SEATTLE — Gabriel Pec had a goal and an assist to back goalkeeper JT Marcinkowski and the Galaxy beat Seattle 2-0 on Saturday night, ending the Sounders’ 22-match unbeaten streak at home as well as a nine-match unbeaten run this season.
Greg Vanney led Los Angeles to its first victory in Seattle since July 9, 2016 — Bruce Arena’s final season as the Galaxy’s coach.
Pec used assists from Marco Reus and defender Miki Yamane in the 23rd minute to score his fifth goal of the season, giving the Galaxy a 1-0 lead that stood through halftime. It was his fourth goal in the last three matches and his 27th in 75 career appearances.
Reus’ assist was his fifth this season, while Yamane collected his first.
Pec and Edwin Cerrillo set up Matheus Nascimento’s first goal this season two minutes into stoppage time to clinch the victory. Cerrillo entered in the 89th minute before snagging his first assist and Pec’s helper was his fourth.
Marcinkowski stopped six shots for the Galaxy (5-5-4). It was his first clean sheet in his 10th start this season.
Andrew Thomas finished without a save for Seattle (7-2-3), whose only other loss came in its road opener at Real Salt Lake on Feb. 28.
The Galaxy extended the league’s longest current streak with at least one goal scored to 23.
Seattle was the last team to shut out the Galaxy, doing so with a 4-0 road win on Aug. 10 last season.
The Sounders were coming off a 3-2 victory over Arena’s San Jose Earthquakes on Wednesday, while the Galaxy lost to Sporting Kansas City — whose only other victory to that point came against the Galaxy on the road.
The Galaxy lead the all-time series with the Sounders 16-11-15, including a 5-8-8 record in Seattle.
The Sounders fall to 4-1-1 at home and the Galaxy improve to 3-3-2 on the road.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Calvin Harris had a goal and two assists and Dejan Joveljić scored against his former team, leading Sporting Kansas City to a 3-1 victory over the visiting Galaxy on Wednesday night.
Sporting KC (2-8-2) snapped an eight-match winless streak under first-year manager Raphaël Wicky and an eight-match winless skid at home dating to last year. The club’s only other victory came against the Galaxy (4-5-4) — a 2-1 road win on March 14 in which Joveljić also scored.
Sporting KC grabbed a 1-0 lead in the 32nd minute on Capita Capemba’s first career goal in his sixth appearance. Harris and Lasse Berg Johnsen had assists.
Joveljić made it 2-0 at halftime when he scored in the fourth minute of stoppage time with assists from Harris and defender Zorhan Bassong. It was his sixth goal this season and his 24th in 44 appearances with his new club. Joveljić scored 34 goals for the Galaxy from 2021-24. He scored the winner in the final against the New York Red Bulls in 2024 for L.A.’s sixth MLS Cup before being traded in the offseason.
Harris found the net in the 70th minute for a 3-0 lead with helpers from Manu García and Jacob Bartlett, who entered in the 61st. It was Harris’ first goal this season and his 12th in 113 career matches.
Stefan Cleveland totaled six saves for Sporting KC in his third start this season and the 15th of his career.
J.T. Marcinkowski saved six shots for Los Angeles.
The Galaxy extended their current scoring streak to a league-best 22 straight matches when Gabriel Pec scored in the 89th minute for his 10th goal of the season. Justin Haak and former Sporting KC member Erik Thommy had assists.
Pec scored two late goals in a 2-1 road win over Atlanta United last time out. It was his 10th goal of the campaign.
Sporting KC ties the all-time series at 29-29-18 while improving to 20-10-9 at home against the Galaxy.
Joveljić has scored in three straight matches against his former teammates.
Mathias Laborda scored in the 82nd minute for the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday night, sealing a 1-1 tie with the Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson.
The Whitecaps (8-1-1), who were only the second MLS team in the post-shootout era (since 2000) to win eight of their first nine games to begin a season, had their club regular-season record four-game win streak snapped.
Sebastian Berhalter played a free kick from the left side to the back post and Laborda headed home the finish from point-blank range to cap the scoring.
The Whitecaps had 58% possession and outshot the Galaxy 19-7, including a 5-2 edge in on target shots.
Joseph Paintsil opened the scoring in the 46th minute. Lucas Sanabria, in the opening seconds of the second half, stole a misplayed ball from Whitecaps goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka and fed Paintsil for a finish from the right side of the area.
