1 CHAPTER 2018 EL TRÁFICO Superstar Zlatan Ibrahimović quickly made his mark in MLS when he joined the league in 2018 4
The full page ad on the back cover of the Los Angeles Times sports section read simply Dear Los Angeles You're welcome At the bottom was the signature of the Los Angeles Galaxy's newest player striker Zlatan Ibrahimović The tone was entirely in keeping with the bombastic Zlatan The Swedish superstar had played for just about every superclub in Europe first Juventus then Inter Milan Barcelona AC Milan Paris Saint Germain and Manchester United This is a man who once said I can't help but laugh at how perfect I am And now in 2018 Zlatan had reached North America He was just in time for the very first game between the Galaxy and their brand new crosstown rivals Los Angeles FC LAFC MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER IN LOS ANGELES The Los Angeles Galaxy were one of MLS's original ten teams in 1996 Like other teams from that era their stadium is in a suburb In this case it's in Carson California which is about 15 miles 24 km south of downtown Los Angeles In 2005 MLS launched a second team in Los Angeles called Chivas USA It was so named because the owners of the team CD Guadalajara in Mexico known as Chivas also owned Chivas USA Chivas USA shared the Galaxy's stadium The new team was supposed to appeal to local fans of Latin American descent but it was poorly managed and poorly run In 2014 MLS shut down the team and gave its spot to Los Angeles FC which started playing in 2018 6
That Zlatan a world superstar would even consider coming to Major League Soccer MLS was a testament to how the league had grown since it first kicked off in 1996. What began as a scramble to fill out ten teams with competent players had grown to the point that it could attract one of the world's top soccer talents to Los Angeles NEW TEAM NEW RIVALRY The Galaxy had been around since the beginning of the league but LAFC like Zlatan was new to MLS LAFC represented the second attempt to add a second team to the nation's second largest city one that was arguably the soccer capital of the United States It was fitting that Zlatan's debut would be in the first crosstown rivalry game between the two clubs taking place at the Galaxy's home stadium in the southern Los Angeles metro area The teams hadn't met even once but the rivalry games already had a nickname El Tráfico The name was a pun on El Clásico the name for matches between Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain The modified name was a perfect fit for crosstown games in famously traffic choked Los Angeles That the game had a Spanish influenced name also made sense given the large Hispanic population in Southern California Before the first game was even played fans of both teams were clashing Murals of both teams in Los Angeles had already been defaced by rival fans 7
