You can learn a lot about the speed and scale of the LA Galaxy’s turnaround by listening to Will Kuntz recall his first matchday at Dignity Health Sports Park after joining the club’s technical staff in April 2023.
Arriving after a highly successful stint with crosstown rivals LAFC – who’d won MLS Cup 2022 just a few months prior – Kuntz encountered a club reeling from years of underachievement, beset by a groundswell of fan discontent that sparked a revolt led by their largest supporters’ groups, who demanded the ouster of president Chris Klein and technical director Jovan Kirovski, boycotting matches until the duo departed.
“It was full-on en fuego,” recalled Kuntz during a one-on-one conversation with MLSsoccer.com at DHSP last month. “My first game, I was sitting back in the conference room there, and I remember [President of Business Operations and Chief Operating Officer] Tom Braun coming in and giving a report on the number of people protesting outside – I mean, like, ‘it's not as bad as we thought.’
“But yeah, it was not great.”
Star signings step up
The manner in which the Galaxy’s general manager rapidly reframed that rebellion, which eventually paved the way to the very changes the supporter groups sought, is revealing, too.
“I also remember thinking, this is what happens when you are a big club and you're not performing, right? The alternative is nobody cares, and that's awful,” continued Kuntz. “So the fact that we had fans that were so passionate, so invested, that they show up for the games, but not for the game? That tells you what the potential is.
“And that shows you that there is an appetite, a yearning for something different, which also helped me feel really confident that if we changed our approach a little bit, it would be well received.”
Nineteen months later, with the Gs poised to host the New York Red Bulls in MLS Cup 2024 presented by Audi on Saturday (4 pm ET | Apple TV - Free; FOX, FOX Deportes; TSN, RDS), that instinct has been vindicated, and then some.
It’s not just their impressive march to the final after finishing second in the Western Conference during the regular season with their highest point total (64) since 2011. The Gs have blossomed into arguably MLS’s most entertaining side, powered by an aggressive game model steered by classy Spanish maestro Riqui Puig that reeled off 69 goals in league play before dialing it up in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs, to the tune of 16 goals in their four matches, all wins, to reach this point.
Winter Designated Player signings Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil have been a smash hit, producing 26 goals and 24 assists between them and bringing out the best in those around them, like rising striker Dejan Joveljić. That quartet all hit double digits in scoring, making LA the first MLS team with four different players to bag 10-plus goals in a season.
Turning the page
The fans appear to be back onside, based on the deafening volume that’s become the norm at DHSP and the sustained upturn in crowd size that made this their best-attended season on average since their inaugural 1996 campaign. In retrospect, the situation that precipitated the supporter boycott – an unprecedentedly severe raft of MLS sanctions imposed for LA violating salary budget and roster guidelines during the 2019 season – turned out to be a watershed moment, the prelude to an unexpectedly swift renaissance.
“Going into last season, there was just a lot of negative energy around the club. We obviously had a tough penalty handed down to us, the toughest in the history of the league, with a million-dollar fine and a transfer ban for the first time in the history of the league,” head coach Greg Vanney noted to MLSsoccer.com. “From roster building, we had to make some spur-of-the-moment decisions on how to make up that money, and how to try to plan for the future, understanding that you might not be able to make moves in the summer and how that's going to look.
“[With] supporters groups not coming in, we were playing home games and it was just no energy and no noise,” he added, “and you could tell just the weight was laying heavily down onto the players as well. Because the players understood the way we change the dialogue a little bit is to just start winning games. That's the only way you can change the energy.”
The Galaxy were not just fined, but also deprived of $1 million in available future General Allocation Money (GAM) and prohibited from registering a player who required the receipt of an International Transfer Certificate during the 2023 summer transfer window.
That, in essence, limited LA to free-agent signings or intra-league trades as they sought to strengthen their squad in midseason, following a stumbling start of just three wins in their first 19 league matches, made worse by season-ending knee injuries to showcase striker Javier 'Chicharito' Hernández and starting center back Martín Cáceres. Further, Klein was suspended from any sporting-related responsibilities through the conclusion of the summer window.
