What’s old is new again – but for the very first time, somehow.
As the final seconds of November slipped through the hourglass, a wild Saturday night bleeding into Sunday morning as Dejan Joveljić steered his clutch late strike past Stefan Frei at Dignity Health Sports Park, we finally learned our MLS Cup 2024 presented by Audi matchup for Dec. 7, the season’s 10-month marathon reaching its finish line with heart-stopping Audi MLS Cup Playoffs tension on opposite ends of North America.
For the first time in a decade, two MLS founding clubs are the last ones standing. And not just any originals.
Big cities
The LA Galaxy and New York Red Bulls (the latter having entered the world as the MetroStars) were envisioned as flagship clubs for this league when it began in 1996. They represented the two largest metropolises in the United States, the sprawling supercities who’d hosted the most – and biggest – matches in the FIFA World Cup two years prior, the paradigm-shifting event that inspired the new league’s launch.
Los Angeles vs. New York; Hollywood welcomes Gotham, flexing star power from Spain to Sweden, Serbia, Colombia, Ghana, Brazil and beyond. MLS’s founders would likely have seen this year’s final as a highly tasty fixture for the showcase occasion. The fact it took nearly three decades to materialize? Well, they might not have predicted that part.
“The feeling is – inexplainable, is that a word? Unexplainable?” asked the Red Bulls’ young homegrown defender John Tolkin in the press conference after his side’s plucky 1-0 victory over Orlando City SC at Inter&Co Stadium, searching for the right words to express what it meant to help his hometown club reach just their second MLS Cup final ever.
“I was overcome with emotions at the end, and I think everybody was as well. And just pure exhaustion,” he added. “I'm just so happy for everybody and all the work that we put in, and just the feeling and all the smiles. It's what you do this for.”
"Why can't we?"
Tolkin, 22, was just six years old when RBNY made their only previous MLS Cup appearance. The Designated Player rule was still brand new at that point, and the academy revolution that crafted a development pathway for talents like him to chart a course toward a professional career was years away.
New York’s reputation for chronic underachievement was already well-established, however. The disappointment was so relentless that fans coined a supernatural explanation, The Curse of Caricola, after an own goal scored by Italian defender Nicola Caricola in their inaugural season. Though major hardware finally arrived in the form of three Supporters’ Shields earned by the classy RBNY sides of the 2010s, they remain one of just three founding members of MLS yet to win the big one.
That’s why grown adults wept in the away supporters’ section when the Red Bulls finally got over the hump on Saturday night, Carlos Coronel & Co. defending the narrow lead provided by Andrés Reyes’ set-piece header as tenaciously as if their lives depended on it. A team that had fallen short so often, so painfully, that had such little contender buzz at the start of these playoffs, was 90 minutes from its first league championship, rocket-fueled by an underdog’s resourcefulness.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” said RBNY’s star playmaker Emil Forsberg, whose R-rated declaration of belief – “f--k it, we can win. Why can’t we?” – provided vital inspiration on the eve of the postseason.
“Proud of the team, proud of the whole organization, the hard work behind the scenes as well, everybody working so hard for us to succeed. I’m just so happy for the club, for everybody. But job’s not finished. We have one more game. But like I said before, why can’t we?”
A return to the MLS elite
The Galaxy will have something to say about that.
For much of MLS’s existence, they were everything RBNY weren't, a constant contender and globally-recognized brand now headed for their league-leading 10th MLS Cup final. Yet it’s been 10 years since their most recent one, a frustrating drought triggered by a sudden, drastic loss of mojo after the departure of Bruce Arena, the coach and general manager who delivered their 2011, 2012 and 2014 titles.
The Gs missed the playoffs entirely in three of the previous four years, and finished 26th of 29 in last year’s overall league table, failing to carry momentum from their days of Landon Donovan, David Beckham and Robbie Keane.
Climbing back into the MLS elite required a combination of patience (keeping faith in head coach Greg Vanney, an MLS Cup winner with Toronto FC and distinguished member of the great Galaxy teams of MLS’s first decade) and urgency (splashing out reportedly more than $20 million on talented wingers Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil to upgrade the front line last winter), steered by the able leadership of general manager Will Kuntz, who arrived from crosstown rivals LAFC in April 2023.
Hosting this final at their palm tree-lined Southern California home is both a euphoric breakthrough and a fulfillment of incumbent expectations.
“I mean, we prepared for this. I'm happy, but not surprised,” said Joveljić after the hard-earned 1-0 defeat of the ferociously resilient Seattle Sounders.
“From the first day when I saw Pec, Joseph, Miki [Yamane] and other guys, of course I knew that we have something special and that we are going to be good this season.”
Dueling styles
This MLS Cup is also a duel of footballing contrasts. Blessed with so much attacking firepower, the Galaxy look more comfortable winning barnburners than nailbiters. They tend to open up the throttle and go for broke, orchestrated by relentless maestro Riqui Puig, whose health will be a major plotline in the week ahead given his obvious discomfort at the end of the Western Conference Final.
RBNY, meanwhile, got here by embracing a more pragmatic relationship with risk. After sustained struggles down the home stretch, their German coach Sandro Schwarz evolved towards a sturdy defensive posture to spark this postseason run. Organization, intensity, pacey transitions and little interest in volume of possession – “we can control the ball without the ball, if that makes any sense,” noted Tolkin – have powered an increasingly ruthless surge of form.
It’s already dethroned last year’s stylish champs, the Columbus Crew, and promises to make this title bout a tricky task for the favored hosts Saturday (4 pm ET | Apple TV - Free; FOX, FOX Deportes; TSN, RDS).
“It’s intriguing to me that probably the two most aggressive teams in some way, shape or form in the West and the East, them on the defensive side, us on the attacking side, have found ourselves into the final,” said Vanney.
“Dogged, defensive, hard-fought playoffs is usually what you get out of that. So it's interesting. It's an interesting matchup because they're not going to sit on the top of their 18 and wait for us; they're going to come after us, and it's going to be a different challenge for us.”
