Matheus Nascimento and Joseph Paintsil each scored on Saturday night to help the Galaxy beat Minnesota United 2-1 in the regular-season finale for both teams.
Minnesota (16-8-10) is fourth in the Western Conference and will play fifth-seeded Seattle in the best-of-three first round of the MLS Cup playoffs.
Nascimento gave the Galaxy (7-18-9) the lead for good when he scored on a first-touch shot from the center of the area in the 12th minute.
Paintsil, on the counterattack, outraced the defense down the left sideline and then bounced a low shot off the far post and then slammed home his own rebound to make it 2-0 in the 52nd.
Joaquín Pereyra scored in the fifth minute of stoppage time for Minnesota.
A couple of minutes later, the Galaxy’s Edwin Cerrillo was shown a yellow card in the 67th and another, resulting in a red, in the seventh minute of stoppage time.
Harbor Miller and Elijah Wynder scored their first career goals in MLS, Gabriel Pec also scored a goal, and the Galaxy beat the Colorado Rapids 3-0 on Saturday night to snap a four-game MLS winless streak.
JT Marcinkowski made his first MLS appearance since 2023 and had a save for the Galaxy (4-16-7). The 28-year-old, who signed with the Galaxy in January after seven seasons with San José, missed the 2024 season while recovering from knee surgery.
Miller, an 18-year-old defender, gave the Galaxy a 1-0 lead in the seventh minute. On the counter-attack, Miller ran onto a centering pass played by Miki Yamane and blasted a first-touch shot from near the penalty spot into the net.
The 22-year-old Wynder tapped a pass from the center of the area to Yamane on the right side. Yamane played a first-touch pass back to Wynder, who redirected it into the net from near the penalty spot to make it 2-0 in the 55th.
Pec, on the counter-attack, ran onto a long ball played ahead by Marco Reus and outraced the defense to the edge of the six-yard box where he slipped a shot between the legs of goalkeeper Zack Steffen to cap the scoring in the 75th minute.
The rivalry between the old-school Galaxy and its upstart neighbor LAFC was once the best in MLS. The Galaxy traces its roots to the inception of the league while LAFC helped define its modern era, setting up a turf war so good, so competitive and so emotional, it had its own nickname.
Much of that drama had faded from El Tráfico in recent matches. But that changed Saturday when Maya Yoshida scored on the last touch of the game to give the Galaxy a 3-3 draw before a packed house of 22,301 at BMO Stadium.
And the teams didn’t limit their fight to the scoreboard. A tense shoving match broke out seconds into stoppage time, leading referee Guido Gonzalez Jr. to send off LAFC’s Eddie Segura with a red card while handing two yellow cards to the Galaxy and one to LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris.
Galaxy and LAFC players get into a on-field scuffle during Saturday’s 3-3 draw at BMO Stadium.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The most devastating punch, however, came from Yoshida, who was in the center of the shoving match. Minutes later his header off a cross from Mauricio Cuevas — his first goal and just his second shot on target of the season — capped a Galaxy comeback from a late 3-1 deficit.
The draw gave the Galaxy (3-14-7) points in five of their last seven games, the team’s best stretch of the season. LAFC (10-5-6) is unbeaten in four straight and has lost just once in 14 league games since April 5. But the two points it lost on Yoshida’s goal dropped it to fifth in the Western Conference standings.
Bouanga’s fifth goal in six games gave LAFC the early lead in the 26th minute and, significantly, it was the first goal in that span that didn’t come from the penalty spot. It also gave him a goal in his last six games against the Galaxy.
LAFC star Denis Bouanga celebrates after scoring in the first half against the Galaxy on Saturday.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
Dilrosun doubled the lead with his second MLS goal on a counterattack five minutes later.
Pec halved the deficit for the Galaxy on a penalty kick less than 10 minutes before the intermission. That goal, set up by a Ryan Hollingshead hand ball in the box, snapped a 375-minute scoreless streak for LAFC.
Bouanga extended the LAFC lead on another counterattack set up by a Galaxy mistake in the 67th minute. Afterward, as the teams walked back to the center circle, Pec and Galaxy defender Emiro Garces, who was out of position on the breakaway, engaged in a heated argument.
Pec calmed down enough to get his fifth goal of the season, on a cross from Marco Reus, to pull his team closer in the 79th minute. The Galaxy then appeared to tie the score just before stoppage time, but Lloris made a spectacular kick save on Christian Ramirez while lying on his back on the goal line.
That set the stage for Yoshida, however, with the Galaxy captain slipping in front of Nkosi Tafari to redirect a glancing header inside the far post, earning the Galaxy a league result at BMO Stadium for the first time since August 2021, a game that also ended in a 3-3 draw.