Initially, Vanney took over sporting director responsibilities, piling further work on his already-full plate. That made Kuntz’s hiring vital, particularly after Klein eventually departed in late May. The challenges involved in player recruitment dated back even further, though, explains Vanney, who says the Galaxy were missing a fully-fledged scouting operation when he arrived in 2021 after a successful six-year stint at Toronto FC.
“Look, part of the reason I came is because of my relationship with Chris, and I played with Jovan and I knew Jovan. But it was our shared vision for where we wanted to get the club back to,” he explained. “We've just done a better job over the last couple years of creating things that didn't exist prior to my arrival. There was never a scouting department that was doing proactive work, and a lot of that was left to the coaches before.
“And if they didn't say, 'hey, I'm going to use a scouting department, and this is how I'm going to use it,' then it wasn't created. So if they were just going to say, 'we're going to use relationships with agents and find players, and that's what was here,' problem with that is that doesn't have any legacy, and there's nothing proactive about that.”
Former Galaxy and Chicago Fire FC midfielder Michael Stephens spearheaded the construction of a more coherent player identification structure, something Vanney believes will continue to lift the club well beyond the tenures of the current leadership. It’s noteworthy that one of new Fire boss Gregg Berhalter’s first moves was convincing Stephens, a Chicagoland native, to return to his hometown club last month to take up a similar post there.
Galaxy revival
Even now, Vanney sounds rueful as he recalls the frustrations of his first couple of seasons back in LA, noting the Galaxy had a range of overseas prospects on their radar, including future MLS standouts like Thiago Almada and Alan Velasco, but couldn’t gather enough data to close deals.
“We were just coming out of COVID, and even if we wanted to go scout places – I remember Jovan was getting into the backs of cars and hiding under seats to get across borders in Europe to be able to go watch a player because the borders were closed and they weren't letting people travel,” said Vanney.
“We've done a much better job in the last window, specifically, of really doing the work and identifying the exact types of profiles that we need to finally reach, the vision of this team that we've been wanting to – not just in the qualities of those players, but also in the ages and the trajectories and where they are in their careers.”
LA wanted to get “younger and more dynamic,” in Vanney’s words, with “durable” players who could threaten opponents not only in possession but also on the counterattack. Having previously worked at LAFC and the league’s headquarters offices, Kuntz was well-placed to gauge and guide the evolutionary process ahead.
“We knew what we needed,” said Vanney. “So addressing those needs right at the beginning of the season, getting younger, getting a little more dynamic, getting some speed at the top, getting some one-on-one ability at the top, we felt like we could not only get ourselves better, but we could draw out the qualities of Dejan, we could draw out more qualities from Riqui.”
A return to winning ways was the bottom-line priority. But doing so in a style that befits the Galaxy’s glitzy brand and Hollywood backdrop was almost as important. That sheds light on why the club kept faith in Vanney and the assertive, ball-dominant philosophy with which he led TFC to three Canadian Championships, four MLS Cup finals and an unprecedented 2017 treble.
“The most important thing at the end of the day is the final score – that's the ultimate determinant,” said Kuntz. “But yeah, I'm a believer, and Greg is too, that you want to play attacking, exciting football. Especially in LA, this is a club that's historically had a lot of success, been a lot of fun to watch, and that was something, again, we think about.
“I don't say this to denigrate anybody who came before, but we lost our way a little bit in that respect, maybe chasing guys who didn't do that. But when we sort of recalibrated and said, 'look, the most important thing is that we win games in an exciting, dynamic, attacking way.' In some ways, it almost takes the albatross off your back and opens up the realm of possibility.”
An organization with a proud tradition of signing big names in the latter stages of their careers, the likes of Chicharito, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Beckham, needed to change tack. The Galaxy have always been one of MLS’s biggest spenders; now they would allocate those resources differently. Paintsil and Pec arrived via hefty transfer fees that added up to around $20 million.
The timing was key, too: LA did not rush their big-ticket acquisitions in hopes of rescuing a 2023 campaign that went south – “we ran out of bullets,” said Vanney – amid a raft of injuries and defensive breakdowns.
