Before joining the galaxy two years ago, Christian Ramírez I spent two seasons with the crew of Columbus, winning an MLS Cup a year, then not getting out of the first round of the playoffs the next.
The lesson, said Ramírez, is that it is much easier to climb to the top of the league than to stay there. What if the GalaxyWHO won the MLS Cup last seasonI did not know that they already discovered on Sunday when they opened their title with an apathetic, Life-free 2-0 defeat against San Diego FC.
The defeat was the first of the team at the Dignity Health Sports Park in 22 games and made the Galaxy the first MLS title champion to lose his first match to an expansion team. The Galaxy may have grieved in the teams last year, but this season, they will play with a large target on their backs.
“It becomes a championship match for the teams to prove themselves against us,” said Ramírez. “It's a bit like the curse of the championship.”
And the MLS Cup curse is real.
No MLS team has won consecutive titles since Bruce Arena galaxy in 2011-12. Since then, only three teams – the Sounders of Seattle, the Toronto FC and the Lafc – have even made consecutive results apparitions in the final.
More typical is the experience of the Toronto FC, which won the Cup in 2017, then missed the playoffs the following season, losing 18 games, then the second largest number in the history of the franchise. Or Columbus, who won the Cup in 2020, then missed the playoffs the following year.
Ramírez, as well as defender Eriq Zavaleta (Toronto, 2017) and goalkeeper John McCarthy (Lafc, 2022), are the only players on the list of galaxy who experienced the curse. So it's their own, said Ramírez, to teach the lesson.
“This is something that I can pass (on), knowing what is happening, how the teams get up for these matches,” he said.
It would be a more precious contribution than that that Ramírez brought to the field on Sunday. Replacement of the attacker Dejan JovljicWho was exchanged at Sporting Kansas City after scoring the winning goal in the MLS Cup final, Ramírez was invisible against San Diego, only taking 12 keys and not shooting in 63 minutes.
But he was not the only one to have disappointed. Midfieldrs Marco Reus and Lucas Sanabria, playing in place of Riqui PuigIndefinitely with a torn ACL, and Mark Delgado, who was exchanged, was also ineffective. Without Puig and winger Joseph Paintsilmissing with a quadriceps injury, Gabriel Pec was the only player designated on the ground, leaving the so-called killers of the PS PS galaxy by what coach Greg Vanney called the Mortel DS; An offended, disjointed and not very dynamic attack.
“We were not like a team that has just won the championship,” said the coach. “We looked like a team that corresponded to certain things together.”
What it is. A great reason for the curse of the MLS CUP is the complicated, ruthless and complicated salary structure of the League, which punishes success by making it difficult to achieve performance bonuses and increases that accompany a championship under a frugal budgetary ceiling. This is why five starters last season are no longer on the Galaxy list and a sixth, defender Maya Yoshida, who led MLS in the minutes played while captain of the Galaxy on the title, had to take a salary reduction to return.
This is also why four of the players who appeared in the opening on Sunday were not even in the team for the final of the MLS Cup of December. If it was not an excuse for the apathetic performance of the Galaxy, it was at least to the explanation.
Yoshida, however, had none of this.
“There is no excuse,” he said. “It's a new season. Everyone started to match. We have to fight as a challenger. ”
Especially when they are the champions. Because if the Galaxy celebrated its title by exceeding a championship banner before the match on Sunday, San Diego later celebrated as if he had just won a final by beating the champions.
Yoshida said the team will have to get used to it or find a way to stop it. And time for this is short. The Galaxy plays Vancouver on Sunday before opening the Concacaf Champions Cup playing three days later, starting a rush of seven games in at least two countries and three states in 27 days.
They will enter each of these games with a large target on their backs.
“This is a new challenge for us, how (a lot) they want to beat us,” said Yoshida. “We have to be ready for this. We have to fight. We must be better. “
Because Christian Ramírez can testify, the curse of the MLS Cup is real.
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For the file:
11:03 p.m. February 27, 2025A previous version of this story indicated that two teams had been consecutive MLS Cup finals since the Galaxy won titles in 2011 and 2012. Three teams have appeared in the consecutive final since then – Seattle, Toronto and Lafc.
