LAFC's Mark Delgado crosses El Tráfico divide with "same fire" | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

From day one, when Zlatan Ibrahimović made global headlines by scoring a sensational super-sub brace in 2018 in the most dramatic MLS debut imaginable, the emotions around El Tráfico have almost always been elevated to extreme levels. It’s what has powered the Southern California rivalry into the wider North American soccer consciousness in record time.

No one will feel those emotions more deeply this weekend than LAFC midfielder Mark Delgado, who visits the winless LA Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park for Part 2 of Rivalry Week’s Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire doubleheader (9 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).

“It’s definitely going to be weird,” he told MLSsoccer.com in a recent phone conversation.

“It's definitely going to be, I guess, emotional as well, because I had that attachment to the club and winning a championship.”

Switching sides

The Glendora, California native played more than 100 matches for the Gs over the past three years, the most recent being their 2024 MLS Cup final triumph at the same venue just five months ago, in which he assisted on the game-winning goal by Dejan Joveljić. By that point he’d already connected with colleagues, club staff and fans; he recalls the time he treated DHSP and Galaxy staff to doughnuts, the occasions when he joined the pickup games held by their supporters’ groups during the offseason.

Perhaps the strongest bond of all: He worked with their head coach, Greg Vanney, and core members of his staff for well over a decade at three different clubs dating back to his academy days. Last year, Vanney called Delgado “the epitome” of his game model, an “omnipresent” influence in the system that won the Gs their MLS-best sixth league title with his linking play, tactical intelligence and engine-room labor. Overall, they won two MLS Cups and reached several other achievements together, including an unprecedented and still-unmatched treble with Toronto FC in 2017, and still keep in touch despite the winter trade that sent Delgado across town, and across enemy lines.

“With Greg, we have a really close relationship, still speak from time to time, so definitely going to be very strange for me,” he said. “I got along really well with the front office, with the people behind the scenes who do the video editing, the merchandise, the ticketing, and I definitely spent a lot of time up there, just hanging out with all of them … I definitely had really close relationships with a lot of people out there.”

Of the many offseason departures imposed by their salary-budget challenges – the Galaxy threw all their chips in on last year’s run, and soon had to pay the price – Delgado’s might have been the single most painful, both on and off the pitch. As loathe as any club would be to trade away a key veteran and local kid to their heated adversaries, there was insufficient room under the Gs’ cap to keep him, let alone scope to adequately reward him for his role in their championship push.

A deal with LAFC offered him a chance to play for a contender without uprooting the life that he and his wife Nicky have made in Southern California, just with a somewhat longer daily commute.

“I wouldn't say too much has changed. Just a change of scenery at the workplace. That's the way I see it, right?” said Delgado. “New faces, new scenery, new club, new coach, all that stuff comes with moving teams. But other than that, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to still stay at my place that I was at and still be home in LA. So definitely very fortunate.”

Rivalry Week: Which derby stands out?

Hometown veteran

When it comes to El Tráfico, Delgado is in a select club. A very select club.

He’s not only one of just five players to play for both clubs in the showdown, which will spark into life again this weekend during Matchday 14. He’s also been involved with LA derbies since before El Tráfico existed.

A homegrown product of CD Chivas USA, the LAFC predecessor that co-inhabited what’s now called DHSP with the LA Galaxy from 2005-14, Delgado is the only person to suit up for all three of the SoCal sides. So as a teenager, he lived the first iteration of this crosstown clash, dubbed the ‘SuperClasico,’ between the Goats and Galaxy.

“Yeah, it wasn't much of a clasico,” Delgado deadpanned.

He’s putting it mildly: Star-crossed Chivas USA won just four of the 34 all-time meetings compared to the Galaxy’s 22, and only one of them in the final seven years of their existence.

The Goats’ only series win came in the 2007 season, in which they finished tops in the Western Conference regular-season standings, paced by standouts like Ante Razov, Sacha Kljestan and Jesse Marsch, the latter memorably squaring up to David Beckham after kicking the English legend, who was in his opening weeks in Major League Soccer, in a 3-0 drubbing that August.

Spicy moments like that hinted at the promise of the concept, though it took some rebirth to truly bring it to life. Chivas USA were shuttered in 2014, players distributed around the league via the Dispersal Draft – Delgado was the last picked, as Toronto snatched him at No. 14 after seven other clubs passed, which looks rather myopic on their part in retrospect.

Derby days

A few years later, LAFC arrived, with sweeping ambition and investment that produced the downtown marvel that is BMO Stadium, one of MLS’s elite grounds, and a chronic winning habit marked by four major trophies in just over seven years of life. All of which brought powerful light and heat to El Tráfico from the jump.

For Delgado, it’s the premier fixture in MLS. And he’s not just saying that as a local, but as a veteran of the peak years of the profoundly passionate Canadian Classique between TFC and CF Montréal, the soccer incarnation of a bone-deep cultural clash between Canada’s two largest cities.

“The Toronto-Montréal derby was definitely what I felt was the most exciting rivalry in the league, even though it wasn't being played out to be. There's such a hatred between Toronto and Montréal in all sports,” said Delgado. “It was on another level, and it was during the time where Montréal was doing very well, and so were we. So the level of play and the competitiveness, it was there … The fans hate each other, for sure.”

As his tenure as a Red rolled on, he could not help but take note of what was unfolding back in his hometown.

“Towards the back end of my years there, that's when LAFC was born, and then El Tráfico was born,” he said, “and then that definitely took over, and that caught everyone's eyes. So I always wanted to come back to LA, and then when that rivalry was born with LAFC and the Galaxy, it definitely caught my eye.”

There’s a palpable, occasionally nasty edge to these affairs both on the pitch and in the stands, which could make Delgado’s respect for his old team something of an outlier on Sunday. It won’t diminish his hunger for bragging rights in the least.

“Definitely a very physical match, and they always are,” he said. “Now to be on the other side, to be with LAFC now, it's going to be strange, but it doesn't change anything. I still have the same fire underneath me and I'm still looking to come out on the winning side, just with different colors.”