Alexi Lalas
Soccer Analyst
When the LA Galaxy takes the field on Saturday against the New York Red Bulls in the MLS Cup final, they’ll do it without their star midfielder Riqui Puig.
Puig, who joined the LA Galaxy in 2022 on a free transfer from FC Barcelona, suffered a torn ACL in the Galaxy’s semifinal win over the Seattle Sounders on Nov. 30. He played the final 30 minutes of the match with a torn ACL and remarkably assisted Dejan Joveljić’s game-winning goal.
There is no timetable for Puig’s return, but the expectation is that he will miss most, if not all, of the 2025 MLS campaign. The Galaxy will have to find a way to supplement the loss of Puig, who tallied 15 goals and 13 assists in 29 appearances for LA this season and was named to the league’s best XI alongside his former Barcelona teammates Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba.
Would Gio Reyna be someone that Galaxy considers as a suitable short-term Puig replacement?
Possible benefits of a Gio Reyna MLS transfer | SOTU
Reyna, first and foremost, is available. And, obviously, he’s American, and needs a place where he’s going to play.
Since joining Dortmund from New York City FC’s academy in 2019, Reyna has appeared in just 141 games in all competitions. He also had an unsuccessful loan spell in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest in January.
From a positional standpoint, he’s not Riqui Puig, but he’s actually got some Puig-ish types of qualities. For a couple of years now, even when the Galaxy was struggling, it was obvious Riqui Puig was a quality player, and this season, he finally had some quality around him, and he ran the show in a kind of throwback way.
From the Galaxy’s perspective, it’s not about getting Reyna’s career back on track; it’s about getting the best available player out there that, maybe, can approximate what Puig does.
A while ago, Landon Donovan suggested that Christian Pulisic, who, at the time, was struggling to get playing time at Chelsea and was looking for a new club, move to MLS because there would be an assurance that he’d play. A lot of people gave him crap for it.
Now, with less than two years until the 2026 World Cup on home soli, Reyna’s in a similar position with Dortmund, the proposition seems less far-fetched. We’ll see what happens in the January transfer window.
Alexi Lalas is a soccer analyst for FOX sports and host of “Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union Podcast.” He represented the USMNT at the 1994 FIFA World Cup and had a nine-year professional career. In 2006, he became the president of the LA Galaxy and helped bring David Beckham to Major League Soccer.
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