Soccer newsletter: LAFC and Galaxy prepare for a new MLS season

Hello, and welcome to the L.A. Times soccer newsletter. I’m Kevin Baxter, The Times’ soccer writer, and we start today with final preparations for the start of the MLS season, the league’s 26th, which kicks off Friday.

LAFC will open its fourth season Saturday when it hosts expansion club Austin FC — and a limited number of fans! — and the Galaxy begin their schedule Sunday in South Florida against David Beckham’s Inter Miami.

The L.A. teams are coming off very different 2020 seasons. LAFC had a player win the league goal-scoring title for a second consecutive season, with Diego Rossi following Carlos Vela, and the team qualified for a third consecutive playoff appearance. The Galaxy, on the other hand, missed the postseason for the third time in four years. That cost coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto his job, making him the team’s third manager sacked since the summer of 2017.

The rivals have prepared for the new season in different ways as well. LAFC has focused on training and has played just three games against MLS opposition: two draws against the New England Revolution and a 4-4 tie with the Galaxy at Banc of California Stadium. LAFC also has conducted a couple of intrasquad scrimmages.

Nonetheless, the online betting site OddsChecker has LAFC the heavy favorite to win the MLS Cup at +500. The reigning champion Columbus Crew (+900) are second ahead of the Seattle Sounders (+1,000), last year’s runners-up.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy, whom OddsChecker put at +5,000, played early and often this preseason with seven exhibition games against MLS competition and two against the San Diego Loyal, a USL Championship team. Greg Vanney’s team went 3-2-4 and closed its preseason schedule in the Visit Tucson Sun Cup in Arizona by playing three times in eight days — a trying schedule it will repeat multiple times in the regular season.

“You’re never where you want to be,” LAFC coach Bob Bradley said after his team closed its preseason schedule with a 3-3 draw against the Revolution on Saturday. “It’s impossible to start with just a couple of training matches and think that you’re already at the level you want to be at when the team comes together. There are things that we are looking at all around the field.”

Saturday’s game wasn’t only a rehearsal for the players, though. LAFC opened its stadium to 700 essential workers to thank them for their devotion to duty on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were the first spectators allowed in Banc of California in more than 13 months, and their presence allowed the team to test procedures for the regular-season opener, when a limited number of socially distanced season-ticket holders will be allowed in.

“It felt good,” midfielder Latif Blessing said of the return of a live crowd. “We’re very happy to have them back here.”

As for the coming season, Blessing said the team is prepared but still must get everyone on the same page defensively.

“I think last year we weren’t in the right mindset yet,” he said. “This year, we’re ready to go. We need to work a little bit on our mistakes. This year, we won’t be giving [up] as many goals as last year. We’re ready to better our defense.”

That last part hasn’t been borne out by the preseason. In 2020, LAFC allowed a franchise-record 1.77 goals per game, and it gave up nearly twice as many in its three preseason draws. The team is counting on South Korean international Kim Moon-hwan to help solidify the back line, but Kim has been slowed by a knee problem and probably will miss the opener.

“There still are a few too many moments where we are a little bit careless, a little bit treating plays without the necessary understanding of the situation,” Bradley said. “We’ve gotten ourselves into trouble in some of these situations, and that is a really important thing to make sure everybody is on board with as we start next week versus Austin.”

Offensively, the team hasn’t missed a beat, with Rossi and Vela accounting for three of LAFC’s final four preseason scores.

For the Galaxy, it isn’t so much a case of getting everyone on the same page as it is getting everyone on the same field.

“We keep adding new guys, and they’re still trying to get full fitness underneath them,” Vanney said. “We’re growing together. You can see that, and that’s the progress we want to see right now.”

“I continue to learn a little bit about each guy, their nuances and their approach within the game,” he continued. “The more I see them play, the more I get to understand them, but the more they get to understand each other as well. We’re getting connected between what I’m asking them to do and what they’re doing on the field.”

