L.A Galaxy vs LAFC: how many times have they faced each other and who has won more games?
LAFC and LA Galaxy go head-to-head on Thursday night with a place in the 2022 MLS Western Conference final on the line.
Thursday night sees arguably the most attractive and certainly most hotly contested fixture of the 2022 MLS Conference semi-final games as Los Angeles Football Club face local rivals Los Angeles Galaxy at the Banc of California Stadium.
Despite being one of the newest derby games in US sport, ‘El Trafico’ as the matchup has been dubbed, has become a high profile rivalry game that evokes immense levels of passion from both Galaxy and LAFC fans respectively with no love lost between supporters of the blue and white and black and gold.
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Steve Cherundolo’s men are the team to beat at the moment, having won the 2022 Supporters Shield and tipped by many as red hot favorites to win the MLS title, they face a Galaxy side who had to dig deep to beat Nashville SC in Carson last Saturday to secure their semi-final berth with an Araujo goal on the hour mark enough for the LA side.
With LAFC having only being founded as a new MLS team back in 2018, meetings between both sides have been fierce but few and far between with Thursday’s game set to be the only the seventeenth time the sides have met in all official competitions. Many fans still recall the first ever MLS league meeting in March 2018 between both teams when Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored a dramatic injury time winner to give the Galaxy a 4-3 win in an incident packed inaugural derby.
LAFC-Galaxy match-ups
When it come to local ‘bragging rights’, Galaxy fans hold the upper hand with their side having won six of the thirteen meetings in MLS regular season. Five games have ended in a draw with the ‘black and gold’ only managing two derby wins in the league.
There have been three other meetings between the Los Angeles giants with the Galaxy edging out the ‘black and gold’ in a recent US Open Cup clash. When it comes to post season meetings, LAFC can point to their win in the 2018 season play-off game and the Banc of California based side also secured victory over the Galaxy during the MLS is Back mini-competition staged in Florida during the pandemic affected 2020 season.