LA Galaxy ‘Have To Redefine Who We’re Going To Be’ After Riqui Puig Injury

When the Los Angeles Galaxy take the field for their first MLS Cup in a decade on Saturday, they’ll do so without their talisman and one of the most singularly influential players in Major League Soccer.

Riqui Puigtore his ACL during Saturday’s Western Conference final against Seattle Sounders, managing to play the final 30 minutes of the match and deliver the game-winning assist despite the injury. Set for surgery and a lengthy spell on the sidelines, his absence on Saturday will have a massive impact on the match.

“We have to kind of redefine who we’re going to be and how we’re going to win this game without someone like Ricky on the field,” Galaxy head coach Greg Vanney told media in the lead-up to MLS Cup. “… We’re going to have to adapt, and we’re going to have to adapt in a collective way. It’s not any one player who’s going to step on and do what Riqui has done for us. That’s that’s for sure.”

How Can The Galaxy Replace Puig?

Even absent Puig, Los Angeles have a wealth of attacking options from which to chose

How do you replace an irreplaceable player? It’s an impossible question for the Galaxy to answer, and certainly not one they can answer in just a week’s worth of preparation. The impact Puig has on the pitch and the singular effect he has on the Galaxy’s entire philosophy cannot be overstated.

Marco Reus would seem like the obvious replacement for Puig. The former Borussia Dortmund and Germany superstar was the Galaxy’s major signing of the summer, and he’s been solid-if-unspectacular this season, logging a goal and four assists in 10 matches this season. However, he’s in his own race for fitness ahead of Saturday after coming off with a groin issue at halftime of their Western Conference final win last weekend.

“We’ll see how his health is as the week progresses. We have some optimism that he can get himself turned around and be and be ready for us,” said Vanney. “He’s getting treatment, doing the stuff day to day is what I would say. He scanned yesterday and there’s some issue there. The question is how prepared can we get him for the game this week? I don’t think it’s overly significant. It’s not debilitating, but it’s also challenging. So we’ll, we’ll see day to day how he recovers.”

Along with Reus, the Galaxy have a trio of other elite attackers in Joseph Pantsil, Dejan Joveljic and Gabriel Pec, each of whom scored double-digit goals in the regular season. They also have a proven MLS veteran in Diego Fagúndez, who already has 400 MLS matches under his belt at the age of 29 and has been a reliable option for LA this season.

“We’re definitely going to miss Riqui out there. He’s a special player. Everyone can see that. Definitely irreplaceable, right?” posited midfielder Mark Delgado. “He wants to win this championship more than anyone? But we want to win it for him. We’re definitely going to look forward to it.”

How Vanney Will Adapt His Game Plan

The Galaxy cannot play the same way without Puig on the pitch

Simply put, there’s not a plug-and-play replacement for Riqui Puig on the roster. There’s not one in all of MLS, perhaps even in world football. Puig’s impact on his team is unique and unparalleled.

“He drives the team in many ways,” said Vanney. “When you look at the stat sheet on any given day, he’s probably touched the ball 120 times, 140 times… He wants to win and he wants to impact the game. And so we’ll miss that on the attacking side for sure, having somebody who can just change the tempo of a game like this. And any play, in any given moment can be the one that changes the game when you have a guy like Riqui because of his capacity to pull those kind of plays off and do things like that.”

“On the defensive side of things, he’s someone who is an intelligent defender,” he continued. “About his positioning, but more than anything, he’s someone that the opposition always has to account for in transition because the team is so good and transition through him… He’s a unique player in what he does.”

It’s going to take a different-looking game model from Vanney and his staff to bring home a trophy on Saturday. Whoever does get the start in place of Puig won’t be a like-for-like replacement.

“It’s going to be a different type of player than Riqui,” he acknowledged. “[The Red Bulls] want to be disruptors as much as they want to be creators in many ways. How we want to manage that situation both early and later are things that we’re working through, talking through and figuring out the right personnel to try to approach the game.”

Puig managed to deliver the game-winning assist on a torn ACL, putting his team on the brink of MLS’s most coveted trophy

Puig tore his ACL in the 63rd minute of the Galaxy’s 1-0 MLS Western Conference final win over the Seattle Sounders. Not only did he stay on the field for the final 30 minutes, he continued to be one of the best players on the pitch, ultimately setting up Gabriel Pec for his 85th-minute winner.

“When I went back and watched the game, I cringed a lot more at his movements and I was actually incredibly impressed at some of the ways that he was able to do things on one foot and protect the knee, but still execute play,” said Vanney, who called the injury a ‘straightforward ACL tear’, putting to rest any speculation that the injury was less than severe. ” I think given the moment, the adrenaline, the competitor inside of him, I don’t know if he completely knew that [it was torn]… When I spoke to him later, he said he felt like his knee was a little unstable. He felt some clicking, but he didn’t necessarily hear or feel like a pop, which sometimes is an indication.”

While Puig was able to force the Galaxy into their first MLS Cup final since 2014, he’ll have to watch from the sidelines as his teammates compete for MLS’s prized trophy. It won’t be easy for one of the league’s greatest competitors.

“Emotionally, he’s devastated,” said Vanney. “To work as hard as he has and to care as much as he does about being in this moment, this is what he came here for, to be in this game that’s coming up and to win a championship. And that’s what he’s been driven and motivated by. And so you can imagine it’s difficult.”

For the rest of the Galaxy, that just makes their match on Saturday all the more important.

“We’re definitely going to miss Riqui out there,” said Delgado.

Our heart is with him, and it definitely gives us the reason to go out there and give it our all for him.

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LA Galaxy star Riqui Puig suffers torn ACL before MLS Cup

LA Galaxy star Riqui Puig has suffered a torn ACL.