The team’s biggest offseason signing, French forward Kevin Cabral, isn’t expected to arrive in Southern California until next week and will miss the opener. Midfielder Víctor Vázquez and winger Samuel Grandsir only recently arrived in camp. Both players, however, started in the final preseason game — with Vázquez scoring the team’s only goal — and are likely to see action against Inter Miami.

“Of course, I have to adapt to my team, my new teammates,” said Vázquez, who played under Vanney in Toronto. “But it’s pretty easy because we like to play with the ball. Everything is getting more smooth.

“It’s a new thing but we will get it. I think we are ready now. The mentality is good. If we have confidence and the group is playing together, we will succeed.”

Four key players — midfielders Sebastian Lletget, Jonathan dos Santos and Efraín Álvarez and defender Julian Araujo — missed a big chunk of the preseason to international duty while others, including defender Derrick Williams, have been nursing injuries. But the Galaxy are out of time for introductions because they start playing for keeps this weekend.

Vanney said they are up to the challenge.

“We’re as ready as we’re going to get,” he said. “If they want to give us more time, we’ll always take it. We’re still growing together as a group. We’re rebuilding this roster, and that’s still a work in progress. But you see a lot of positive things.”

Yeah, but will they get paid the same?

The Mexican national team has been playing in the U.S. regularly for more than three decades, and those annual tours have been so lucrative that the country’s soccer federation counts on them to fund all of its programs back home.

Now the federation is planning to expand its reach by organizing games for the women’s national team in the United States.

“We are pushing extremely hard our women’s program, and part of that boost is obviously playing international matches,” federation president Yon de Luisa said.

De Luisa believes there is a market for the Mexican team in the U.S. that goes beyond just the popularity of women’s soccer here. There’s also a domestic storyline because nine of the 21 players called up for Mexico’s two April friendlies were either born or have played extensively in the U.S.

“There’s a nice crowd that will not only cheer for Mexico as being Mexico but will also cheer for their local players,” he said.

Camilo Durana — senior vice president of properties and events at Soccer United Marketing, which has been arranging the U.S. tours for the Mexican men since 2003 — also believes there’s a cross-border appeal to the women’s team.

“It’ll probably be a slow build,” he said “but we think it’s a talented team. There’s a lot of Mexican Americans, many bilingual, bicultural [players]. There’s a lot of them that are active as spokespersons for really great causes.

“We think, No. 1, that that’s great for us as a property. I think our commercial partners would also be really excited about supporting the women’s game but also getting involved with some of the protagonists on the team that I think would really resonate with audiences in the U.S.”

Uneasy rests the (World Cup) crown

Winning the World Cup — or even reaching the final — isn’t the mark of a dynasty it used to be, something 2014 champion Germany is going to great pains to prove.

Of the 13 World Cup titles won between 1958 and 2006, Brazil claimed five and Argentina, West Germany and Italy won two each, accounting for 11 of the 13 champions. Of the 26 finalists in those 13 tournaments, only three countries made just one appearance: England, Sweden and Czechoslovakia. Brazil and Germany, on the other hand, made the final six times each. Brazil did it three times in a row between 1994 and 2002; West Germany played in four out of five between 1974 and 1990; and Argentina played in three of four between 1978 and 1990.

Surviving deep into a World Cup once meant you would be back again.

So why is that relevant now? Well, with Germany’s recent implosion, which has led Joachim Loew to announce he will step down as manager after this summer’s European Championships, the World Cup has had just one repeat finalist since 2006 — and no repeat winners.

Italy won in 2006 but failed to get out of the group stage in the next two tournaments. It didn’t qualify at all in 2018. Spain was champion in 2010 but won just two matches in the last two World Cups combined and never went beyond the round of 16. Only France, the 2018 champion and 2006 runner-up, has made the final twice in the last four tournaments.