JT Marcinkowski had four saves for the Galaxy (3-4-4).
Not every crowd will gleefully applaud and cheer a known notorious villain. But the Disneyland faithful certainly will, as when Darth Vader set foot in the park’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge on Wednesday morning and the audience erupted in approving hollers.
Kylo Ren has officially been evicted from the fictional “Star Wars” town of Black Spire Outpost. Vader has instead taken up residence, and he will appear multiple times daily in front of the land’s militaristic TIE fighter before stalking the area on the prowl for Luke Skywalker.
In Vader’s first two appearances Wednesday, he spoke of his quest to hunt down the young Jedi. He was flanked by two classic Stormtroopers, who had different dialogue in each showing — one time critiquing Black Spire Outpost and later talking of a run-in with a Jedi.
Vader isn’t the only new addition to the area. Leia, Han and Luke, the latter of whom previously appeared in the land for a limited time last year, are also now regularly appearing in Galaxy’s Edge.
Their presence marks a major shift in direction for the 14-acre theme park land. When Galaxy’s Edge opened in 2019, it was set at a fixed point in the “Star Wars” timeline, namely one in the middle of the latest films in the series.
This was done in part to promote the new cinematic works, but to also facilitate interaction, placing guests on an unknown adventure rather than one with a fixed outcome. It was a theme park experiment to see how much Disneyland attendees would lean in and role play.
But Disneyland wisely hasn’t completely pivoted on the Galaxy’s Edge mission. The characters appear out in the land and on a quest rather than simply standing and posing for photos.
Leia, for instance, spent the bulk of one appearance working with the furry Chewbacca to fix up the starship Millennium Falcon. Later, she joked around with Luke and asked young fans if they wanted to train to learn the ways of the Force.
Marco Reus scored two goals, the second one on a penalty kick in the 85th minute, to rally the Galaxy to a 2-1 victory over Real Salt Lake on Sunday.
Reus scored from 21 yards out off a free kick to give the Galaxy a 1-0 lead in the ninth minute. The kick was awarded after Gabriel Pec was fouled by Real Salt Lake midfielder Stijn Spierings.
Galaxy goalkeeper JT Marcinkowski was charged with an own goal in the final minute of stoppage time, tying it 1-1 at halftime. The ball deflected off the post and into the net when he dove to make a save on Zavier Gozo’s shot.
Reus scored the winner on a PK after a foul on Sam Junqua for shoving Elijah Wynder in the back on a corner kick. It was the fourth goal this season for Reus and his 10th in 37 career appearances.
Marcinkowski saved nine shots for the Galaxy (3-4-3).
Rafael Cabral totaled four saves for Real Salt Lake (5-3-1).
Real Salt Lake went 5-0-1 in a six-match stretch before losing 2-0 to visiting Inter Miami on Wednesday. The club falls to 1-2-1 on the road.
The Galaxy were coming off a 1-1-1 road trip and improve to 2-2-1 at home.
On the soccer pitch, Cobi Jones was defined by blinding speed, a tireless work rate and an exceptional soccer IQ. But that’s not what stood out most when you watched him play.
It was the shoulder-length dreadlocks that made him instantly recognizable whether he was playing for the Galaxy or the national team.
So those became the most important — and more difficult — things to replicate in the nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Jones that the Galaxy will unveil Sunday before the team’s MLS matinee with Real Salt Lake.
“Essentially you build it out of clay and then you take it to a foundry and you pour bronze over the clay. That turns it into a statue,” said Galaxy president Tom Braun, who oversaw the process. “But you can’t do that with the hair. You have to build them individually and then solder them in.”
That meant artists Oscar Leon and Omri Amrany had to painstakingly join approximately 100 separate dreadlocks into the sculpture. The result, said Braun, one of two people other than the artists to have seen the finished statue, is remarkable.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime piece that is going to show him, and everything about him, in a really iconic way,” Braun said. “But I think when it comes to the hair specifically, they did a really nice job.”
The statue will join liked-sized tributes to David Beckham and Landon Donovan in Legends Plaza, which fronts the main entrance at Dignity Health Sports Park. Those sculptures, also done in Amrany’s studio, were unveiled in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
For Jones, the tribute is humbling.
