KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The LA Galaxy officially got back on track Wednesday night, earning their first win in Kansas City since 2007 and stacking up back-to-back wins that move them into second place in both the Western Conference and Supporters' Shield standings, albeit with one more game played than the Seattle Sounders.
“Our target is not top four, it’s number one,” Zlatan Ibrahimovic said after the 2-0 victory over Sporting KC. “The playoff games is seven places. I don’t care about the seven, I care about number one. That is what we want and what we are playing for.”
That mindset is one that Zlatan will always carry, however it has to be more amplified this year given how their 2018 season ended. With a 2-0 lead over the Houston Dynamo at halftime on Decision Day, the Galaxy stood on the cusp of making the playoffs after a poor start to the year — only to blow it and ended up losing the match 3-2, the last in a string of missed opportunities.
“The season will be up and down,” said Ibrahimovic after scoring a goal and an assist on Wednesday. “But the important thing is to keep the low performance very high, and not like we had the one and a half weeks where we were losing four in a row. We are aiming to become number one.”
Prior to their twin road wins of the past week, the Galaxy had dropped four straight after their 7-1-1 start. Three of those losses came in a busy span of three games in eight days, two of them on a cross-country road trip.
Now they find themselves in a similar stretch, with Wednesday’s win sandwiched between last Friday’s 1-0 victory at Orlando City and Sunday’s home match vs. New England (10:30 pm ET | MLS LIVE on ESPN+ in US, MLS LIVE on DAZN in Canada). Head coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto wants his team to take it game by game.
“We will keep working and trying to get better every day and to get another three points on Sunday in LA,” he said.
Zlatan is not the only one who believes the Galaxy must aim for the MLS summit, currently occupied by their crosstown rivals LAFC. Defender Jorgen Skjelvik feels it’s where they are supposed to be.
“We always want to be at the top,” said Skjelvik. “That's where the LA Galaxy belongs and we're going to work to be up there. We just need to take it game by game, and win the next game and the next game to add up points.”
