LA Galaxy bounced out of Leagues Cup with late Vancouver goals

For quite a while on Sunday night, It looked like Riqui Puig's 16th-minute opening goal would hold up and allow the LA Galaxy to move into the knockout rounds of the 2023 Leagues Cup tournament. 

But two late goals from the Vancouver Whitecaps — an 81st-minute Ryan Gauld free kick ruled to glance off Calegari to equalize, and a stoppage-time winner from Brian White — sent the Galaxy to an early exit from the two-nation tournament, while Vancouver will play Liga MX powers Tigres in the Round of 32 later this week to continue their Leagues Cup journey. 

It was a match in which the Galaxy had much more of the ball than their Canadian counterparts, winning the possession battle with 61.5 of the ball and outshooting the 'Caps 16-10 and outpassing them by a 627-382 margin. But it's also a match in which striker Dejan Joveljic got five shots off but couldn't convert — he still hasn't scored for LA since May 14. 

"It’s extremely frustrating," head coach Greg Vanney said after the match. "I felt like this was a microcosm of some of the games at the start of the season. Again, it’s not necessarily that we had a lot of shots on target, per say. We missed target. We’re around the area. We get things blocked. We’re just not clinical in the final action. And, you know, when you don’t do that with teams that you are, I believe, dominating through large stretches of the game, they hover, they hang around. You can put them away and the game is done. Their spirit is broken. You can see it out.

"But because they kept hanging around at 1-0, there wasn’t a broken spirit," he added. "They were always just kind of around. In the moments where it seemed like we were dominating, they were still hanging around because we couldn’t put them away. That’s just, for me, it’s execution. We have to execute. I’m not a big believer in luck when it comes to playing." 

After the match, Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini remarked, "At the end I think we deserved to tie. The win is a steal," and Vanney's comments indicated he agreed. 

Vanney expressed that he felt the team was largely in control for most of the game, but the game state created questions around how he might sub late. "I was preparing a potential third center back sub, just because I felt like maybe it wasn’t our day to get a goal. And we needed to see it out. As that player was warming up, we gave up one. And then the questions are… with what’s left, can you still go to the third? Or do you keep the group on the field and still try to prevent yourself from getting into a shootout?" 

In the end, Vanney opted for bringing on Efrain Alvarez and Kelvin Leerdam for Daniel Aguirre and Uri Rosell respectively, the latter playing in place of an injured Gaston Brugman. 

"For large stretches of the game, I thought he was solid," Vanney said of Rosell. "I think he hasn’t played a ton of 90 minutes games over the course of the season, so I do think he was getting a little bit fatigued over the course of it all. And also, there’s times where numbers, Riqui [Puig] or Douglas [Costa] drop down to those positions and guys are trying to clear space, so then our pivot goes running forward. And, it doesn’t hurt us in the moment, and it also sometimes is good for us, but it does wear on a guy who hasn’t played a lot of games over the course of the season to be doing all of that extra running and work. And, I feel like the game just started to wear on him."

Replacing him with Leerdam at the end of the match reflected both that and where the match stood, with Vanney noting of Leerdam, "Kelvin [Leerdam] has done this job got us and does it for his national team. He is one of the guys we would put out there to shoot. We really wanted to see the final couple of minutes out, and we didn’t." 

It's possible, with the summer transfer window and the Galaxy's transfer ban woes ending Wednesday, that the Galaxy will get to use the time to integrate a new center back into the mix. The Athletic reported that Japanese international Maya Yoshida — a free agent, and therefore eligible to sign for the Galaxy once the summer transfer window closes — will sign with the club later this week to help shore up the injury-riddled back line. That might not solve all the Galaxy's woes, but it's a good gambit to make as the Galaxy now get to focus on climbing out of the hole it's in to vie for the playoffs.