For seven seasons, the Galaxy and LAFC have shared Southern California. But until Thursday, they had never played each other while sharing the top spot in the Western Conference standings.
They didn’t finish the night that way, with first-half goals from Kei Kamara and Denis Bouanga lifting LAFC to a 2-1 victory in front of a crowd of 70,076 at the Rose Bowl. Gabriel Pec scored for the Galaxy early in the second half.
For much of the bitter crosstown rivalry, the Galaxy have been closer to the bottom of the standings than the top. LAFC, meanwhile, has the best record in the league since entering MLS.
That has often left one team playing for a title and the other one playing spoiler. That wasn’t the case this time.
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“It looked to me as if the Galaxy players had something today to lose,” LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo said. “They were not the underdogs today. And that’s a different burden.”
LAFC defender Aaron Long wasn’t so sure since nobody takes a copy of the standings into a game.
“It’s always going to feel the same, to be honest,” he said. “If you lose to them when you’re in first and they’re in last, it hurts the same as if you lose to them if you’re both tied for first.”
But when you win and break that tie? Well, it means a little more.
“That perhaps made it a little different,” defender Sergi Palencia said in Spanish. “Tied on points for first place, it was a very important game for us. We approached this match as a final.”
A final maybe, but it won’t be their last meeting. The teams will square off in September and, given the way both are playing, a playoff rematch in the fall looks likely.
Consider that LAFC (13-4-4), with its third win in as many games, extended the team’s franchise-record unbeaten streak to 10 matches and pushed it closer to Inter Miami in the Supporters’ Shield race. It has also won its last three games against the Galaxy. It is the hottest team in the league.
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For the Galaxy (11-4-7), the loss, their second in 12 games, ended a four-match winning streak, the team’s longest since 2020, and dropped them into a tie with Real Salt Lake for second in the table on points.
The Galaxy are the third-best team in the Western Conference since April.
The two teams, which normally play in stadiums only 11 miles apart, moved their Fourth…