Zlatan Ibrahimovic revealed some frustration with the LA Galaxy's recent form, saying the club is losing to teams that are "not better than us" following Wednesday night's 3-2 defeat to FC Dallas.
The Swedish striker netted both of the Galaxy's goals in his return from a suspension following his first red card in MLS, but LA was already trailing Dallas by three goals when he got on the scoresheet.
The result ended a brief two-game win streak -- done largely without Ibrahimovic -- but the Galaxy have now lost five of their last seven games, and the former Manchester United player said it was hard to lose to teams he expects to beat.
"The thing is if we play against a team like Real Madrid or Barcelona and we lose, I will say, 'Yeah, we did the hard work, we tried everything we did,' but we're not playing against those teams," Ibrahimovic said. "Because the quality [of the MLS opponents] is not so high, and they're not better than us. Opposite, we're better than them, but they're winning the games, and that's the difference."
Ibrahimovic said he saw the same issues the Galaxy showed in their four-game losing streak, and that the problems were only masked by the results in the recent 1-0 wins against Montreal and San Jose.
"For us saying we did much more [in the wins], the only difference is that you win and you cover [up] the mistakes you normally do [by winning]. The things are not [better] by winning," he said. "It's like a hidden secret, like it's still there but you don't see it, because you're winning. That's the problem. And when you're losing, you see it and you point at it, and you say that's the problem."
Although he also accepted his part in the Galaxy's defeats, Ibrahimovic also hit out at the Galaxy lack of organisation and urged his teammates to work together better as a unit.
"I feel in the offensive and defensive way, we're a little bit lost in the positions we're playing because we're not organized, and it's difficult to play like that, because as soon as we play a team that's a little bit organized, they punish you, because they're a little more organized, obviously," he said.
"Doesn't matter [how much] quality you have, because it's a collective game, it's not individual, so the collective needs to work for the individual to work. And now it's not working 100 percent. We're conceding too many goals, too many easy goals, and we need to work on it. We need to work on the things that we're less good at and the things we're not good at."
The Galaxy's last four defeats have all come with 3-2 scorelines, including twice against FC Dallas after losses to the Houston Dynamo and New York Red Bulls.
In his MLS debut, Ibrahimovic inspired a remarkable comeback from 3-0 against LAFC to win 4-3, but he said falling behind every game is no way to succeed in the long run.
"It's irritating, of course, when you lose the game," he said. "It's never good [when you're losing] 3-0 [and you must] chase the game. I've played more than 800 games, and it's very difficult to win games when you're losing, 2-0, 3-0. Doesn't matter who you are, it's very difficult.
"Against LAFC, we were losing, 3-0, won, 4-3, now everybody is like, 'Yeah, if we're losing, 2-0, 3-0, we can catch it 5-4 or 4-3.' But it's not easy. Today was the same thing: 3-0, we try to catch, we came to 3-2, and, yeah, we lose the game. It's very [frustrating] to lose. It's never good to lose."