If there was ever a time to end another road drought at a specific venue, it’s now.
Dallas has ended some long droughts on the road this season at San Jose, Colorado, and New York. While some of those were decades-long droughts, Dallas hasn’t won at the LA Galaxy since 2023. That’s three years of making the trip to Southern California and coming home empty-handed. The harder part is realizing it has come against a Galaxy squad that hasn’t been great for a number of years either.
LA comes into Saturday’s game winless in four straight, with three of those games coming after the World Cup break. They’ve been outscored 7-2 in those three games, including losses against LAFC and St. Louis CITY SC. They also spent the summer selling their best player for a club-record fee and replacing him with a guy who has yet to debut.
Dallas comes in off a frustrating week that saw them drop points in a 2-2 draw at Portland before getting run around in a 1-0 loss to San Diego last weekend. They need a response in a big way, especially before things shift to the Leagues Cup next week.
Here’s what we’ll be watching for Saturday night.
The Galaxy Are Vulnerable Right Now, But They’re Still the Galaxy
In a way, this feels like a repeat of what we discussed last weekend going into San Diego. Like San Diego, LA opened the post-break schedule with some bad results. The Galaxy started off the post-World Cup schedule with a painful blowout loss at home to LAFC. Then things got worse a few days later when St. Louis CITY SC came to Carson and left with a 3-1 win of their own. That’s six goals conceded in two home games.
LA then responded with a 1-1 draw on the road up the coast against San Jose over the weekend. LA was outshot in that one 9-2 in the first half.
Galaxy midfielder Harbor Miller put it plainly after the loss to St. Louis: “We need to win this game, we have to win this game. It’s more than just playing a game right now.” That’s the energy level inside that locker room at the moment. A team under pressure, similar to what Dallas walked into last week at San Diego.
And FC Dallas knows this going into the weekend, too.
“They’re a talented team that likes to keep the ball, heavy possession team, a lot like San Diego,” explained FC Dallas manager Eric Quill. “So it’s about disrupting the rhythm, not letting them get a rhythm at home where they start to get front-footed and confident. We want to negate any kind of momentum plays they can get against us. We want to be really good in our structures, and when we press and trigger, find our moments and conquer. That’s the goal: get out in front, maintain, and keep our foot on the gas pedal. Not be conservative, but be aggressive all night long in every phase of the game.”
Big D Soccer gives you the why — the tactical breakdowns, the honest assessments, the context that actually helps you understand what you watched on Saturday night.
If you're serious about this club, you should be reading all of it.
Pec Is Gone and the Replacements Are Untested, Attack the Space He Left
One of the more underrated storylines for LA’s summer was when they sold Gabriel Pec to Cruzeiro for a club-record fee. They then sold Mauricio Cuevas shortly after that to Santos Laguna. Both deals brought in a ton of money to the club.
But here is the thing, they dumped two of their most productive guys from this season. Pec already led the club with five goals and five assists, while Cuevas was one of the more productive midfielders on the roster.
They’ve tried to fill in the gaps since then. In mid-June, LA added former Austin and Inter Miami midfielder, Robert Taylor as a free agent (Austin had previously waived him). They then went out and recently added 31-year old Japanese forward Kyogo Furuhashi from Birmingham City (here is a solid scouting report on him).
Taylor is a known MLS commodity but came in cold, while Furuhashi has yet to debut with the club. All of this while their other top striker, Joao Klauss, is still out on the injury list. The Galaxy’s attack is being rebuilt in real time. Dallas should press that uncertainty hard and make them prove the new pieces work under pressure.