As for why that is, there likely are several culprits. Spain won two European Championships and its first World Cup in a five-year period after reinventing the tiki-taka style, but the real secret to its success might have been the fact nine of the 11 starters came off just two clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

When coach Vicente del Bosque and many of the same players returned to the World Cup in 2014, however, the core of the team had aged and the world had figured how to defend the tiki-taka in holding Spain to a goal in its two group-play losses. Del Bosque stepped down after eight years in charge when Spain was eliminated in the knockout round of the 2016 Euros, just the second time in 24 years it had failed to reach the quarterfinals.

Germany’s fall arguably has been steeper. After an unbeaten run to the title in 2014 — the fourth consecutive World Cup in which it reached the semifinals — Germany was eliminated in the group stage in Russia, the worst performance by a German team in tournament history. More recently, it has lost two of its last four games in spectacular fashion, falling 6-0 to Spain in Nations League play in November and 2-1 to North Macedonia in a home World Cup qualifier last week.

The loss to Spain was the most one-sided in Loew’s 15 years as Germany’s manager, and the six goals conceded were two more than Germany gave up in seven matches in its run to its most recent World Cup championship. The loss to North Macedonia came against a team ranked 65th in the world, between Montenegro and Albania.

Like many recent champions, Germany got old fast. Ten of the 23 players Loew took to Russia also played on the title-winning team in Brazil. They just didn’t play as well. Then after the tournament, Loew retired Thomas Mueller (age 31), Mats Hummels (32) and Jerome Boateng (32), only to see their replacements punish him with costly mistakes.

Loew, like Del Bosque before him, probably has stayed around too long. He is the longest-tenured manager in international soccer. Plus he rushed too late to rejuvenate a roster that now begs for depth and experience, with 13 of the 23 players called up for last month’s World Cup qualifiers holding 13 or fewer international caps.

France might be well-positioned to buck the trend and make another deep run next year in Qatar. Eight of the 14 players France used in the World Cup final victory over Croatia were younger than 26, including goal\ scorers Kylian Mbappe and Paul Pogba. And the team has lost just three times in 28 matches since that final.

To avoid Germany’s fate, expect France to begin an overhaul of its own after Qatar. When Loew steps down, Didier Deschamps will become the longest-tenured manager of a major European national team with more than nine years on the job. And we know how that has turned out in the past.

And finally there’s this …

A federal judge approved a partial deal between women’s national team players and the U.S. Soccer Federation over unequal working conditions. U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner on Monday approved a Dec. 1 settlement that calls for charter flights, hotel accommodations, venue selection and professional staff support equitable to that of the men’s national team. Players sued the USSF in March 2019 and contended they have not been paid equitably under their collective bargaining agreement that runs through December 2021. Klausner dismissed the pay claim last May, but his approval of Monday’s settlement allows the players to ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn his decision on unequal pay. … D.C. United has hired Lucy Rushton as general manager, the Washington Post’s Steve Goff and others reported Monday, making her MLS’s highest-ranking woman in charge of player personnel. Rushton’s hiring comes five months after the Miami Marlins made Kim Ng the first female general manager in Major League Baseball history. Rushton has been Atlanta’s head of video and technical analysis. … UCLA clinched its first Pac-12 women’s soccer title since 2014 this past weekend. The Bruins (12-1-1, 9-1) dethroned Stanford, which had won the five previous Pac-12 titles. UCLA finishes the regular season against USC on Friday, then awaits the NCAA tournament draw.

Podcast

Don’t miss my weekly podcast on the Corner of the Galaxy site as co-host Josh Guesman and I discuss the Galaxy each Monday. You can listen to the most recent podcast here.

Quotebook

“If we play the way we played today, it’s not good enough. And I know that. But again, it’s just a good learning opportunity for us to get better.”

Vlatko Andonovski, manager of the U.S. women’s team, on how his team’s draw with Sweden last week will help prepare the players for this summer’s Tokyo Olympics.