has been done throughout the year: setting the pace, greasing the attack, finding the final pass. Puig arrived in the US in August 2022 but that Galaxy was still that of Mexican Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernández.

The impact of the exculé was immediately noticeable, but the Galaxy fell in the West semifinal in a vibrant match against their great rival: Los Angeles FC (LAFC). In 2023 the Galaxy experienced another season full of disappointments and did not even qualify for the postseason, but for this 2024 everyone in the Californian team, with Greg Vanney at the helm as coach, was clear that Puig was going to be the master pillar on which lift the entire structure.

This is how two explosive wingers landed in Los Angeles: the Brazilian Gabriel Pec and the aforementioned Joseph Paintsil. Both opened highways for Puig’s passes and Pec especially shone, receiving the award for best signing of the year in the MLS. The icing on the cake of a devastating offensive came from Joveljic as a striker. With all this, the Galaxy was the highest scoring team in the West (69 goals) and only lost first place in its conference on the last day and, precisely again, against LAFC.

It has not been easy for the Galaxy to live with the fantastic rise of their neighbors, who with the Mexican Carlos Vela as a star won the MLS Cup in 2022 and were finalists in 2023. It has not been a bed of roses this year either since, although the The attack was an overwhelming machine, the defense showed its fragility throughout the course despite the notable efforts of the veteran Japanese center back Maya Yoshida.

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But in a playoff full of surprises and after the failures of titans like Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami, Puig and company fulfilled their mission and returned glory to the Galaxy.