“Just to be in the plaza itself and have a statue, that’s the incredible part for me,” he said. “When I’m long gone that statue will be there. My grandkids, hopefully, will still be able to see it.”
Yet having himself rendered in bronze was the furthest thing from Jones’ mind when he started playing soccer as a 5-year-old in Westlake Village.
“I don’t think that crossed anyone’s mind,” said Jones, 55. “It was all about just playing and having fun and trying to be the best player that I could possibly be. I was more focused on how do I beat the opponent in front of me than thinking about 20 years, 30 years down the road.”
”It makes me truly think about the past a bit more,” he continued. “All the various things that had to happen — that did happen — that came to this moment. It makes you kind of reminisce [on] the various histories and all the people that helped you.”
The statue is as much a monument to Jones’ self-confidence and refusal to quit as it is to his stellar playing career. Unable to land a scholarship coming out of high school, Jones used his academic success to enroll at UCLA, where he played as a walk-on for a strong Bruin team coached by Sigi Schmid. He wound up leading UCLA to its second NCAA championship while earning All-American honors — as well as a scholarship and a place in the school’s Hall of Fame.
Galaxy star Cobi Jones heads the ball above the Chicago Fire’s Carlos Bocanegra on Oct. 17, 2001.
(Fred Jewell / Associated Press)
He played the first of a U.S.-record 164 games with the national team in 1992 and played in the first of three World Cups in 1994 before starting a professional career that would take him to teams in three countries. He spent the majority of that time with the Galaxy, appearing in a franchise-record 306 games while making five All-Star teams and winning two MLS Cups, two Supporters’ Shields, two U.S. Open Cups and a CONCACAF title. He also served the team as an assistant coach and interim manager.
“It’s unequivocal that Cobi should have gotten a statue,” Braun said. “No one is doubting the contribution that Cobi Jones has had on the Galaxy and U.S. Soccer. So I think was an easy one for us to decide on and it’s probably long overdue.”
The plaza is nowhere near full, nor has the list of Galaxy players and coaches who deserve statues been exhausted, so Braun said there likely will be more sculptures added in the near future.
Jones had substantial input into the design of his statue, choosing the pose and offering other guidance. But it was important the statue show motion, as the Beckham and Donovan sculptures do. And the most obvious way to do that was to have Jones’ ample dreadlocks flowing behind him.
It might have been the most obvious way, but it certainly wasn’t the easiest one.
“We asked [Amrany] if he ever sculpted hair like this and he said no,” Braun said.
And he probably won’t do it again either — at least not for the Galaxy.
“They got to a point where they started to do it and we wanted some adjustments,” Braun recalled. “We wanted the hair to flow a different way and we thought maybe the hair was too long so we had them shorten it and move the hair a certain way that makes it look like it’s in motion.”
Although Jones said he wasn’t allowed to see the finished product so he has little idea how he has been rendered for history. He’ll find out Sunday.
“They took me out of the statue process as they started getting to the face and the head and hair and all that so that I could still have some element of surprise when it’s unveiled,” he said.
It figures to be a hair-raising moment.
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
FRISCO, Texas — Lucas Sanabria and Joseph Paintsil scored late in the first half after Petar Musa scored twice to give Dallas the lead, helping the Galaxy rally for a 2-2 draw on Saturday night.
Musa scored unassisted in the seventh minute to give Dallas a quick lead and then used assists from Christian Cappis and Logan Farrington to give Dallas a two-goal advantage in the 38th minute with his league-leading ninth of the season.
It was the first assist for Cappis after collecting two in 11 appearances last season as a rookie. Farrington’s third assist gives him 15 in 69 career matches.
Sanabria used assists from Paintsil and Justin Haak to cut it to 2-1 in the 43rd minute and Paintsil used assists from Gabriel Pec and defender Mauricio Cuevas to tie it three minutes into stoppage time.
Sanabria netted his second goal after scoring twice in 21 matches as a rookie last season. A hamstring injury sidelined Paintsil, who has a goal and two assists in four matches. Pec has four assists but has yet to score.
Michael Collodi turned away three shots in goal for Dallas (3-1-4).
JT Marcinkowski had three saves for the Galaxy (2-3-3).
The Galaxy lead the all-time series 37-35-13 and are 9-26-8 in Frisco.
