Match Preview: Whitecaps Welcome La Galaxy for the Home Opener

On Sunday afternoon at BC Place, the Vancouver Whitecaps will take over the defending champion MLS Cup Meister La Galaxy in Vancouvers MLS Home Opener.

The Whitecaps are watching a 2-0 win against Deportivo Saprissa on Thursday and a 4-1 drub of Portland Timbers in the Providence Park last weekend.

While this is a very compressed part of the WHITECAPS schedule, Jesper Sørensen was able to offer a break for the stars Ryan Gauld and Andres Cubas on Thursday evening, since none of them were at the start XI.

Despite her success of 2024, it was not a big start for the galaxy until 2025. Riqui Puig will be most of the season because he recovered from a band crack that he suffered from the playoffs last season, while Joseph Paintsil also fails with a thigh injury. In addition, Dejan Joveljić was moved to Sporting KC to become her youngest specific player.

With these three stars that are not available, Gabriel Pec, who lived last year as part of the four -member monster of the galaxy, falls great pressure on Gabriel Pec. PEC had 16 goals and 14 templates in 2024, but he has to prove that he can reproduce these sums with less support if the galaxy will be successful early this season.

The galaxy fought against San Diego at its MLS season opener and lost 2-0 against the MLS newcomers in a game that was fair, much closer than that indicated by the goal line. Nevertheless, much more pressure is put on the defense unit of the Galaxy, which historically has to struggle historically without the same playful quality.

A position of interest at the start of the galaxy was between the sticks, where the young Serbian keeper Novak Mićović overtaken the MLS veteran John McCarthy. Mićović made a decisive mistake that led to San Diego's opening goal in this game, but he also made a great 1V1 rescue against Chucky Lozano. I think it's fair to say that Greg Vanney is on the upward trend of the young goalkeeper and maybe ready to live on the way through some growing pain. In two earlier seasons in La, Mićović played only four MLS games, which allowed 8 goals.

In the striker position, the Galaxy Joveljić replaced Christian Ramírez from the Columbus crew. While Ramírez has been a solid player in MLS for many years, you have to return to 2017 in Minnesota to find the last time he has scored 10 goals in one season.

In midfield, Veteran Gastón Brugman's galaxy continued, which is now at Nashville SC. At the start, the galaxy organized a very young double frond of Edwin Cerrillo (24) and the MLS-Newcomer Lucas Sanabria (21), who recently started on the Uruguayan page of Nacional in a U-22 contract. In view of this, I would expect the whitecaps to target the midfield as an area in which you can take control of the game. Jesper Sørensen found that both teams like Hold the Ball and as such, as such won the midfield, could be decisive for the end result at the end of 90 minutes.

I think it is for sure to say that Ryan Gaul, Andres Cubas and Ranko Veselinovic are in focus on Vancouver, which will all be at the start of XI. Overall, I do not imagine that Sørensen will deviate a lot from the line -up that we saw last weekend in Portland, possibly except for a change in the full -back or the exchange of Ali Ahmed for Jayden Nelson.

If the whitecaps continue to uncover wide areas with the pace of their wingers and create space for white and Galld in the box, then I think that the whitecaps can be successful against this Galaxy team. Especially since they are very easy to slow down too slowly at a moment when injuries and duty schedule could easily lead to a delay.

Apart from that, the white caps must remain disciplined in their tactics, since Marco Reus and Diego Fagúndez can still give the Whitecaps headache if these players get enough opportunities.

All in all, I think that the Whitecaps will continue their positive start into the season with another home win, so I will predict an end result of 2: 1 in favor of the Whitecaps.

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