“We can't sacrifice this year for next year,” Vanney recalled of the outlook in the summer of ‘23. “We took it on the chin, but we took it on the chin in order to try to be in the position that we are today.”
He, Kuntz and their colleagues drafted a bigger-picture strategy for where, how and why they wanted to invest those millions into the squad and presented it to Philip Anschutz and Dan Beckerman of Anschutz Entertainment Group, the club’s owners.
“We took the time to create kind of a business plan for what we wanted to happen and why we wanted it to happen that way, with the roster, and how we wanted to build and rebuild it,” said Vanney, “just so we could lay it out for Mr. Anschutz and everybody else. And that's ultimately how he says at the end of the day, well, ‘OK, here's the money. We trust and we like what you're doing, and we're going to back you.'”
On a surface level, splashing upwards of $20 million on in-prime attacking reinforcements might look like a shortcut to success. Kuntz contends that it’s actually not an increase in overall spend, given the new recruits didn’t carry the lofty salary demands of their superstar predecessors.
“The more complicated thing is, we spent it well,” he said. “There's no doubt, without the support of ownership financially, you can't get guys like Gabriel and Joseph here. But when you amortize everything and look at the numbers, it's less than we spent, on a per-year basis, on our DPs historically. So despite the big outlay upfront in cash, it ends up being a more cost-effective way to put a roster together.”
Strengthening supporting cast
The less-flashy moves deserve attention, too. Even with the aforementioned limitations, Kuntz and Vanney made gains in the summer ‘23 window. Diego Fagúndez arrived in a trade with Austin FC, then Edwin Cerrillo from FC Dallas, then Maya Yoshida, a Japanese center back with English Premier League and Italian Serie A experience, was available as a free agent after Schalke 04's relegation from the German Bundesliga.
Today, Yoshida wears the captain’s armband, Cerrillo is the underrated defensive midfielder doing the dirty work for the “Killa P's” attacking in front of him and Fagúndez is perhaps the most luxurious utility man in the league, a versatile creator who could step into the hole created when Puig tore his ACL during last weekend’s Western Conference Final victory over Seattle Sounders FC.
After the sanctions were lifted in the offseason, the Galaxy acquired starting goalkeeper John McCarthy and left back John Nelson via free agency. Right back Miki Yamane arrived on a modest transfer fee from J-League side Kawasaki Frontale; rising young center back Emiro Garcés was secured on loan from Colombia’s Deportivo Pereira. And while Marco Reus’ signing was a boon in the sense that the German star prioritized living in Southern California, Kuntz had to jump through extra hoops because his MLS rights were held by Charlotte FC.
Add it all up, and the Gs have refashioned their team into an aesthetically pleasing MLS Cup favorite in just two transfer windows – one that hasn’t lost at DHSP all year. Vanney contends the season opener, a 1-1 draw with Inter Miami FC in which it took an injury-time equalizer from Leo Messi for the visitors to snatch a point, was a statement of intent that sped the reconciliation with supporters.
“There's no better game than Miami as the opening game of the season to measure yourself and to have your fans excited about the game and coming to the stadium,” he said. “We felt like this is a statement game for us, to show that we are a competitive team and that we're going to be here for this year. And we played great. I think from right there, that moment, we convinced our fans that this team is going to be for real, and that the past was the past, and the future is bright.
“And the group has lived up to that.”
For his part, Kuntz considers this to be only year one of a bigger-picture project, which says something about the scale of the ambitions being cultivated in Carson once again, whatever the result may be on Saturday.
“I think ‘make the Galaxy great again’ is kind of the goal, and we're there, but we want to keep driving hard in this direction,” he said. “This is not where the buck stops. We are going to continue to be aggressive, to look different, try and feel different, find new markets, whether that's Japan, South America, Europe. We've got a platform, we've got an opportunity here to really blow it out.
“We've got an ownership group that's really supportive with resources, with passion and time commitment, investment that's really special. I would just sort of say, 'hey, if you've liked what you've seen, stand by because we're really trying to double down and triple down on what we're doing here.'”
